In Defense Of LeBron James.

facebooktwitterreddit

This may be the trickiest internet column ever written. See, it’s halftime of game 7 of Celtics-Heat and by the time I finish this, the second half may have already started.

There’s been a lot of talk about how “clutch” LeBron James is or is not.

Personally, I think a lot of that is overstated. Is he the guy I’d want taking the last shot for my team? Probably not. But he’s near the top of my list, and he should be near the peak of yours as well.

In my opinion, fans are breaking James’ career down like officials used to call games differently when Shaquille O’ Neal was in his prime in Orlando and Los Angeles.

Do most people admit that James is an awesome basketball player? Of course they do. It’s practically a given at this point.

Still people fall over themselves to run James into the ground, and that’s the purpose of this article.

First thing’s first; LeBron James is the best player on Earth. There are other contenders, and if Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder win the title this year, then it will be because Durant was awesome for over two months and on the biggest stage. In that scenario, Durant would make a very strong case for the “best player alive” belt.

Durant is awesome, no doubt about it. I don’t know if he’s better than James overall, but he’s probably the best offensive player in our league today. He can score from anywhere on the floor and is a devastating jump shooter, something that James has never been able to claim.

However, LeBron does alright on offense if you haven’t noticed. The real difference between Durant and James is on the defensive end where Durant came a long way between the end of last season the beginning of this one. He’s not a Defensive Player of the Year candidate or anything, but he began to use his length and athleticism as an asset.

That said, LeBron James is the best defensive player in the game. He can guard any position on the floor, whether it be a quick point guard or a center.

Again, picking between the two would cause me to lose sleep personally, but at gunpoint I’d go with James.

If we’re lucky, we’ll get this debate settled where it should be: on the court in the 2012 NBA Finals if the Heat win game 7. Durant and James head-to-head for 7 games? For me!? But I didn’t get you anything. Now I feel bad.

There are still some people (mostly Laker fans) that feel like Kobe Bryant is still the best player in basketball. They point to his big shots from four or five years ago, and his five championship rings as the reason.

First of all, Kobe has the worst “clutch” numbers of any active player in the league right now. He shoots the lowest percentage in crunch time and turns it over a ton to boot. Other than that, he’s awesome though.

Also overlooked is Kobe’s status as sidekick on those first three Laker titles. He was an awesome player, but any big possession went to Shaq in those days. That’s the biggest reason why Kobe ran him out of Los Angeles, after all.

The “true” Laker fans blame the supporting cast and more specifically Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum for holding the Lakers back and causing them to not make it out of the second round the past two years.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s a good chance that the Lakers’ big three is better than the Heat’s big three right now.

It’s closer than you may think.

I just said that LeBron is better than Kobe, but if you’re one of the folks that think that Kobe is better than LeBron, it’s time to own up.

Then you get to Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade up against Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum.

In my opinion, Gasol and Bynum are both better than Bosh. If you disagree, ask yourself what the Lakers would do if the Heat offered Bosh straight up for either of them.

The Lakers would laugh and hang up immediately, as they should, Bynum and Gasol are both better basketball players than Bosh.

Then the question becomes Wade against either one. I think Bynum is a little better than Wade, but would prefer Wade to Gasol, just because of Gasol’s age at this point.

The rest of the roster is a toss-up, a choice of personal preference. Sessions or Chalmers, Shane Battier or Metta World Peace, so on and so forth.

At the very worst, I think that the teams are even, which proves that LeBron is better than Kobe as the Heat have advanced deeper into the postseason than the Lakers for two years in a row.

It’s time for the Laker truthers to realize this fact.

Look, is it frustrating that LeBron doesn’t start busting heads late in games like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird did? Of course it is. There’s nothing better in the world than the great players kicking ass and taking names.

Even in the midst of that wire-to-wire butt-kicking in Boston the other night, people took away from that performance by saying that you can’t trust him in the clutch still and that game 6 meant nothing because it was a blow-out.

IT WAS A BLOW-OUT BECAUSE LEBRON MADE IT SO!!! Don’t penalize him for Boston not being able to keep pace.

I don’t believe that we’ll ever see another Michael Jordan because he was one-of-a-kind, he captured a lot of people’s imagination and nobody cared like he did. Nobody else willed their team to greatness like Jordan did.

That said, what if we do see another Jordan? What if we’re too busy picking James, or Durant or even Kobe apart to realize it?

We live in a cynical age today where nothing is ever good enough, no player is great enough, nobody ever gets quite enough done to please us. I’m not sure when we got to this place where we’re all so caught up in what guys don’t do as opposed to appreciating what they actually do.

LeBron James is one of the two most fascinating players in NBA history, trailing only Michael Jordan. He’s also playing in an era where everything gets broken down far too much. Every game is the greatest one ever played, every team that loses is the biggest choke artist and every player is either overrated or underrated with no in-between.

The Heat and the Celtics are playing an awesome game 7, I hope we’re all able to watch and enjoy it without worrying if it’s the greatest game 7 ever or other narratives like that.

Just 9 months ago, it didn’t even look like we’d have a season and now we get a game 7 of the eastern conference finals and a fantastic NBA Finals. It’s not the greatest playoff season ever, but it’s definitely not the worst. LeBron isn’t the greatest player ever, but he’ll be in the discussion one day. I hope we can all appreciate how amazing that fact is.