LeBron and the impossible standard of greatness in 2020
LeBron is one of one. He's singular. Let's appreciate the time he has left.
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The 2020 NBA season came to a close on Sunday night, exactly one year to the day after it started, and the ending was as fitting as it was inevitable: LeBron James posting a triple-double in a blowout win to secure his fourth title and his fourth Finals MVP.
He’s 35-years old, and it hardly seems like LeBron is slowing down. He just finished off a 16-5 run through the Playoffs by averaging 27.6 points, 10.8 boards, 8.8 assists and 1.2 steals while shooting 56 percent from the floor and 37 percent from three on nearly six attempts per game.
You’re telling me that a guy capable of doing that doesn’t have a few more years left in the tank at this level?
I certainly hope he does.
Because I’m not ready to see his career come to an end. I’m not really one for wading into GOAT debate — at this point, those waters are left solely for Skip Bayless and Nick Wright to earn their paychecks — but now that the basketball is gone and we have another six weeks until college basketball saves us, I’ve found myself reflecting on what we all watched for the last three months.
I have thoughts.
And what point is having a newsletter if I’m not going to use it to share those thoughts.
So here goes:
- I think there’s a valid argument to make that Jimmy Butler was the Finals MVP. The Heat were outmatched against the Lakers when they were at full strength, and they played this series without their primary creator in Goran Dragic and with their superstar (yeah, I said it) center in Bam Adebayo banged up enough to miss two-and-a-half games.
And Butler still carried Miami to two wins they had absolutely no business getting.
The 40-point triple-double that Butler posted in Game 3 was one of the most incredible performances I can remember seeing in the Finals in some time. The 35-point triple-double he had in Game 5 might have been better, considering that he played all-but 46 seconds of that game and beat LeBron punch-for-punch in final four minutes.
He was un. bee. leave. ah. bull.
He was also so tired after those two performances that he really struggled the next night. Butler did have 25-10-9 in Game 4, but Miami lost that game because of his inability to attack Anthony Davis when AD went under every ball-screen. It was a quiet 25-10-9, if you will.
In Game 6, he was completely gassed. I knew it the second this happened:
Butler went Full LeBron in twice in a three-game stretch in the Finals, and it broke him.
I hope that puts into content what LeBron was able to do in 2015, when he took Cleveland to a 2-1 lead over Golden State despite playing without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love; or in 2016, when he posted three straight 40-point triple-doubles to erase a 3-1 deficit; or in either of the Finals where he had to face a 73-win team that added Kevin Durant to their mix.
Jimmy Butler is in the top 1% of the top 1% of competitors on this planet, a freak that never actually seems to get tired, and even he is not in the came category as King James.
- LeBron made his first NBA Finals back in 2007, when I was a senior in college. That should have been LeBron’s senior year as well. We’re the same age. I have two kids, a mortgage, an extra 25 pounds around my waist and a knee that makes walking down the stairs every morning a roller coaster. LeBron is still the face of the NBA.
Think about that.
He’s been a villain for more than a decade. Much of it was his own doing — he’s still paying the price for The Decision — but it’s not his fault that hating LeBron has become a cottage industry. Skip Bayless makes like $5 million-per-year because he clings to the narrative that LeBron’s (terrible) performance in the 2011 NBA Finals is still relevant today.
I’m not sure there is an athlete that has ever dealt with as much scrutiny as LeBron has. He’s hardly the first Enemy Of The People to play pro sports in this country, but no one has embodied that sentiment more during the era of social media and 24-hour news cycles than LeBron. He’s dealt with that attention and that pressure and that life in a fishbowl for an entire decade, and he’s still the best basketball player on the planet.
How many people would be able to deal with that? How many people could live in the public eye for this long and have their biggest mistake be going through with a dumb idea for a TV show?
Michael Jordan was King for six seasons in an eight-year stretch. He retired twice because life in the public eye — and the murder of his father — was too much for him to deal with.
His second retirement came at the age of 35.
- The problem that I have with the GOAT debate is that it’s fucking dumb.
Nuance doesn’t exist in sports discourse anymore. You have to be on one side or the other. It’s all about the argument, not the discussion.
But here’s my nuanced take. It’s hardly unique, I think.
Both LeBron and Jordan are the GOAT, depending on the parameters you’re using to define “great.” There has never been a human being that was a more perfectly-developed basketball player than LeBron James. There has never been a human being that was more perfectly-crafted to be a serial winner than Michael Jordan. LeBron is the best on paper. Jordan has the best resume.
Both of these things can be true.
I know this because both of them are true.
And I also know that wasting the rest of LeBron’s career arguing whether or not he can live up to someone else’s legacy ignores the simple fact that the King is one of one.
We’re never going to see someone like him again, not for a long time.
Let’s all just appreciate what we’re witnessing, even if you think he’s the second-greatest basketball player of all-time.