It is the joy and curse of having a player right there in front of you who is one of the greatest to have ever played that every moment becomes a referendum on his stature not just in a game, but in the sport and in sports.
That’s where LeBron James is, or where we are with LeBron. The better he performs, the more miraculous the feats, the better for those watching. We can say we were there.
But through four games of the NBA Finals it’s not entirely clear to me yet what we’re seeing.
What is certain is that for once in his career James is the beneficiary of limited expectations. When Kyrie Irving broke his kneecap at the end of Game 1 Cleveland was written off. But then James led the Cavaliers to a pair of unlikely wins and appeared poised to write a story that almost any basketball fan or sports fan is eager to hear, and it’s a simple one: James was putting up the greatest individual performance in NBA Finals history by lifting a depleted Cavaliers team to a 2-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors – by many measures one of the most potent teams the league has seen in recent years.
I didn’t quite buy it. It was a view that steamrolled over a few inconvenient details, such as his record three-game total of 124 points was achieved on a 109 shots and a record 64 misses. Or that in their own way the group around James – Matthew Dellavedova, Tristan Thompson, Timofy Mozgov and the like – had found ways to contribute mightily, if on James’ cue.
Or that when you’re as talented as James and you are on the floor for 45 minutes a game, the box score line is going to look pretty good. All those assists and rebounds add up fast.
Or that for all the remarkable plays he did make my eyes get drawn to plays James makes that I can never quite understand – like beating his initial defender and choosing to force his way into two more when an easy pull-up jumper is available; or failing to finish around the rim against players he always has an advantage against.
But whatever. What James had achieved through three games created an opportunity for him to have the signature moment his still-evolving career needed to carve him a new spot on the hypothetical NBA Mount Rushmore, alongside consensus picks Russell, Bird, Magic and Michael. All he needed to do was keep doing it.
But can we wait a little before saying this is a performance that can be acclaimed as one of the finest in league history? Can we wait to declare that it’s even James’ finest moment?
What are we going to say if the Warriors pull away from James and the Cavaliers as it suddenly looks like they might after their all-too-easy 103-82 win in Game 4 that evened the series as it shifts back to Oakland for Game 5 Sunday? Similarly, what would we be saying if the Cavs were down 3-1, which very easily could be the case?
Statistics can tell any story you want, often enough, but James has been to the NBA Finals five consecutive times and the only other time he’s had a negative net rating was in his 2011 car wreck against the Dallas Mavericks, when his reputation was at rock bottom. His net rating (the difference between how many points his team and the other teams scores when he’s on the floor per 100 possessions) then was -8; through four games so far James’ net rating in this series is -7.7 (it was -3.4 prior to the Game 4 blowout). He is shooting just 39 per cent for the series and 35 per cent for his last three games.
A mini-industry has sprung around contrarian views that argue against James’ greatness. It’s a minority – okay as far as I can tell it’s ESPN controversy-maker Skip Bayless – but it’s loud enough that it feels like there’s a need to shout the anti-LeBron forces down. But the correct response isn’t to just as loudly shout that James is the greatest or that this series is his greatest expression of that greatness.
All that does is set him up for a fall. James has taken on a massive load for a Cavs to be sure, but it’s hardly being unfair to expect him to do just that. Doing extraordinary things is part of the job description. Legends move mountains.
Magic Johnson was 20 years old when he started at centre in place of an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the road for the Los Angeles Lakers in Philadelphia and delivered 42 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists to win his first championship in 1980.
Michael Jordan was playing alongside a badly ailing Scottie Pippen when he stole the ball from Karl Malone and won his sixth title in six tries with his game-winning jumper at Utah, giving him 45 points on that night in 1998.
And yes Bird and Magic and Jordan and the rest of the greats had more help than LeBron has available to him, but they were going against teams that boasted their own rosters of Hall of Famers. The nature of the NBA salary cap means that teams loaded with multiple Hall of Famers are going to be increasingly rare. As good as Golden State is, who are its all-time greats? Steph Curry? Maybe Klay Thompson if he has another eight seasons like the one he just had?
James hit a wall on Thursday night in his hometown. Now we get to see if he can get over it.
Dubs coach Steve Kerr started Andre Iguodala opposite James rather than bring him off the bench, and Golden State was more aggressive in sending a second defender, betting that James’ iffy supporting cast wouldn’t be able to make them pay for leaving someone open. Kerr was right. Dellavedova, Shumpert and J.R. Smith – the three perimeter players who should benefit most from the room created by the attention paid to James – combined to shoot a miserable 7-of-35 from the field.
Meanwhile Iguodala was outstanding, contributing 22 points and eight rebounds while providing the first line of defence against James, who shot just 7-of-22 from the field. The way Iguodala is going he could be the Finals MVP. If he does it will the second year in a row the player opposite James – it was the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard a year ago – emerges as best player in the series.
It may come across as nitpicky, but if the rush is to label this series as James’ defining moment I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect him to shoot over 50 per cent from the field in at least one game. No one is looking back at Allen Iverson’s 2001 showing when he put up a line of 35.6/5.6/3.8 on 40.5 per cent shooting as an all-time Finals performance as the over-matched Philadelphia 76ers lost in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers, but then again no one is holding it against Iverson either. People recognized it for what it was: the desperate gasp of a one-man team.
LeBron has done some remarkable things through four games. He’s set records. He’s pushed himself to the limit. But has he played the best basketball of his career? I don’t thinks so. I do think he’s got better basketball in him and if Cleveland is going to see its first championship in any sport since 1964, he’s going to have to find it.