LeBron: He Goes On & On & On
Leading the Lakers past the Grizzlies is only the latest for basketball's all-time greatest
Sometimes we can get bored with greatness—overlooking it, taking it for granted, moving on to the next Big Thing.
But let’s pause a moment to reflect on what just happened in the National Basketball Association playoffs: last night, with their 125-85 throttling of the Memphis Grizzlies, the Los Angeles Lakers clinched their first-round series in six games. The club’s undisputed leader is LeBron James, the man whose persistent dominance over the past 20 years can be glimpsed by any variety of data points. Here are a few:
· Four NBA championships with three different teams (Miami Heat twice, Cleveland Cavaliers once and Lakers once)
· Four regular season MVP Awards (in a five-year span), as well as four runner-up MVP finishes and five other times in the Top 5
· 13-time 1st team All-NBA selection (two more than anyone else)
· All-time leading scorer
· Fourth all-time in assists
OK, enough already! That might be close to what you are thinking, right? And that’s sort of the point: James has been so great for so long that it can feel like old news.
“Old” applies when you consider he’s been playing in the league longer than one of its players, the Detroit Pistons’ Jalen Duren, has been alive. (On the day Duren was born, James was playing in his 11th NBA game.)
For most of this season, it was a toss-up whether the Lakers would even make the playoffs. A late surge lifted them into the 7th seed, which meant they barely got in and still had to win a play-in game before locking their spot against 2nd-seed Memphis in the opening best-of-seven round.
Although the Lakers won the NBA title three seasons ago, during the COVID-19 “bubble” tournament, they have struggled since then. When it came to sizing up their chances of advancing against Memphis, skepticism abounded. But I have learned over the past 20 years never to count out a team with James on the roster.
The Greatest Ever: LeBron or Michael?
One of the recurring basketball debates is whether LeBron or Michael Jordan is the greatest of all-time. When someone asks me, I respond, without equivocation: LeBron. It has been my answer for the past four or five years, and every passing year, my answer only grows firmer.
Amid an assortment of "evidence" that inevitably includes the data points shared at the top, I point to the Cleveland Cavaliers teams that he repeatedly willed to the NBA Finals. In particular, it is astounding to consider the 2016 Cavs edition that defeated the Golden State Warriors for the franchise's only championship ever.
With all due respect to that squad's other players (Kyrie Irving is excellent, if erratic and troubled, and Kevin Love was still at or near the top of his game back then), nobody can convince me that the team would have secured a title with any other superstar, past or present.
He came into the NBA with ridiculously high expectations (above, there he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high school junior), and he’s somehow managed to exceed them. At the same time, James has led a scandal-free life off the court that has been marked by social justice advocacy and philanthropic leadership that has included starting a school in his hometown of Akron, Ohio.
`He’s not afraid to be great’
Three times over an 11-month span, during James’ senior year of high school and early in his rookie season, Time magazine dispatched me to report on him. My write-up from those trips is captured on my website: A Look Back at a Legend-in-the-Making.
Reviewing notes from the fifth of his nearly 1,700 career games (playoffs included), I am struck by something Toronto Raptor scout Craig Neal told me about James that night in Indianapolis:
“He’s not afraid to be great. A lot of kids don’t want to be that great because they’re afraid of what comes behind it...There’s no fear in him.”
Two decades later, James' capacity to thrive in the moment when others shy away is still on regular display. In my view, the turning point of the first-round series came in Game 4. Down by two points with the clock winding down, James carried the Lakers into overtime with a crucial last-second basket. By winning in OT, L.A. seized a 3-1 series lead, instead of heading to Memphis for Game 5 with the series knotted at 2. That’s a world of difference.
James’ blend of strength and finesse made that bucket happen.
His strength: an I-won’t-be-denied drive from the point to the basket, starting with four seconds left from beyond the three-point arc.
His finesse: as NBA shot-blocking king Jaren Jackson Jr. tries to block the attempt, James floats the ball up, a few inches beyond Jackson’s fingers. It kisses the backboard, about three-quarters up on the glass, treads lightly along a few spots on the rim, and then drops through.
It was a clinic in merging brute physicality with a brilliant command of physics.
`You tell him once, and he’s got it.’
Going into last night’s game, James was looking to bounce back from an especially subpar performance in which he made only 1-of-9 three-point attempts in the Lakers’ Game 5 loss at Memphis. Over the prior four games, he was 3-for-28 from three-point distance, well below his 35% career norm from 3.
How did he do in the clincher?
He went 2-for-5 from 3-point range, made all but one of his eight other shots, and finished with an efficient 22 points, six assists and five rebounds. In his 31 minutes on the court, L.A. outscored Memphis by 32.
James’ performance brings to mind an observation someone shared with me 19 1/2 years ago, minutes before James played in his fifth game as a rookie. It was his first NBA coach, Paul Silas, who marveled that he had never coached a player who was as fast a learner as James.
For context: Silas played in the NBA for 16 years and was a member of three championship teams. At the time, he was in his ninth year as an NBA head coach. In short, he was sharing from a large sample size that encompassed decades of top performers.
“It’s God-given,” said Silas. “God gives people certain gifts. You tell him once, and he’s got it.”
All these years later — over half his life now — he’s still got it.