The Lebron Contention
Intro
I set out to engage in a debate that has been done to death, like as near as anything in living memory can come to "is there a god?" debate (and similarly also a sausage fest). I wrote as someone who craves a limit placed on free speech that I call "put up or shut up" which is to say, the objective side of the debate "is Lebron better than Jordan?" the statistical debate, doesn't hold water.
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
― George Orwell, 1984
In the contention that Lebron is somehow not only in the discussion of "greatest of all time" but possibly "the greatest of all time" one plus one needs must = three, and two plus two must make at least five, maybe six.
Though this topic is a bit of a passion post for me, it may have broader implications as we live through a dark age of popularity/mediocrity. I doubt Lebron James was the catalyst for the past 20 years, so much as a symptom, but a highly visible symptom.
There are a cohort that form the minority that I sympathize with, (Given the NBAs decline in ratings, that cohort may in fact be the majority) I suspect we tend to assume that popularity be falsifiable - as in you can observe the reality and determine whether someone is fairly assessed, overrated or underrated. I assume there are people for whom it is the most natural thing in the world to say "if the boss makes a joke, you laugh, because he's the boss. Funny has nothing to do with it." or "if Jenny gets her hair cut, it looks great, because Jenny is the most popular girl in the class. Aesthetics have nothing to do with it." etc. For me and others, popularity should be driven by substance, performance, for most others it seems to be the other way round.
I wanted to look at everything periphery, the behaviours that predicted that relative to expectations foisted upon "The Chosen 1" - Lebron was always going to be a bust.
In writing this post there were times where I began to feel sick. Lebron James is someone who is easy to shit on, he makes bad decisions, he says dumb things, he wears terrible outfits, he loses twitter exchanges with Donald Trump, he bricks, he flops and he cannot keep a low profile to save his reputation.
What came from trying to articulate my thoughts, and also make sure they were grounded in reality, my general experience was that everything I was confident of, generally proved to be worse than I suspected - for example: when trying to make sure I could substantiate that Lebron had indeed declared himself the greatest player of all time, researching this revealed that not only had he done that, he had also turned up to a party with two live goats (a play on the acronym) and gone to a youth basketball tournament wearing a shirt printed with his own Sports Illustrated cover.
There is a human at the centre of this shit show, none of that human's fandom is friend to him, they are sustaining and possibly exacerbating Lebron's greatest source of misery - that he is not who they believe him to be. Cruelly but understandably, Lebron's haters are best positioned to be his best friend. The people that will actually speak truth to "The King" but understandably, because his delusional (a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary) fanbase pose a real and constant threat of driving them insane and they attack the stimulus, James, who himself is participating in this delusion.
The humane thing demands, that we recognize that Lebron like a former President currently racking up indictments is a man largely destroyed by his own supporters enablement. Literally the NBA media's "chosen one" all the choosers went from hoping to rigging.
He is not someone that was likely to have destroyed himself career-wise, like a Latrell Sprewell with the complicated thing being that his career could have been perfectly respectable, ringless, like so many of the all time greats.
Obligatory Conciliatory
I am generally down on Lebron. The discussion I would be inclined to have about Lebron is not "is Lebron the greatest basketball player of all time?" but "Why is Lebron even in the conversation?"
Probably my biggest problem with Lebron is what I perceive as self-evident bad judgement - getting his marketing slogan "Chosen 1" tattooed on his back (In txt speak no less), "The Decision", wearing #23, his current beard, "Space Jam: A New Legacy" etc. All of which I'll expand upon in time. This is supposed to be conciliatory.
Lebron seems like a nice guy. Off court he appears to have lead a completely scandal free life, as at writing. Teammates generally describe him as sociable and easy to get along with. The worst story I've heard about Lebron's character off court is that he is frugal with his cell-phone data plan, out of former teammate Kevin Love's mouth.
He is also undoubtedly a very good, even great player. I've watched some of his games, combined with his longevity, he is arguably a valuable asset on any of the teams of his 19 year career. (his value depends greatly on whether you watch him in games, or just look at his stat lines). But certainly for a big-bodied player, he has aged better than say Shaq.
This may seem like a gross understatement, but for me the question really is: How many great players are there? For example, from the Jordan era there are a bunch of players that could/should be considered all-time greats but there was this behemoth in the league of the Phil Jackson-Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen NBA sponge soaking up all the championships. Though a little before my time, the same is true of the 80s where there was the Bird led Celtics and the Kareem-Johnson Showtime Lakers basically sidelining the rest of the association for a decade.
And Lebron has played out his career in the shadow of similar dynasties, with the forefront of his career being the era of Lakers and Spurs dynasties, and the middle of his career being that of Golden State's dynasty, and the twilight the potential emergence of Denver-Milwaukee dynasties. In which case, or rather hindsight Lebron is certainly up there with an all time great like Hakeem Olajuwon.
Why Lebron Mattress
Spoiler, it's not because he's "The Goat".
Lebron James is a currently active NBA player, there's a small chance that you have never heard of him. More likely that you have never paid him any attention, he almost certainly would have been passed through your field of vision while someone recited his name.
If you go onto Google Trends, set it to "Worldwide" and compare Lebron James to someone like "Trisha Paytas" (a very high profile Youtuber who has racked up almost a billion views of her content) you can see that Trisha Paytas is fucking nobody compared to Lebron James, however Lebron is a minor celebrity compared to Kim Kardashian so I could forgive you for living in a world where you think "influencers" is what every Gen Z kid wants to grow up to be, and sportsball is some anachronistic hangover that did not revive when the moustache did (ironically).
James is a contentious figure, with the chief contention being that he is possibly greater than predecessor Michael Jordan, known as "The Goat" which if you are unfamiliar with sports jargon is an acronym: Greatest-Of-All-Time (GOAT) a contention that has had it's own life-cycle, and here I shall be candid:
The life-cycle has been one from wishful thinking on the part of the NBA media ecosystem when Lebron was a promising young 17 year old, thru a brief metamorphosis into plausibility in the late 2000s, to a contemporary delusion in the face of the more-likely-prospect that he will drop out of the conversation entirely about two weeks after retiring, ranking somewhere below Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and at Bron's position (small forward) below that of Larry Bird.
So it matters because "The Goat Debate" is more of a social science and it is currently a very visible manifestation of living in a post-truth society. A matter of who has sufficient clout to force a constructed grand narrative on the masses. James and his media fantards have that clout presently, but Lebron's prospects of a long and enjoyable retirement look more like post-modern tyrant Putin's than Obama's.
The ongoing discussion of "Lebron vs Jordan" to me, and many others can feel(s) like gaslighting, as speaking only for myself it strikes me as so obvious that Lebron is not even a likely candidate, and is only in the conversation in the same way that science communicators have to deal with Flat Earthers. Alas, it probably depends on your criteria - the best case for Lebron are his career averages:
LJ - 27.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.3 assists in 1,421 regular-season games. (as at writing)
MJ - 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 2.3 steals in 1,072 regular-season games.
At the twilight of Lebron's career, with perhaps 1~3 seasons left to play (It is believed James' last ambition is to play on the same NBA team as his son Bronny James, who on the day of writing this was admitted to hospital after suffering cardiac arrest - it is yet to be seen if this effects either player's career decisions) pretty much every other basis of comparison, not only to Jordan but other NBA figures like Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, Tim Duncan (and the emergent powerhouses of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nicola Jokic) whose careers have generally occupied a quasi-space where they have simultaneously outshone James' career as it took place on court and were wilfully ignored insofar as possible off-court by the NBA media.
My basic contention, is that Lebron James is a tragic figure, a great player with a great career that at no point wasn't tarnished by the avarice of a Sports-Media complex that wanted him to be "the next Michael Jordan" for largely economic reasons, a want that he never had a chance of fulfilling. (Furthermore, the next Michael Jordan is kind of like looking for the next Christopher Columbus, you can't discover a new "new world" and if anyone is Captain James Cook to Christopher Columbus it is, of course Kobe.)
Lebron was just never the guy. The story of his whole career shall be, and is, being unfairly and unfavourably compared to Michael Jordan, a move by a complex industry that just couldn't handle the Mike times not being around forever. Post MJ, basketball - specifically the NBA, I feel can be described as shrinking back to it's natural fanbase, people who love the sport, not all the people who dream a man can fly. Basketball fans are a subculture again, not the culture. So what is the narrative going to be? "Actually for the past 20 years we had someone better than MJ and most of you missed it."
Perhaps the best comparison I can think of is 1981 SNL cast member Charlie Rocket, who was promoted as (and introduced himself) as a cross between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. By contrast, the guy that got closest to being the next Michael Jordan didn't have these expectations foisted upon him (or slipped this noose by being an insufferable turd until humbled by almost going to jail for rape), and subsequently became his own man, his own legend - Kobe Bryant.
What Lebron deserves as due respect is a youtuber Johnny Arnett video titled "How Good Was Lebron Actually?" as has been done for figures like Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwan, Isaiah Thomas, Kevin Johnson, Charles Barkley, Gary Paton, Shawn Kemp, Kevin Garnett, Latrell Sprewell, Carmelo Anthony, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Domonique Wilkins, Clyde Drexler, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter etc. go on your own journey.
Lebron's true-respect worthy career will not come into focus until his GOAT contention is swept away by history.
Allow me to start at the beginning...
So Lebron matters because he is a manifestation and subsequently good study of the collision of ideology and reality, and for some people it can evoke as much fervour as someone contending that god doesn't exist or capitalism is the best system we've got, or that biology determines sex.
The Next Michael Jordan won't wear the number 23.
It is another man's number. I happened to see a broadcast of The Miami Heat vs. Dallas Mavericks finals series where Shaquille O'Neil won his 4th championship, at one point the camera framed then coach and franchise part-owner Pat Riley sitting beneath the retired #23 jersey of Michael Jordan who never played for the Heat.
Charles Barkley, a contemporary of Jordan's and widely regarded as one of the greatest players to never win a championship, then (and now) an analyst for TNT questioned Riley's gesture and compared Jordan unfavourably to Wayne Gretsky (widely regarded as the GOAT of Ice Hockey) whose #99 was retired league-wide in the year 2000 (Gretsky retired in 1999). Barkley said "Jordan didn't do for Basketball what Gretsky did for Ice Hockey" more-or-less, this is technically true, alas it would be more true to say that Gretsky did not do for Hockey what Jordan did for Basketball.
The view from inside the US is not a good one. You are too close to the subject, so close you can think Ice Hockey and Basketball are somehow remotely comparable. As a teenager of the 90's, JORDAN CONQUERED THE WORLD, THE FUCKING WORLD. To put this in context, probably the next closest athlete to do so would be either Tiger Woods alas, golf is a high earning sport beloved by old white guys and weird young white guys, it is niche, but as Malcolm Gladwell describes it "Crack for rich white guys" it's also a world game loooooong before Tiger got to it.
Then maybe other candidates might be David Beckham...kind of, Roger Federer, but again Football (Soccer short for "Associated Football") and Tennis were already popular "world games" Basketball was not that when Jordan exploded onto the scene and CONQUERED THE WORLD in the early 90s when he started racking up championships.
If you're American, imagine if you woke up in a world tomorrow where Network Television suddenly aired Australian-Rules Football League (AFL) games in prime time, and all the fucking kids started wearing Harry Sheezel's North Melbourne Kangaroos Jersey, the evening news covered what Harry Sheezel did that day (on or off the field) and then you took a business trip to China, or Japan, or India, or the UK and everyone there was ALSO obsessed with Harry Sheezel.
So the first indication that Lebron was never going to be Jordan, was when he chose to wear #23 in honour of Jordan. If you asked yourself "What would Jordan do?" it would not be to wear Bill Russell's #6, Kareem Abdul Jabbar's #33, Magic Johnson's #32 or perhaps Wilt Chamberlain's #13.
James' career probably could have been greatly helped out had there been a league-wide retirement of #23, forcing him to be his own man. I kind of wish the then NBA commissioner instead of being greedy, had cool headedly looked forward and said "nobody stands to benefit from having to follow the Michael Jordan phenomena." and mandated the league-wide retirement.
Bron's entire career has been in Jordan's shadow, and while it can seem harsh to judge a teenager that went pro straight out of high school, he bears some responsibility for leaning into that. Especially when he isn't a shooting guard like Jordan, but a small forward and all-rounder, more comparable in play style perhaps to Magic than Jordan.
A Brief Diversion into the concept of "Ring Chasing" (Skip if you are familiar)
Ring chasing is more-rather-than-less a pejorative. It could be used to describe anyone who is seriously set on winning a championship, but in practice it describes a player that tries to attach themselves to a winning team.
For example, Clyde "The Glide" Drexler, upon realizing that the Portland Trailblazers were going to give up on winning it all and go into a rebuilding phase, requested he be transferred to Hakeem Olajuwan's defending championship team the Houston Rockets. This would be a clear cut (and understandable) example of ring-chasing. Drexler could only choose between playing out his career as a hometown hero, or the only appealing alternative - join a contender.
So the bare minimum criteria for being a ring-chaser is 1) joining a contending team, rather than having one built around you. and 2) a reasonable expectation you can claim credit as a meaningful contributor.
This second criteria is important in the NBA because (rightly) the NBA awards championship rings to the whole winning organization, including masseuses. There are masseuses on this earth that have more championship rings than Charles Barkley.
The NBL (Australian Professional Basketball league) "Goat" Andrew Gaze won an NBA championship on the 1999 San Antonio Spurs team appearing on the court 19 times during the regular NBA season and inactive for the entire the entire playoff-finals run.
Similarly Dwight Howard won an NBA championship in 2020 coming off the bench as a substitute for Anthony Davis, my feeling is that Dwight will never be celebrated as a championship winning NBA center.
And lastly, Robert "Big Shot Bob" Horry won seven championship rings through meaningful contributions and sheer timing. Not just his ability to hit clutch game winning shots, or lay hard fouls on Steve Nash but also being on the Houston Rockets for their back-to-back championships, then on the San Antonio Spurs for two of their championships, then to the Lakers for a three-peat. To me, this doesn't make Horry the greatest ring-chaser in history but a statistical anomaly that was bound to happen to some player.
Fundamentally, ring-chasing means chasing after a ring instead of the ring coming to you. It is looking at the mountain ahead and taking the ski-lift.
"The Decision" the second disqualifier.
That's when I knew.
I feel the consensus is, that Lebron's televised special "The Decision" where he announced he was using his free agency to go play for the Miami Heat along with NBA Champion and finals MVP Dwayne Wayde and All-Star Chris Bosh, was a public relations disaster. James' went from babyface to heel.
What I knew, when he announced that, was that Lebron does not have the mindset of a champion. As such, I personally am quite comfortable throwing 2 of his 4 championships out of consideration. They shall ever have an unofficial asterick, next to them.
My feeling is, that to think Lebron is in anyway a contender for the title of "greatest of all time" they are not acknowledging that Lebron went ring-chasing, in the prime of his career. Ring chasing is when an NBA player, basically decides their only chance of winning a championship, is to join a championship team. Lebron's brand of ring-chasing is kind of unique though...
For comparison, let us consider Clyde Drexler, Clyde "The Glide" Drexler is famously the reason the Portland Trail Blazers passed on Michael Jordan in the draft and sent him to the Chicago Bulls with the number 3 pick. Drexler was basically the best shooting guard in the NBA with the sole exception of Michael Jordan. They even faced Jordan in the finals and lost. Jordan retired, and Hakeem Olajuwan of the Houston Rockets stepped into the void and won the next championship. The Portland Trail Blazer management decided not to try for more championships but to rebuild, so Clyde asked to be traded to the Houston Rockets who won the next championship as well before Jordan's unretirement and second triple championship.
Lebron's trade to Miami put him on the same team as the next best player in the Eastern Conference. So rather than a player in the twilight of his career (like Drexler) joining a team with a stronger player of the next generation (like Olajuwon) Lebron, in his prime joined the team of one of his main competitors forcing the star of a team that could knock his team out of contention into a secondary role.
It is more comparable to if Jordan's greatest rivals - necessary to make him considered great, joined the Chicago Bulls. If Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Gary Payton, Sean Kemp, Shaquille O'Neil, Penny Hardaway, Isaiah Thomas etc. demanded to be traded onto the bulls so they could ride the Jordan bus to championships...
Not even, the true analogy would be to look at the stage in Jordan's career where he just couldn't get past Isaiah Thomas' Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" in the Eastern Conference. So rather than waiting around for Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson to find a way past this seemingly insurmountable obstacle, he got himself traded to the Detroit Pistons to become the best player on the team that were his greatest obstacle to championships, forcing Dumars onto the bench.
There are two plausible defences for allowing the Miami Heat back-to-back championships stand as evidence for the case that Lebron deserves his place in the goat debate. The first and most basic, is that the Miami Heat super team underperformed expectations, proving that those championships are in some sense an achievement, not cheap rings because in the Heat's finals losses to the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs the Heat with Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Lebron James were revealed to be merely competitive.
One can also point to Michael Jordan's second three-peat in hindsight as aided and abetted by Jordan being on a team with the greatest coach in NBA history (Phil Jackson), the greatest rebounder in NBA history (Dennis Rodman) and possibly the greatest point-forward swing man in NBA history (Skottie Pippen)... whereas Lebron's All-Star team mates of Wade and Bosh aren't as complementary to Lebron as they are redundant.
But, "The Decision", being the televised announcement special just demonstrated yet again that Lebron James is not possessed of good judgement. It can be easily forgotten, but the move to Miami blindsided most media speculation, (because player collusion was unprecedented) and most people thought it most likely that Lebron would go to the New York Knicks, or failing that stay in Cleveland. "The Decision" didn't just construct a super team with the two best players in the conference, and another franchise player from the same conference - it fucked the New York Knicks who had bet big clearing salary cap space to land Lebron, and then had to dump all that money on a Steve-Nashless Ama're Stoudamire as a consolation prize. Three moves taking three teams in the Eastern Conference out of contention (Raptors, Cavs, Knicks)
In a follow up ugh..."event" when Lebron and Bosh debuted in Miami Heat uniforms, Lebron set expectations sky high and revealed exactly his anti-competitive mindset in joining the Miami Heat and forming a super team with his poorly judged "Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven..." expectations for championships won. This I feel can be directly compared to Charles Rocket introducing himself in 1981 to the US public as "kind of a cross between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase."
I mean it was foolish because any of the three stars could have a career ending injury, or just die in a car crash or from eating poison ham, a brain aneurysm etc. Lebron would prove to be the one who didn't stick around to collect eight championships. His prediction/promise was off by 300%.
After the newly minted super team lost in the finals to the Dallas Mavericks in a very welcome upset, I remember someone saying "So far Lebron's prediction rings true "Not one...""
There is something important about the decision, not the PR disaster of the televised special, but the collusion between Lebron, Wayde and Bosh. I do not know who masterminded it, but those three wanted Carmelo Anthony as well, he just happened to sign away his free agency happy with the Denver Nuggets before Wayde told him about the plan to coordinate their free agency and all play for Miami.
Had that panned out, it would basically have been most of the starting line up of a US men's Olympic Basketball team. (It's a cheap shot, but it's not like Lebron is capable of disappointing on a US men's Olympic team).
This incident has far-reaching important implications. Consider by analogy the relationship between media and the government. We know state owned media is a disaster, you get propaganda saying up is down and day is night. So there's rules against the government unduly influencing media. We generally refer to this as "Freedom of the Press" and it results in either rules or norms like the state can't compel a journalist to reveal their source if say a member of government leaks state secrets etc.
But what if the press, of it's own volition decides to help out a political party or candidate, they just volunteer to act as a state propaganda mouth piece because it's good for them if the state likes them and say - deregulates limits on how much of the media can be owned by one person.
This is a tricky problem that has not as far as I'm aware, been solved yet. In the case of the NBA when players collude to rort all the measures put in place to promote competition - draft lottery, salary caps, free agency, contract limits etc. They were caught without a penalty to levy against player collusion.
The mafia, being a criminal organization I have no confidence in describing definitively, but organized crime faces the literal prisoners dilemma of having members talk to the police and get reduced sentences or immunity from prosecution in turn for taking down higher ups. The mafia can "beat" the prisoners dilemma by putting a death sentence on anyone who rats, snitches etc.
In the long run, I would suggest that the NBA needs a countermeasure to player collusion - coordinating their contracts in order to assemble on one team. It's in the best interest of the game, just as it probably never wants to see a repeat of the 11 NBA championships won by the Boston Celtics between 1957-69 and generally most professional sports leagues basically try to prevent the richest teams from winning all the championships because sports are entertainment and thrive on competition.
In Lebron, Wade and Bosh's defence, the super team era was precipitated by the Boston Celtic's "Big Three" of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. However, "The Decision" was the most egregious anti-competitive super team, given that Pierce (30), Garnett (32) and Allen (32) were all veterans aged 30 or over, none of them had time on their legs for the clubs that drafted them to rebuild around them. It was time for the richest club of the three to pay through the nose for complementary superstars with a 3 year or so window to pay off. There's a reason Lebron called 8 championships he felt he and Wade had a decade and change on their legs with no viable competition in sight.
Dwayne Wade I feel is remembered sooner as a great player for the championship he won as "the man" with Shaq. Not the two he won as second fiddle to Lebron James. He may have masterminded the most egregious super team, but again he escapes the condemnation heaped upon James because nobody ever pushed him as "the next Michael Jordan" or "the GOAT". He got to be his own great player.
Do Not Slam Dunk, Do Not Surpass Goat
Again, technically winning the NBA slam dunk contest can't be a mandatory requirement for GOAT. For example Steph Curry has far more potential to eclipse Lebron James' claim and I would never expect even a rookie Steph Curry to win a slam dunk contest.
The slam dunk contest is a carnival side show, however it, along with rookie-of-the-year are probably the earliest accolades a young player can pick up, and likely far more predictive of individual greatness, provided one has the athleticism to dunk.
So the dunk contest is not nothing. Rookies are often in a bind - they can get drafted to a strong team and not see enough minutes to win ROY, like Kobe's or Jokic's rookie seasons. Or they are drafted onto a team that needs them in the starting line up but with few exceptions like Hakeem and Bird, they are years away from doing deep playoff runs.
Dunking during the all-star weekend is an early accolade entirely within an individuals control. Winning depends on the competition.
Jordan famously won it taking off from the free throw line, perpetuating the myth of "hang time" suggesting the human body is capable of generating lift or some shit, and having that year's Chicago Bulls uniform dubbed "the flight suit". It was the beginning of the legend of Air Jordan.
Kobe won it in his rookie season with a between the legs dunk. Perhaps the only winner to surpass these two via sheer athleticism and creativity before the contest became a prop laden farce, being Vince Carter.
Lebron never participated, and to be fair here are his own explicitly stated reasons for never participating.
Here is what I can't exclude - Lebron was afraid of losing, so he chose not to participate. The years won by Fred Jones, Josh Smith and Gerald Green were probably Brons' best years to enter. Nate, Dwight and Blake probably would have won, though I can never discount in a subjective contest the judges desire for Lebron to win and keep him in the GOAT narrative to affect their impartiality.
By 2007 Lebron is going deep in the playoffs and to finals with the Cavs and the dunk contest is not a wise undertaking for contenders, I'm guessing this is why Kobe never came back to the contest after his rookie year. We also can't forget that by then Lebron had "won" 2 Bronze medals in his international basketball career.
Maybe Lebron didn't genuinely care, but it is consistent with many other behaviours from him that look like running from challenges instead of towards. Running to the Heat in the face of the Celtic's big three, running to the Cavs in the face of the Golden State Warriors super team. etc.
Just like Jerry choosing not to run, Lebron chose not to dunk. There's a narrative to protect from falsification. It is a bright star in the constellation I see that he doesn't have the nerve.
A Goat doesn't have to tell you he's a Goat
This is really simple, and I generally take mind-reading off the table.
Yes, Muhammed Ali said he was the greatest, and Lebron saying his Cleveland championship made him the greatest player of all time could be construed as a savvy manoeuvre to shift GOAT criteria from quantity to quality... except the quality of the Cleveland win doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and we already tacitly do not debate GOATs based on quantity, given that Bill Russell has 11 championships and Robert Horry has seven, but generally is not treated as a full stop on all GOAT discussion.
The most likely explanation in my opinion, is that Lebron James agrees with his haters - but cannot accept his own conclusions. He is likely aware, and this is why he is a tragic figure that he will be remembered as less successful than Giannis, Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki, David Robinson, Gary Payton, Clyde Drexler, Russell Westbrook, Derick Rose, Dwayne Wade... simply because the expectations of every chapter of his career were too high.
Bron can't pull off what Ali did, even the boxing GOAT is vastly more complicated than NBA, given not just different eras, but different weight divisions and generally 3~5 organizations that declare world champions simultaneously. There's simply no way to compare Ali to Julio Ceaser Chavez to Floyd Mayweather Jr. etc. etc. It's pretty hard to compare Ali to contemporary rival George Foreman (who also had a very late comeback career to reclaim the Heavy weight title).
Lebron missed the smart play, on and off the court, of rejecting the GOAT narrative. Phil Jackson in his book "Spiritual Hoops" describes how he would sometimes refuse to make adjustments (call time outs or substitute players) in order to let the players on the court figure it out for themselves because in the long run it makes the starting line-up stronger if they learn to overcome every offense/defence without intervention. Had Phil Jackson ever coached Lebron, Bron would undoubtedly have more rings, but Phil might have been waiting 20 years for Bron to figure this adjustment out.
Leflop
Kobe watches futbol and revolutionised basketball shoes, Lebron watches futbol and starts flopping for calls. (In soccer, flopping is generally called "simulation")
There are hilarious highlight reels now just of Lebron's flopping, and they have on occasion been his most impactful plays.
What I suspect, is that in any discussion of say... is Lionel Messi greater than Pele type debates, FIFA will never celebrate the world's greatest flopper whether or not it is "a part of the game". I'm sure just about everyone has flopped, or appealed for a call, or got up in a ref's face, but if you really want to be in the Goat discussion, you would want to never be in a position where it comes down to getting a call in your favour. Nor having it contend with a full court chase down, or a slam dunk, as your signature move.
The Goat won't make you Cringe
Okay, here I must admit, I have never listened to Kobe Bryant's rap albums, or Shaq's. I have seen some of Bill Russell's TV career, post Celtics as featured on his Netflix documentary and yeah, that's pretty cringe. An argument could be made that Space Jam with Jordan is cringe... it's not a great movie, for all the nostalgia, but I don't think any of it is cringe.
My introduction to Lebron James, literally my first exposure to him beyond a few seconds of news real saying "could this be the next MJ?" when the whole if-we-repeat-it-enough-they'll-think-it-is-true, was James' presentation of the MTV music award for best hip-hop music video with Ashanti.
Now, a few qualifiers - it was the early 2000s, fashion was terrible, a joke. Like it is now. It was the joke years where one could choose between awful former mouseketeer pop or awful nu metal joke music. Hip hop was much better, but still going through a pretty awful phase of Sean Puffy Combs formula of bland verses sold on a hook typically from a 60s, 70s or 80s hit song. This would be contemporary to the period where you can't find a photo of Kobe off the court without him wearing some fucking monstrosity of a jacket.
Another qualifier is that it really wasn't until Jordan blew up NBA into a worldwide phenomena that everything started getting monetized. The early 2000s represent a transition from celebrity being mysterious, where to know more about your idols you had to buy a magazine to read an interview that they gave that year, or wait for them to appear on a late night talk show. We now live in a time where many idols, notably including Lebron James, have a fucking Twitter/X account where they can post their moronic hot takes on the numerous issues for which they have no fucking insight 24/7 and appear on numerous podcasts, some even produced and hosted by active NBA players.
Which is all to say, Jordan has, and continues to enjoy the luxury of mystique. By and large, if you look at the NBA from say the late 60s to the late 90s, you really just see a bunch of grown men with moustaches that are very good at their jobs. Now like everything post baby-boomer cohort, you see a bunch of adolescents never missing an opportunity to open their mouth and reveal what cringe morons they are.
So here was my introduction to Lebron:
Terrible look, unless you came of age in the early 2000s and have the requisite nostalgia for terrible fashion. Yeah, many athletes are dumb and cringe, particularly when young.
Let's flash-forward to Lebron now:
It was very tempting to not trust you to notice how cringe this is and embed a video with a commentary explaining how cringe Lebron is. Without context, you may only have two pieces of evidence to tingle your cringe sense - 1) his Wife Savannah shows the poor judgement to introduce Lebron as "the Goat" and 2) What Lebron is wearing.
I feel those two should be sufficient, alas, we are going through another fucking terrible time of fashion, perhaps Black Culture's first as it goes through a post-Obama-presidency identity crisis that began in 2015.
To add a bit of context, I'm generally against mind reading, but as previously mentioned - if you say you are "the Goat" it is highly likely you do so because you know you aren't. It is a stupid thing to say about yourself, unless you have skills as a clown - Muhammed Ali can pull it off, Ice Cube can pull it off because they have the comedy chops to disarm you and stay in contention with serious people etc. Trump can't, Lebron can't. There's no tongue-in-cheek about it.
Lebron can get back into the discussion with serious people, however at this stage it would probably take 2 more championships and 2 more finals MVPs where he puts the team on his back. He has been known to do this and produce a big game in a win-or-go-home game 5, 6 or 7, just never in his ten finals series. Where the big moment typically goes to characters like Ray Allen or Kyrie Irving.
Anyway, one positive you might notice is that Lebron James doesn't look 20 years older than the young man at the MTV movie awards. He has preserved himself impressively. He is currently setting a new precedent for longevity in pro-sports, perhaps akin, but not as destructive, to the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic longevity in Tennis.* (note, I like everyone, am susceptible to peddled narratives, subsequent to writing this post and doing some research, I'm less convinced that Lebron's longevity and impressive stat line, is at all impressive. See comparisons of Lebron at 38 vs Jordan at 38 versus Charlotte Hornets)
Because of his high production at an advanced age, it is more meaningful to say we can expect Lebron to win a championship every 5 years than perhaps any other player in history (the next closest would be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for whom we could say was expected to win a championship every 4 years of his 20 year career, but Kareem was pretty clearly over-the-hill by his 20th season.)
Going into his 21st season, we could say Lebron has about a 20% chance of taking home the finals MVP award next year...except no. Here's the missing context - A new era has dawned, a Big-Man/Center Renaissance. Most teams in the league have not built themselves to deal with the reigning champions the Denver Nuggets with a center that is both an efficient shooter but also passes like John Stockton/Steve Nash. A team that swept Lebron's Lakers out of the Eastern Conference in 4 straight games.
After which, Lebron clawed back the spotlight by teasing that he might retire. Slack jawed yokels might have said "Oh no Bron's going to retire." But most people saw this as a sterling example of cringe sore-loserdom. Probably, Lebron should retire, he doesn't need the money and it is increasingly unlikely he will ever see another finals series.
And Lebron got called out by Charles Barkley and Bill Simmons. Simmons going so far as to say the teasing retirement "grosses me out". A channel I've been reluctant to share; Skap Attack that does unabashedly hate on Lebron, released a comprehensive and sarcastic summary of Lebron's latest and greatest cringe moment (as at writing). But calling himself the goat, throwing a party for himself with two live goats, having his wife introduce him as the goat, tattoing "chosen 1" on his back, "taking my talents to South Beach" isn't even an exhaustive list of Lebron's cringe and cope.
So you can't even rationalize that we are merely watching a great player unravel mentally and emotionally at the end of his career, doing some cringe things. Between awkwardly flirting with Ashanti at the MTV music awards, to "I've never ever cheated the game..." there's no dignified period with Lebron. He tweets "You're next" he bumps coach Erik Sopoelstra, he shows up to summer league games in a shirt printed with his Sport's Illustrated "Chosen One" cover.
I will concede, that it is conceivable that the greatest player of all time, for any sport, could coincide with a cringe inducing poor taste. Someone who is so great on court while simultaneously being unbearable off court.
Basketball is a game about decisions, and Lebron just throws out datum after datum that he has incredibly poor judgement, and subsequently, how cringe Lebron is off court predicted his inability to deliver on expectations, no three-peats, one more championship than Larry Bird in 7 more seasons against much weaker conference/MVP competition etc. His league performance is not explained by his genetics, and a big piece of that puzzle can be explained by Lebron's demonstrable poor judgement and lack of insight.
And this is without even mentioning "Space Jam: A New Legacy" the poor bastard just doesn't understand the world he lives in.
Sartorial
So I've already touched on this, Lebron wore a pearl choker to the 2023 Espy's, maybe Mamoa really started something with his Dante performance from Fast X.
Like I guess people can call me an old-timer, because the thing that's in with the kids these days is being genderqueer, but think about that for a second, do you want sexual orientation and gender expression to be in the same category as ska?
One thing I do notice, is light reflected off the top of Lebron James and Kevin Durant's heads. So not limited to Lebron, the NBA was at the forefront of how to respectfully deal with male pattern baldness. Prior to the late 80's when the 90's began with the Pixies and Jane's Addiction, Kareem Abdul Jabbar long sporting a bald spot, just shaved his head completely. Then in the early 90's Charles Barkley shaves his head when he starts balding, and then Michael Jordan did it, and this became the thing to do. When Kobe was trying his hardest to imitate Michael Jordan, he sported an afro to differentiate himself. As he became his own player merely heavily influenced by MJ, he stopped sticking his tongue out and started shaving his head. I'm not even sure if he went bald somewhere in the process.
Kevin Garnett, Chauncey Billups, Vince Carter, Derek Fisher, Ray Allen, Clyde Drexler, Jason Kidd, Pousdnous, Common, DMX, Zidane, Andre Agassi (Eventually), Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson... so many great looking men just shaving their head in the act of ultimate acceptance. Sure Karl Malone didn't, just as Stockton never abandoned the short shorts and respect to them. In some sense I also respect Durant for really just sticking to the 70's bald patch and the 90's metal goatee, but it is weird to me that the NBA has regressed to being unable to deal with male pattern baldness, having been at the forefront of coming up with the cheapest and best solution. Then there's Derrick White taking Lebron's receding headband game to the next level.
Fuck. I've had this tab open in my browser since before I even started working on this draft of this post. The History of Lebron James Basketball shoes.
I'm sure they are out there, the other day I saw a Lebron witness 6 shoe in a store. I have never noticed anyone wearing a Lebron shoe outside of Lebron. I see Air Jordans daily, they are one of the most ubiquitous shoe choices in the world.
In the movie Air, playing on our hindsight, one of the characters at Nike speculates about the worth of an athlete endorsed basketball shoe - a shoe that is only bought by basketball players and only worn on the basketball court.
We know this is not how it turned out, Air Jordan's are possibly the most popular mass produced shoe in the world. People wear Air Jordan's with business suits, and women models wear Jordan's and little else in men's magazine shoots. Decades after Jordan's retirement Miley Cyrus appears on the track and in the videoclip "23" I feel comfortable in forecasting now, there will be nothing like this for Lebron and if there is, it will be a) cringe and b) another Space Jam 2 and c) financed by Lebron.
Jordan and Kobe trainer Tim Grover speaking to an entire auditorium conducted a straw poll of who was wearing Jordan's and who was wearing Lebron's. The ratio was something in the neighbourhood of 100:1, with literally one hilarious clown wearing Lebron's.
A fairer test might be Kobe's vs Lebrons, or Paul Goerge's vs Lebrons. The shoes though are really the only fashion contributions players could be said to generate... except if it's the length men wear their shorts at, how men deal with male pattern baldness, how men wear their hair, the prevelance of tattoos etc. In almost all cases, Lebron is a follower not a trend setter, unless it is undoing the contributions of Jordan and Allen Iverson by bringing shorts up above the knee, without anything for the ladies by taking them all the way up to the 80s.
The straw poll bears out numerically - Jordan sells about $5bn brand Jordan shoes per year and Lebron sells (unbelievably) $500m per year. I cannot find the last annual sale's figures for Kobe and everyone before Jordan didn't really have shoe lines. The athletes wore the shoes, the shoes didn't wear the athlete until the Air Jordan 1.
If in 30 years time, brand Lebron is selling $5bn in volume, inflation will be so bad that brand Jordan will be selling half a trillion. It's not going to happen because it is hard enough to look good in most Lebron's while playing basketball, let alone wearing them on a night out.
I have struggled to find reliable sales figures for Kobe line shoes - largely because the contract between Nike and the Kobe estate lapsed and they went out of circulation. What is interesting is that they are the most worn shoes in the league by far, occupying the No 4 and No 1 spots with the Kobe 5 Protro and Kobe 6 Protro respectively tallying a total of 67,425 minutes logged in the 22-23 season. Sourced here.
On court fashion doesn't count for much, but it probably has deteriorated in the 21st century, driven by cash grabs and "eccentricity inflation" as Allen Iverson and Dennis Rodman's legacy. It appears possible that Kobe's shoes can be significantly more popular than Lebron's on the court as performance sports wear, and sell far fewer units retail. Also, Kobe no longer plays in the league, and there may be something inherently diminishing about wearing an active player's signature shoe, but there are far more primary and secondary school students who are never going to have to guard a man while wearing his signature shoes.
So I don't know, I just find the majority of Lebron's shoe designs to be something I'd instinctively call "clodhoppers" like they are just...uninspired boots, it certainly sounds like there's technical innovation in there, but that kind of describes every pair of athletic footwear developed ever.
Now I find myself with a little bit of a conundrum, a conundrum called Russel Westbrook. I haven't had too much interest in the NBA since Phil and Kobe retired. I've been aware of the Golden State dynasty, and didn't buy into the hype when Durant joined them for 2 of the 4 Steph Curry championships. I saw James Harden's beard, but wasn't really aware of his decline until recently and the first hook that actually had some bait on it to get me interested again was Giannis the Greek Freak.
If asked "who has a champion's mindset" I would probably say Russell Westbrook, sooner than Giannis or Jokic even those two both have championships now, though I fear Westbrook missed his window. I would have said Kyrie too, given him asking to be traded away from Lebron so he could have his own team, but then in the pandemic he went completely fucking insane, he clearly has other priorities and may be the NBA's greatest casualty of being able to express himself on Twitter/X.
Russell Westbrook is one of the best represented athletes on NBA "worst dressed" lists, and yet he is the man who stayed behind in Oklahoma City after Durant defected to Golden State for a super-team up, and he was like "fuck it" and won MVP by averaging a triple-double for the next 3 straight seasons, and then another in '21. (double digits in three statistical categories, usually points, rebounds and assists, though occasionally a defensive player will rack up a block or steal triple-doubles). His shoe line is pretty cool, but it is also under brand Jordan.
I get the sense that Russell Westbrook is somewhat trolling with his pregame outfits. This is a nice segue into Michael Jordan's wearing Armani suits to games. I've only read "Driven from Within" as a book authored by MJ, it was mostly about his shoes and collaboration with Tinker Hatfield, but I think I had it from there that Jordan started wearing suits to games to impress upon people that he was a professional and basketball was his job, his business and he took it seriously.
I don't know if he was the first, likely he wasn't, but it is credible enough that his rationale is an honest one. Walt Frasier is probably the first NBA player I'm aware of that really made a name as a fashion icon. I also recall Caron Butler being interviewed in Dime Magazine (a magazine about NBA lifestyle, rather than the game itself) and stating that he wore suits to every game long before the introduction in 2005 of the NBA dress code.
There's an undulating pattern with basketball fashions, Nike paid fines for the supposedly "banned" Air Jordan I's because they were too colourful for the then on-court dress code that required white shoes, basically setting Jordan's up to grab all market share from a generic playing field, then Jordan popularizes wearing suits to games, but it isn't mandatory, hence John Stockton shows up to games looking like he is going to teach badminton to a church youth group before transforming into one of the toughest, meanest mother fuckers on court.
Then the NBA makes suits/conservative attire mandatory in 2005 (Stockton would have been fine) and it's Allen Iverson that is nonchalantly paying fines in order to maintain his gangsta rap looks. And then I don't care for a long time, and now pre-game walk ins have become a full-fledged fashion show filled with fucking monstrosities. Something like attention-inflation has transpired, the NBA has become post-modern and too many stars and relative nobodies are competing not for court dominance but cultural dominance and the end result is this article written by a moron who thinks he can discern good-looks from bad. My favourite quotation being:
We can forgive the 2014-2015 era for him, because let's be honest, it was a cringe period for all of us.
It's still a fucking cringe period and Lebron James is right in there with the worst offenders. Westbrook doesn't turn out to be a conundrum because on-court he will be compared to Oscar Robertson once he retires, and will likely never be in any Goat discussions unless he proceeds from here to win a three-peat with the Clippers.
The key to it all, is relevance whosoever relentlessly pursues relevance is not to be bet on in the Goat debate. If you embrace the slang of the moment, you aren't going to be the Goat. Taking the pregame walk in seriously is likely now incompatible with taking the game seriously. You aren't supposed to try and impress and win over the teenagers of the internet, they are supposed to come to you based on how you express yourself on the court.
The history of Kobe signature shoes I feel is telling, frontloaded with turn-of-the-century cringe that culminates in the Adidas Kobe 2...the consensus best looking basketball shoe ever: the Jordan XI was inspired by Porsche convertible sports cars. Adidas designed the Kobe 1 based on an AUDI and then upped the ante for the Kobe 2s that are often described as "NSFW" and they make me ask what Adidas were thinking?
Kobe testified that the Kobe 2s taught him the hard lesson that he needs to take control of the design process, and he bought out his own contract with Adidas and switched to Nike - how is this different from Lebron switching to Miami Heat? Well...
Kobe is the character in the NBA that we watched turn from petulant adolescent to grown ass man. A bridge Lebron is yet to cross. Kobe did it by the skin of his teeth, with damage to his reputation he never recovered from over the rape allegations. It appeared to wake him the fuck up, and we saw the transformations manifest in his personal style. The fucking whatever jackets and hats disappear, he starts wearing suits and presenting as an adult, he changes numbers from 8 to 24 and invents the Black Mamba persona - all to distance himself from the kid whose self assurance was a force of destruction.
The switch from Adidas to Nike is more akin to Kobe's willingness to lose years of his prime rebuilding with LA post Shaquille, it's the personal sacrifice, the direct result of a loss of confidence in others, or his own judgement.
How to wrap up the sartorial. Obviously it is subjective, I've lived long enough to recall the morons that said "gangsta" and the morons that said "bling" and the morons that said "pimp" and the morons that said "swag" and they are the same morons that say "drip" as at writing, and these morons will always think what "we" are doing right now is spiffing, while what "we" were doing yesterday is cringe.
How would the goat dress? Well, just like wearing Jordan's number, and how Steve Jobs would never have worked for Steve Jobs, Lebron isn't serious enough to just do what Kobe and Jordan did which was mostly wear immaculate suits. At the same time I feel it almost goes without saying that his personality can't do what Allen Iverson or Russell Westbrook do with any authenticity. When I think about Lebron, I actually think of John Stockton.
Lebron's entire career got off on the wrong foot. He needed to create space certainly from Jordan and for the first decade, from Kobe. It was all about expectation management and nobody ever was likely better at this than John Stockton. I'm not suggesting Lebron get a $20 haircut at a shopping mall, I'm suggesting that Stockton looked exactly like someone to take for granted off the court and was serious fucking business on the court. That was the aesthetic he needed to hit. That's how you slip under the radar.
Sartorially, Lebron is a hipster, in the sense of relevance at all costs, at any price, in that sense he also resembled the various tech-popes of silicon valley. He is like bing, google wave, google plus, zune, metaverse, X etc. where every tech-giant needs to be everything to everyone forever.
He needed to let Shaq be the clown, Kobe rule out west and just be the beast in the east on the court. Lebron is too self conscious. That was his weak side he needed to work on.
In other words, aside from a few all over prints, Lebron needed to be 20 years ago, who Giannis already is, turning up to games largely in tracksuits.
The Goat Don't Have Asterisks
Now factually speaking, there probably are not literal asterisk mark next to the years Lebron won championships.
The 2020 Laker's championship win over the Miami Heat likely literally has an asterisk because it is the COVID-19 season. Whoever won that year gets a mark because that season was so unusual and the finals taking place in a bubble. It likely didn't feel like a real championship given the absence of crowds to win in front of, the lack of home and away games etc.
There is also a type of person who can manage to simultaneously disrespect Scottie Pippen and Kobe Bryant by calling three of Kobe's rings "Scottie Pippen rings" because he played on the same team as Shaq who took home three consecutive Finals MVP awards - probably the most prestigious individual award in the NBA.
Tim Duncan has 5 championships and doesn't get treated the same way as Kobe + Shaq does, or even Steph, Klay and Durant. Duncan's last championship was won on a team with 4 future NBA hall-of-famers (Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, Kawhi Leonard). I suspect the big difference is that the Spurs are probably the most successful drafting and trading team in modern NBA history, though they let Kawhi go win a championship for Toronto.
I'll let others break down the numbers on how fair/ridiculous that argument is. I would simply say there's no way for Lebron to win that argument. Because 3 of his 4 championships were won on Super teams. Kobe's career eclipses Lebron's either way.
I basically, don't count Lebron's Miami Heat championships, even given that team underperformed expectations. It had a stronger line up than perhaps any other team to win at least 3 championships in a row, with the exception of Bill Russell's 8 championship in a row Boston Celtic's team. The Lebron James Heat couldn't get it done.
My inclination is to say the Cleveland Cavelier's championship is the only free-and-clear championship Lebron won, but I will concede it does also look like a super team simply because Kevin Love comes with Lebron to bolster a rare non-bust number 1 draft pick. Kyrie Irving being pretty much as good as Lebron, and Kevin Love perhaps being equivalent to Chris Bosh. So... Lebron rides a bus, rather than driving it. He should be treated the same not as Kobe and Jordan, but as Kevin Durant, he has simply been twice as successful at having super teams pan out as Durant. For some reason Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are not viewed the same as Dwane Wade and Chris Bosh. Probably Steph's MVPs.
Goats must be at MOST this high to ride.
I haven't crunched the numbers, nor will I do so. Here is what I'm going to assert - the NBA average height is something like 6'6", the greater your positive deviation from the average (taller), the more your popularity will be discounted and the greater your negative deviation from the average (shorter) the more your popularity will be given a premium.
Shaquille O'Neal has as many rings as Lebron. In 1994 when Michael Jordan retired, I was in my primary school art class, sitting around a table I suggested to my fellow 11 year old's that with Michael Jordan retired Skottie Pippen was going to be the best player in the world. I got corrected that the next big thing was Shaq. My impression that Pippen was the natural successor was based on the Arcade game "NBA Jam" where the end bosses were Pippen and Jordan.
They were wrong, of course. The next Michael Jordan would be Michael Jordan when he came out of retirement. But Shaq would go on to win 4 championships, his last coming with the Heat at the age of 34. While Lebron's career isn't over he currently has as many championships as Shaq, and one less than Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant.
Both Shaq and Tim Duncan are big men, I feel confident that while Jokic still has only one championship in his career, any discussion of "Greatest Center of All Time" will be between Shaq, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell probably wins. Likewise, Tim Duncan probably wins "Greatest Power Forward of All Time" though personally I find Duncan too boring to pay attention to anywhere that isn't an Onion Article about him. (Also Tim Duncan really only played PF in his early seasons before David "The Admiral" Robinson retired as starting center.)
Bill Russell has 11 rings, 2 of them as player-coach, I was first introduced to his intellectual brilliance when he contributed a finals blog, I forget the year now, probably the year the Celtic Big Three won their championship. I have since watched the Netflix biography of Russell and in my mind Russell becomes one of those market failures - he probably should have been a lawyer, doctor, worked on the Apollo project if they could pay him more than basketball (Russell was one of the first NBA players to not need a summer job, demanding the Celtics pay him $100,001 dollars a year when it was announced Wilt Chamberlain had secured a then record $100,000 contract.)
Bill Russell is great whichever way you slice it. I concur with Youtuber Skap Attack that the list of God-tier all time greats is probably just Russell, Jordan and Kobe.
But the big men, Russell included don't tend to show up much in Goat discussions.
I invite you to consider a hypothetical. The NBA draft a 10' giant with a 10'+ wingspan. He is free of the usual health problems that usually accompany the super-tall, he doesn't owe his height to some defect of his pituitary gland, it is just a rare collision of genes. This isn't Victor Wembanyana the 7'4" most recent draft pick. This is a hypothetical someone who has a greater height advantage over Wembanyana than Wembanyana has over the average NBA player (6'6"). He would make Wembanyana look like Allen Iverson (6'0").
This guy, is so tall and so long, he can stand next to the basket, outside the paint and reach up and out and catch any airball his team mates lob in the general direction of the hoop and dunk it in without lifting his heels off the ground, and the next tallest centers in the league could not do much about it.
This guy could average 100 points scoring every offensive possession for his team who average 0, but a collective 50 assists (a pass that results in scoring). Considering this hypothetical giant would likely have a shooting efficiency of 100%, he could be averaging 150~200 points per game.
What could the NBA do, presented with such a freak? An 18~20 year old kid catching and dropping balls in a basket could win 20 championships in a row. The adjustment other teams would have to make, is a full court press trying to force turnovers on offensive possessions, then the giant's coach would just drill their team to lob full court passes. This hypothetical would literally break the game.
The big problem being, that sports are entertainment - they thrive on contest. The thrill of MJ's Bulls career was because despite the 6 championships, including two 3-peats, at the time it wasn't clear the Bulls could get any given championship done. This would not be the case when winning is a matter of lobbing a high pass to a gigantic freak.
I think it would be a question of: does the giant get bored, sufficiently rich and to everyone's relief retires early? Or does the NBA pay him to leave the league and never play basketball again? If ratings drop out the floor, and the finals series gets less views than the conference finals the giant doesn't play in, and less views than the matchup first round playoff series that do not contain the giant, it actually makes financial sense for the NBA to pay half a billion dollars to a giant to never play again. And that giant would never be considered the goat.
Basically, unless all humans get taller, you can't really raise the regulation height of the rim. We'd just have someone incredibly dominant and incredibly boring. Neither fun to watch, play against or play with. The best thing he could do is trade himself to whichever franchise has the longest running championship drought.
Bringing it back to Lebron, I recall an article (that was published probably prior to Kobe's 4th championship) comparing Lebron and Kobe, the author opined something like "Kobe would win hands down if size didn't matter, but it does and that is why Lebron is the better player." I think this viewpoint is defensible if you are projecting out into player futures. Shaq was very tall and very strong, to the point that during his prime he was just about unstoppable.
How do you be like Mike? You work really really hard. Mike ignited hoop dreams around the world, white kids and asians with no hope of growing to 6'6" or even 6'. How do you be like Kobe? You gotta embrace the Mamba Mentality and work really really hard, be a student of the game, experiment and get creative. How do you be like AI? Well, practice is one thing... but you work on your ball handling, your shooting, your crossover dribbles.
How do you be like Shaq? ...you can't. How do you be like Wilt? ...nope. How do you be like Kareem? ...if you aren't sufficiently tall, your sky hook can still be blocked.
I think that's why centers struggle to get into the Goat debate, they make an impression but they do not ignite the imagination. Russell is probably the exception because his game wasn't about taking advantage of his genetic lottery win, but blocking shots before the NBA recorded them as a statistic, rebounding based off of positioning rather than his ability to leave dimes on-top-of-the-backboard and just winning championships.
Steph Curry has probably opened it up for big men, by changing the game via 3-pointers such that now there are big-men that knock down 3 point shots, or big men like Jokic who's passing game is up there with elite point guards.
Lebron is big, he has power-forward dimensions but plays the small forward position, and even plays point guard. One of the reasons Lebron says he is the goat is because he can play in any of the 5-positions. But the aforementioned author of the article that gave him the edge on Kobe on account of his size, relegates him as a candidate for goat, because he implicitly admits that if you scaled Kobe up to Lebron's dimensions you would have a much better player than Lebron.
It probably wouldn't literally be true, because if Kobe was bigger, mamba mentallity aside he wouldn't have had to be the shot-creator he was.
There's a stat bandied about that if you are 6ft tall you have a .002% chance of making it to the NBA, much less if you are under 6ft, but if you're 7ft the odds shoot up to 17%. I've seen this corrected down to only something like 10 or 20 times more likely to get an NBA career instead of 10,000 times more likely, but regardless there's a reason that the taller you get the more likely you are to get an NBA contract - you don't have to be as good.
It is actually hard to imagine Shaquille O'Neal practicing 200, 500, 1000 catch and shoot 3-pointers in his prime. To what end? Steph Curry makes around 42% of his threes and is considered the greatest 3-point shooter of all time. Shaq had a career average field goal percentage of 58% which breaks down to hundreds of hours of extra practice to maybe score an average 1.26 points per shot attempt versus 1.16 points per shot attempt by virtue of being big and tall, shooting 3s would also certainly impact his rebounding statistics also. He was better off going to the club and eating pulled pork sandwiches.
On the flipside, sub-6-foot people pin their hopes and dreams on sub-6-foot players, Muggsy Bogues , Spudd Webb, Nate Robinson, Isaiah Thomas. I can personally vouch that while these players may not have a championship between them, they inspire. They demonstrate basically that there are things you can do to be better.
Lebron isn't quite in the Wilt or Shaq department, and not in our hypothetical game breaking giant department. But I have not seen sufficient evidence that he gets an exception to being physically gifted like Bill Russell (Defensive genius), Tim Duncan ("The big fundamental") or Nikola Jokic (Passing savant).
At some point, we readily concede that Muggsy Bogues is not the Goat, simply because he had the best career with the greatest height handicap. Similarly, Wilt Chamberlain is almost never in the Goat conversation because with the exception of Bill Russell he made the rest of the league look handicapped. I propose a fairly simple principle that the greater advantage you have over the average height in the league, the more discounted your case for the Goat is. Or perhaps rather, the more you are made for the game/the game is made for you, the less likely you are to reach your full potential and the less likely you are to become the Goat.
I'm afraid when it comes to Lebron, the off court sacrifices he made are just not alike those of Kobe and Jordan. They appear more akin to Tom Brady's to extend his playing career and increase the chances Lebron will happen to be on a Championship team. He hasn't produced the trophy's Brady has via longevity and it's probably because Brady's game has only depended on eyes and one arm, not his legs.
A Note About the Empirical
I had a marketing lecturer that used to say "You have to get down and dirty with the data" quite frequently, and through that frequency was trying to tell us something important. I'm also a fan of the saying "What gets measured gets done" a restating of management guru Peter Drucker's words, however I like the implicit cautionary tale in the saying.
A perfect example is Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, who blocked shots before blocking was a statistical category and defensive player of the year (Hakeem Olajawon Trophy) was ever awarded. Russell and Wilt were estimated as averaging over 8 blocked shots per game, somewhat contradicting "gets done" but Drucker said "gets managed" which could explain why after it became a statistical category stat lines like those two have become virtually impossible, like suddenly everyone could see what was happening.
Anyway, there's a stat out there called "win share" (WS) originally developed for baseball that attempts to apportion team wins out to contributing players. Presumably a player that never makes it off the bench gets a winshare of 0, and a player that only gets subbed on in "garbage time" gets a minimal winshare for not blowing an isurmountable lead. In the process of trying to understand this metric, I have come to believe basketball's win share to be subjective hot garbage, even if the math appears coherent.
Lebron explicitly broke WS for me, because I became aware of the Russell Westbrook media smear, that does not pass the eye test. I found myself curious and so looked up the WS for the last season and LJ = 5.6 (not very impressive) AD = 9 (also not great) RW = 1.9 and when you see Westbrook's play relative to Lebron WS never makes sense. The most consistent mistake RW made was passing the ball to Lebron. Basically Lebron is currently a shithouse shooter. Westbrook is not an efficient shooter either, hence his moniker "Westbrick" however, Russell Westbrook is not passing the ball to Russell Westbrook for a wide-open 3 for him to brick it with 16~21 seconds left on the shot clock, he is passing that to Lebron James.
How it effects WS is that assists don't count in WS calculations (This is also why the 1 game Miami won against Denver in the last finals was where they stopped Jokic from passing and forced him to score 41 points, a phenomenal individual score, but much less points than Jokic normally produces when he shoots and passes which is something in the vicinity of 70 ppg.) so Lebron bricking and clanking off the rim will give AD a rebound increasing AD's defensive WS, while Westbrook could have scored himself increasing his offensive WS while decreasing AD's defensive WS SO WS as a statistic is sort of descriptive of what happened, but it doesn't tell you what should happen. It also discounts point guards, Westbrook in his MVP season for the OKC Thunder supposedly contributed 13.1 wins of the 47 season wins even though clearly OKC was riding on Westbrook's back. Similarly Steve Nash in one of his MVP seasons with PHX contributed 10.9 wins of 62 compared to Ama're and Shawn with 14.6 and 12.5 respectively. WS is horseshit and how suckers like the Knicks wind up betting big on Ama're. Yeah, Nash was a bust for LAL, and that's because there's no stat for physical fragility, apart from age.
Everything comes down to championships. That's the main thing, and here Lebron faces insurmountable obstacles. There's no way to bend the near objective numbers into a subjective case for Lebron's greatness that doesn't blow up in his face.
The exercise should be fruitless, we all knew what we were seeing when Lebron "took [his] talent's to south beach" and we all knew what we saw when that "dynasty" produced two championships and two runner-ups before Lebron bailed, for another super-team.
Anyway, empirical arguments can work, only in so far as nobody bothers to check for cherry-picking.
So, Kobe has one more championship than Lebron, you need to disqualify at least one championship to put Lebron back into the goat conversation and the most popular course of action is to say Shaq carried Kobe to his first three championships.
Okay, the strongest case is the '00 championship where Kobe averages below 20 points and plays on average 10 minutes less than Shaq, and Shaq's statistics are monstrous. The problem is, if you add Dwayne Wade to Chris Bosh do you get 1 Shaq?
'00 vs '11 Shaq gets 38 pts, 16.7 rbs per game, Wade and Bosh combine for 45 pts, 14.3 rbs per game.
'01 vs '12 Shaq gets 33 pts, 15.4 rbs per game, Wade and Bosh combine for 37.2 pts, 15.4 rbs per game.
'02 vs '13 Shaq gets 36.3 pts, 12.3 rbs per game, Wade and Bosh combine for 31.5 pts, 13.9 rbs per game.
So in narratives vs. numbers what can slip by is that if a player is "carried" by one all star teammate then they don't get the finals MVP award, if they are "carried" by two all star teammates they do get the MVP award.
Lebron fans in the grips of cognitive dissonance should steer well clear of the numbers. They should also steer clear of watching Lebron games. I haven't watched enough to know how long he's been over-the-hill for, alas a day is coming where a Lebron hater analyst gives Lebron's career the Pistol Pete Maravich treatment.
The treatment I'm referring to is historical revisionism, some statistician went through Pete's career and determined that he made 13 3-point shots per game before the 3 point line existed. So had the 3 point line existed he would have averaged 57 points per game in the NCAA.
Lebron's will be a little different however, someone is going to calculate James' scoring average if his offensive fouls, carries and travels were called. Likely including minutes lost due to sitting on the bench for accumulating fouls and committing turnovers. I would guess that the consensus will be that he should have retired somewhere between 2017-2019 with one less championship, given that nobody could foresee reasonably that there would be a global pandemic result in asterisks all over the 2020 season.
The last thing I want to say about the numbers, before dishing it to people who crunch these things regards my dubiosity about the statistical category of "assists".
The all time great point-guards tend to be less successful than all time great centers and all time great shooting guards. I don't know why but here are just a few names Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, John Stockton, Gary Payton, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson, Chauncey Billups, Russell Westbrook, Jason Kidd, Rajon Rondo...
I mean of course I could produce a list of great shooting guards that didn't enjoy much success because they played during Jordan and Kobe's years, but most of my list didn't overlap with Magic Johnson's career hence I assert that a great point guard even an MVP struggles to lead a team to a championship, just as with the sole exception of Jordan, an NBA scoring champion struggles to lead a team to a championship.
What it creates is a situation where if someone averages 10 assists per season, I don't really know if that is good or bad or whatever. It is a statline that is too contingent, and we will always lack the counterfactual. The basic point is somebody has to score the ball, and there are plenty of cases where players could opt for an easy layup on a fast break but they pass it to a team mate directly behind them to make the same easy layup. This is why there's a distinction between "shoot first" or "pass first" point guards.
The logical thing would be whether by eye-test or analytics the point guard will have their own field goal percentages, and if the open man has lower percentages you shoot sooner than pass.
Then assists are supposed to be good because they "assist" another player to score, this makes them contingent on who you are passing to. If you have a 50-40-90 shooter on your team, are they "assisting" the point guard with their high field goal percentages to get assists? It makes it hard to compare MVP Steve Nash's '05-'06 statline with '05-'06 Rookie of the Year Chris Paul when you consider Nash was passing to Ama're Stoudamire and Shawn Marrion and Paul to...
It is beyond my puny brain to evaluate the value of the assist, lacking the eye-test of actually watching a game, the raw stat doesn't mean much, if anything, to me. For example, I would want to run the regression on assists delivered vs assists received because it stands to reason that if a players esteem is raised for creating an assist, then a players esteem should be lowered for receiving an assist. Does a player's shooting percentages go up or down when they catch and shoot from an assist or when they go off a dribble? Are the assists increasing the percentage of high percentage shots taken? What is the assist percentage? Is a point guard a volume assister? Quarterbacks who perform a similar function have a "completed passes" statistical category which presumably can be compared to incomplete passes to figure out how efficient a given quarterback is.
Does this relate to Lebron? Absolutely. Lacking sufficient championships to establish him as the greatest player in any era he has played through (less than Kobe and Duncan, presently equal to Steph Curry) if you take recourse to the stat lines, it becomes a question of are plays just running through this player and should they be?
Lebron's twilight years feature him attempting 3 point shots on something like 33-37.% accuracy, or giving him the ball to shoot penalty free throws and have possession in must-foul situations when he only makes 70% of his free throws?
It's all that shit, there is no escape. He beats Kareem's career points record - but Kareem has 6 championships and 2,000 less career turnovers. The end goal, of every NBA team is to win championships, this is why they draft, trade and rebuild, this is why they try to win any given game, it is all in the service of winning championships.
This is an excellent point to just hand over to basketball nerds that go in deep to these kinds of numbers, all to tell anyone what their eyes could plainly see if their ears weren't overrun with narrative:
By The Numbers
Jordan Lebron playoff comparison.
Lebron and Jordan at 38 vs CH the Stats.
Ref You !uck - Michael Lewis Podcast Ep. on Referees (at 28 minutes it explicitly addresses Lebron James)
The Eye-Tests
Lebron and Jordan at 38 1st half play by play. (and 2nd half)
Lebron not rebounding for 6 minutes Straight
Kwame Brown talking sense about Lebron for 10 minutes. (As an aside, it is so nice to see a well adjusted Kwame Brown sounding happy and owning his "biggest bust" title, in terms of maturity Kwame Brown > Lebron)
Okay so that's an abundance, enough to take over your youtube algorithms completely.
Talk of Conspiracy
As a general rule, I always bet against intelligent design.
From the above, particularly Angry Old Hoops Fan's videos that break down Lebron's play, play by play from specific games, I'm left utterly unimpressed by Lebron. Granted, these are from the twilight of his career, however, I came into this post thinking one concession I could make is that Lebron's longevity is impressive, compared to say, Larry Bird's or Isiaih Thomas'. But even that doesn't hold up, he appears much more frail and unathletic than Jordan, Bryant and Reggie Miller at his age.
Anyway, avoiding specifics because it's covered in the videos above; my point is the harder I looked the less I understood why anyone considers Lebron to even be in contention for the Goat. A lively and plausible debate would be to compare Lebron to Shaq or Tim Duncan for "who is the greatest big man?" reframed like that, it is interesting because it would be very very hard to make the case that Lebron James is better than Tim Duncan given that Tim Duncan's Spurs beat Lebron in 2007 and 2014.
Again, I have to avoid specifics, but there's just so many rabbit holes, none literally none of which hold any water, or even rabbits.
All we are left with, is a persistent narrative.
I fucking hate conspiracy theories, I don't need fucking daddy, but in researching this post I mean I linked only a small sample of the videos I watched and right, I like heterodox, I'm a big believer in "He who only knows his own side of the debate knows little of that." but the Lebronze boosters are fucking clowns - Kendrick Perkins? Collin Cowherd? Nick Wright? Shannon Sharpe? They say a man is judged by the company he keeps, and if these are your boosters you can't win.
I actually do not understand how anybody can be a fan of Lebron James, he is not exciting to watch and never really has been, he comports himself like a child on and off the court...enough!
My point is, that I find myself credulous that in ten or twenty years time, current NBA media figures and personalities, teammates and team management, referees etc. will be forthcoming with stories of "we basically couldn't say this and we had to say that..." about Lebron.
Maybe correspondence will surface consisting of instructions that "the Goat debate must rage on so long as Lebron is playing." etc. It certainly feels like there is a general directive that the grand narrative, the Lebron contention must be upheld.
Is it malice or incompetence though?
Got to bet on incompetence, in this case I am readier to expect "escalation of commitment" or throwing good money after bad, plain on garden variety cognitive dissonance sooner than any proposed non-sensical agenda to make Lebron the goat and drive actual fans of the game of basketball insane.
For example, the Lakers organization is pretty straight forward. They pay Lebron James a lot of money to play for them. So constructing a narrative that Lebron James is definitely not over-the-hill, and in fact just as good as his prime, even going so far as to build a list around compensating his shortcomings because ROI. It is even better to blame a poor win-loss record on a cheaper star like Russell Westbrook, because he is easier and cheaper to trade away (assuming Lebron would only wish to be traded to contenders that will also start him.) or otherwise blaming poor performance on Lebron not having "sufficient help" which is true, you need elite defenders if Lebron is on the court because they have to defend 4 on 5 and you need elite passers and shooters to compensate for Lebron's inefficiency where Lebron requires at least 20 points a game which may account for 30 or 40 of a team's hundred possessions.
So present day Laker's perpetuation of the narrative is a no brainer, but Lebron wasn't just a number one draft pick, he was "the next Michael Jordan" the "Chosen 1" he was literally chosen to be the face of the NBA, I think another problem was that the Cleveland Cavaliers bought into the narrative also and did everything possible to land the hometown hero as a prep-to-pro star.
The significance of this, is that Portland is considered to have made a mistake not drafting Michael Jordan, a mistake that cost them 6 championships and a whole lot of merchandize. So if everyone was supremely confident they could now predict the next Michael Jordan - then small market teams buy in at their peril. The Cav's draft payday was drafting Kyrie Irving at #1 who gave them a championship and attracted Lebron James in his free agency. The winner of the 2003 draft year were the Miami Heat with Dwayne Wade who won them 3 championships and landed them Shaq, Lebron James and Chris Bosh.
The point being, the NBA bet big on Lebron James and I just suspect they can't admit their mistake for to do so means that nobody should listen to the NBA whenever they promise there will be more Michael Jordan.
The crazy thing is, we got more Michael Jordan. It's called Kobe Bryant. There's so many analogies to make, like okay Kobe Bryant was not an exact replica of MJ, it was more like a new colorway rerelease of the Jordan XI.
I think that is all it is, and we are now in a phase where Lebron didn't pan out, but the NBA has to keep pretending it has this big draw card.
I'm not a believer in the power of propaganda or social constructivism, but I have enough work experience to understand the general lack of a) search skills and b) critical thinking among the population. I've just lived through a month of the Barbie movie's release, I went to the cinema opening weekend to see Oppenheimer a grown up movie for adults, and I saw the very homogenous crowds of people in Barbie (or Barbenheimer) merch cued up to see something they were told would be a phenomena.
I've seen people break down in tears because I wouldn't tell them what to do in an exercise whose whole point was to get them to think for themselves. I've met people who earnestly wish they lived under a dictatorship because democracy is too confusing and demands too much attention and participation. I would say, at least 90% of the working population, never find the motivation to teach themselves what they need to know, they don't look things up, find a tutorial or read instructions. They have to be told what to do.
That's why I think "LeBrain-Washing" works, and that is all. By analogy, I used to see a lot of dudes wearing Tim Duncan's Spurs Jersey. The man's nickname was "the big fundamental" and my long held opinion was that if a player as boring to watch as Tim Duncan was winning, the NBA needed to change its rules.
There were only two reasons to wear Tim Duncan's jersey. 1) you were a basketball purist. 2) you had no taste and heard he was good.
Duncan and Bryant had the same number of championships, the major difference is that if the NBA gets more players like Bryant it will become a more exciting form of entertainment. If it gets more players like Duncan, it will become a snooze fest.
Lebron James has played in many of the least watched NBA finals series of the modern era, with the 2020 finals being the least watched likely regardless of who was playing. But people significantly tuned out of his peak years with the Miami Heat. He has just been a bust, bad for the game in so many ways but it can't be admitted else the NBA itself would have to confront it's cognitive dissonance.
Paths to Goatness
How would one become the undisputed goat of the NBA? Well there's really only two competitive strategies in anything ever - penetration and differentiation. Penetration is what Lebron tried for, to eclipse Michael Jordan, and he didn't and in likelihood he won't. There isn't 3 more championships in Lebron even if he joined the Denver Nuggets, Milwaukee Bucks or Golden State all of whom I feel confident would rather play against Lebron than with him.
However, I don't want Michael Jordan to become a Jimi-Hendrix closing the door forever on the prospect of him ever being eclipsed. So I think Giannis who seems too different in personality from Jordan and Bryant among current players has maybe the best chance of racking up a Bill Russell like number of championships, his big problem being Jokic, who could also go on to create a dynasty.
But yeah, a Goat contender needs either a non-superteam fourpeat, or to accumulate 7 championships, 7 MVPs, 7-finals MVPs and at least two Olympic Gold Medals. It matters much less how. They don't need a stat line like Jordan's and I'm going to also rule out the need for any cultural impact. Jokic could eclipse Jordan as the Goat, and I don't think he'll ever have a shoe line as successful as brand Jordan.
The other way, would be differentiation, on this front Steph Curry is the extant mold. Reggie Miller showed the way, then Ray Allen and now Steph has it working for him. His problem was he let Durant get too much of the credit pie during the super team years.
I want to get more fanciful with differentiation. I want to suggest a "Sanjuro Yojimbo" man-with-no-name potential goat. A journeyman path to goathood. The big obstacle being the draft, which ties a rookie up for 3~5 years on one team.
This potential goat though, would be someone who can make such an individual impact on winning that they do not care who they play for. In fact, to make the point of their greatness they sign one-year contracts with the bottom team each season and take them to the championships. Someone who wins 6 championships on 6 different teams and does so as finals MVP, while lifting teams from losing records to winning records the year he joins them. Basically someone whose whole career is Kawhi Leonard's one year championship stint at Toronto.
Another differentiation strategy for Goat I would call the "win guarantor" that is a player who specializes in the 4th quarter, more so than Kobe Bryant, I mean a player that is happy to sit on the bench until the team needs a deficit wiped out. A perpetual "6th man" award winner because his teams go 82-0 in the regular season and 16-0 in the playoffs-finals, barring injuries and personal tragedies. That could get someone who plays 20 minutes per game or less, and plays less than 82 games a year into the Goat debate, and their games wouldn't necessarily be boring like the 10 ft giant, because it would just be watching a player so good that they could take over, and use the time on the bench as effectively a handicap generator.
Conclusion
Lebron is a grand narrative. A legitimate subject for Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida to write about. Someone who is clearly any way you slice it, nowhere near the upper tiers of NBA greats, his reputation derived from his power, not his merit. He is not without merit, but he is presently an NBA starter and headline generator because of his power and clout and nothing else.
Donald Trump is the Lebron James of politics. A post-modern tyrant, a bona-fide loser and perpetual cry baby oblivious to the concepts of both "shame" and "dignity". In both cases, there's almost no point to hating the men themselves because the far scarier problem is how many people buy in to the narrative. Lebron doesn't scare me, I'm not afraid he will eclipse Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, if he does, power to him.
What scares me is the number of people I see wearing "James 23" or "James 6" Lakers merch on the street, even though they would never buy or wear his moonboot shoes. I see toddlers and infants dressed in little Lebron Laker's outfits. I'm scared by the society I live in and it's capacity to raise the next generation.
I'm scared by the Brahmin mindset, the ass-backwards "this person is rich, therefore they must be great" compared to the much more simple hypothesis "this person is rich, therefore they were probably born rich" which also incidentally is far more likely to be true.
Lebron was "Chosen" the "Chosen 1" he hasn't earned a thing, a single championship in his time and his overall impact on the game has been to lower its dignity. Everyone in the NBA is attempting to succeed despite Lebron James, something that could be said of everyone who played through Michael Jordan's Chicago Dynasty with Lakers, Celtics and Pistons succeeding. Alas, for MJs 12 full seasons with the Bulls he brought home the hardware 6 times, Lebron's 20 seasons you could similarly expect him to be in the finals every second year, but only win every 5 years.
What this means is that everyone in the NBA is attempting to succeed despite Lebron James who was chosen and subsequently handed everything, and...they are. Lebron can't stop Giannis, Jokic, Curry, Bryant, Duncan, Nowitzki... furthermore, it is understood that for Lebron to succeed he needs a top-tier squad.
The implication for broader society, is that the power of narrative is weak. It is just crazy making. The meta-conclusion is that the most crazy-making narrative is the narrative that the power of narrative is strong. That we can simply fucking will things to happen. That telling a kid, who actually bears little to no resemblance to Michael Jordan, that they can "be like Mike" doesn't work.
It's 1984 shit. Coincidentally, the year Jordan was drafted.
