“I’m The Best Player in the World”
Honest Bron. It happens to all legendary players when they don’t feel the need to be PC anymore and just tell you exactly how they feel. This is the LeBron James we are dealing with and should expect going forward.
You want to hear brutal honesty, watch LeBron’s presser after losing the NBA Finals.
https://youtu.be/WkrCtmr110U
Did he have to be so brutally honest about his teammates? Not at all, but he is passed the point of caring what other people think. If you ask him a question he is going to give you an honest answer. The truth hurts sometimes and if you are a teammate of LeBron’s his words might sting you a bit, but that doesn’t make them any less true.
LeBron’s legacy is simple and complicated at the same time. The first thing people need to understand is he has many prime years left (at least 5), so his legacy isn’t complete. He could win 5 championships in a row or never win one again, we just don’t know, so we have to just go with the information we have now.
LeBron spoke that it maybe would better if he didn’t make the playoffs at all if it meant he would eventually lose in the Finals. That was just the emotion talking, but it does lead to a bigger point.
Athletes many times are judged by their successes in the biggest games. The greater the athlete the more they are scrutinized or praised about it.
Joe Montana stats pale in comparison to a lot of quarterbacks, but no one cares because he went 4-0 in Super Bowls and never threw an INT. No one talks about the playoff losses or poor NFC Championship games he had, they just remember what he did when he got to the championship. If the 49ers went to 6 Super Bowls and Montana went 4-2 and had some bad games how would he be remembered then?
Michael Jordan went 6-0 in NBA Finals. Any time any player is mentioned in the same breath as him you will be reminded of that fact. But, here is when I need you to think and separate the fact from fiction.
Factually throughout the history of the NBA no legendary player won an NBA title without supreme help. Doesn’t mean they had to have Hall of Famers or All-Stars, but whatever run they made to the title they needed a lot of help to get their ring.
Jordan in fact is an EXCELLENT example of this if people would remember his struggles the first 7 years of his career. He was a destroyer and best player in the NBA, but one player couldn’t beat a great team. That is why he kept losing to Celtics and Pistons because their teams were superior. Jordan no matter how great he was never lifted a team that was a supreme underdog to the NBA Finals where he likely would have lost to a far superior team.
That isn’t to discredit Jordan’s championships because the teams he beat were GREAT, but it was GREAT against GREAT. You put two equally matched teams on the court and normally the one with Jordan would win.
Once he got on an even playing field he murdered the competition and that is what made him great, but he had to build up to that.
LeBron is in an interesting spot. He gets full credit for going to the Finals 6 times in 11 years with two different teams. No matter the era that is extremely hard to do and to do it with multiple teams is unheard of.
The problem is that he’s in a conference where even when he has a weak team he is still on an even playing field with his competition, so just like Jordan when you give him an equal playing field he is going to beat you more times than not.
The issue is when he runs into a far superior Western Conference team he can’t overcome them. Look at it from this perspective, out of the 6 teams LeBron has led to the Finals how many would have made it through the WEST? 2? 3? 4?
This isn’t a knock on LeBron ,you can only play who is in front of you, but some people will unfairly judge him on his 2-4 records without realizing or acknowledging some of the teams he dragged to the Finals were not the best.
Would it had been better for LeBron if only his best teams had made it to the Finals. Some people think being 2-0 is better than going 2-4. If LeBron loses to the Bulls in the Eastern Conference Semifinals would anyone be talking about his legacy right now?
You can’t ignore the losses, because you play to win the game as Herman Edwards would say, but you can put them in perspective. Part of LeBron’s legacy is that he is able to literally take any team and make them championship contenders.
He was two games away from making JR Smith a champion.
There aren’t many players ever in the history of the NBA you could drop off on any team in the league and guarantee that team will be a title contender immediately regardless of their roster. LeBron is one of those guys.
This isn’t about Jordan, Magic, Kobe, Russell and etc, this is about LeBron. You are witnessing even in defeat, history in the making, wouldn’t hurt you to stop and appreciate it.