Social media can be a wonderful place.
It carries so much weight and power that it can start movements, make new careers and build long-lasting friendships (and relationships) with people you would never met before this new technology took over our world.
With that being said, just like any city in America there is a part of social media that is just downright nasty and pumps out negativity day in and day out.
There is no critique for going to 5 straight NBA Finals. There is nothing negativity that can be said about the accomplishment, but fans (or haters depending on your perspective) have bashed LeBron for the past 24 hours.
The main critique is quite possibly the dumbest of all-time.
THE EAST IS WEAK
I ask you to think about this with a very clear head. Using the premise the East is weak, if LeBron didn’t make 5 straight Finals what would you say? You would probably say he’s a bum because he couldn’t make the Finals in a weak East.
Which brings me to my overall point, negative people can always find a way to be negative. I had the following conversation with a Twitter user a couple of weeks back.
Twitter guy: You never doing any sporting events.
Me: I’m at the NFL Draft right now (I literally was there).
Twitter guy: Well, that is just one time.
Me: I’ll be ringside at May-Pac fight in couple of days.
Twitter guy: Well, you just do it when it suits you.
That is how social media works, facts aren’t as important as the slander or jokes, being logical and rational on social media is a foreign concept to many online. Which is why mainly, I just ignore it, because they don’t want answers, they want attention.
Celtics went to 10 straight NBA Finals, they had to win 1 series to make it to the Finals. So the maximum amount of games they could play was 14. NBA teams today if they want to make it to the Finals have to win three series and could play a maximum of 28 games to win a Championship. You can always find a flaw to try to discredit an accomplishment if you want to, but that says a lot about you the person.
The EAST hasn’t been the stronger conference for a while, but you can only beat the teams that are in front you. It hasn’t been a cakewalk for LeBron. He has beaten veteran teams, teams with MVPs on them, 60 win teams, young athletic teams , teams that had homecourt advantage and he has dealt with injuries to star players on his own team. LeBron has had a bullseye on his back since he came into the NBA. To beat LeBron is like beating Superman he is giving everyone’s A+ effort and still succeeding in spite of that.
It wasn’t EASY, in fact it is extremely hard considering it hadn’t been done for like 40+ years. Add in the fact LeBron has done it with two different teams, two different coaches and different types of players, makes it even a greater feat.
A friend of mine, told me the reason we only hear from the negative people is because it is boring agreeing with someone. People just want something to talk about, they want people to listen to them especially on social media, they crave the attention, so they just say whatever they think will make people react.
People want to live in a world of hypotheticals, if LeBron was in the West, if Shaq never left Kobe, if Jordan never played baseball and etc.
Life doesn’t work like that, you have to just deal with what actually happened or you will drive yourself crazy.
One of the mystique of Jordan’s legacy is he went 6-0 in the Finals. The sad thing for LeBron is by taking frankly a few subpar teams to the Finals (or not as loaded as many other Finals teams), there is no way he will ever have a Finals like mystique that Jordan or a Russell had. He is going to be an underdog, likely against Warriors and has a good chance to dropping to 2-4 in the Finals. In the social media’s world twisted view LeBron would have been better off going to 2 Finals and winning both then going to 6 and losing 4 (potentially, since we don’t know outcome of the one coming up).
It will talk a calm, unbiased and reasonable person to put his legacy into context if that happens, so don’t expect to see that on social media where sharks are always circling.
For now just try to appreciate you are watching in real-time one of the greatest basketball player of all-time and certainly of our generation.
It is ok to appreciate that without adding a BUT……