In Memorium: Lebreaving Los Lakers

 As at writing, it seems pretty much confirmed that Lebron James has no place on the Los Angeles Lakers roster. Also at writing it appears clear that Lebron intends to play even yet more seasons of basketball in the NBA, but does not have a destination. 

I want to take a moment to reflect on this departure though, as one of those moments where a cloud stops obstructing a sun and you hadn't even realised just how chill it had become. Lebron and the Lakers were not a dangerous pairing in any competitive sense, they were a dangerous pairing in an anti-competitive sense.

Tune into Angry Old Hoops youtube channel any day of the week for the past three years, and you'll see the receipts of not only a sustained anger in an elder basketball fan, but an old billionaire lumbering around a court, blowing on his hands who need the laws of basketball suspended to play in the actual game and is most animated when complaining to a referee.

Lebron is not like any other name that gets tossed into the largely academic 'greatest of all time' debates, virtually all the other candidates suited up for one team, the exceptions being Kareem Abdul Jabbar who played for the Milwaukee Bucks and won a championship with them before going to the Lakers and winning four more, and Michael Jordan who after his second retirement where he became part-owner and manager of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards suited up for them before retiring permanently. But Bill Russell, Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant played their whole careers for the Celtics, Spurs and the Lakers respectively.

Lebron played 7 years for the Cleveland Cavaliers before going to play for the Miami Heat for like 4 years, then went back to Cleveland for 4 years before heading to the Lakers for 8 years, his longest consecutive stint at any one club.

And the merging of Lebron and the Lakers I think was a particular disaster. I'm sure the Lakers organisation had excuses, they needed a marquee name to restore their relevance after struggling to rebuild post Kobe Bryant etc. but at the point at which they acquired Lebron, Lebron was a known quantity, a guy that basically needed a US mens Olympic calibre team to compensate for his propensity to choke away fourth quarters. 

He'd had a great fourth quarter, once, which I watched live against the remnants of the Detroit Pistons' Bad Boys II dynasty that had already lost their defensive lynchpin in Ben Wallace, a victory that sent Lebron to his first ever NBA finals where he was swept by the Spurs in 4 games, choking away the opportunity. Then Kobe's Lakers would acquire Pau Gasol and go to three straight finals and win two back to back, Kobe acquiring one more championship than Shaq and falling one shy of Michael Jordan. This milestone of Kobe threatening to become Jordan's true heir was the supposed impetus for Lebron to make 'the decision' an unprecedented level of anti-competitive player collusion to amass talent on a single 'superteam' not of veterans as was the case with the mega-trade that put Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen together on the Celtics right as their championship windows were closing, but three elite talents from the same draft year joining forces in their prime.

Lebron would ride that super team back to the finals, where he would famously choke harder than anyone had ever choked in the finals ever, definitively elevating the previous generation above his own into the superior position when the offcuts of an era - Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion and Jason Terry, a team of post season bridesmaids in the Kobe-Duncan decades congealed on the Dallas Mavericks and beat the Miami Heat super team thanks to Lebron James, arguably a candidate for finals MVP then as without his ability to disappear completely in the fourth quarter, Dallas could not have won.

Lebron did then win two championships back-to-back with the Heat, before Tim Duncan as the old guard and Kawhi Leonard as the new guard curb stomped Lebron's one and only chance to three peat like Kobe, Jordan and Russell had. 

So Lebron cut and ran from the superteam of his own construction, back to Cleveland because in possibly his greatest basketball move ever, his abandonment of Cleveland for Miami had resulted in the Cavs drafting Kyrie Irving one of the most skilled point guards ever. Lebron would also have elite rebounder Kevin Love join the Cavs for his second super team, and would lose a bunch of NBA finals to the Golden State Warriors, winning one in the midst there. Irving would desert Lebron before Lebron would leave Cleveland for the Lakers, but that's the potted history of the known quantity Lebron was.

Lebron was capable of winning your team a championship, if he was surrounded by the top tier talent to insure against his crumbling when you need him. You need someone to make that big play in the final moments, whether it was a Ray Allen, a Chris Bosh, a Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love.

And so the disaster happened. 

Here I am going to assert two premises:

1. The NBA has a vested interest in saying that the greatest person to ever play basketball is currently playing in the NBA.

2. The NBA has a vested interest in the Los Angeles Lakers having at least a post-season, and hopefully a deep post-season run.

Combining Lebron James with the Lakers gave Lebron incredible leverage, incredible influence over the modern NBA. For basketball fans, it was quite literally the worst possible combination ever. The conclusion that follows from my premises is a bizarre double negative - the Lakers cannot fail and it cannot be Lebron James' fault.

Lebron was perfectly positioned to drive the NBA from pure sport towards pure theatre, forcing the NBA to make the Lakers a babyface and any team they played a heel. 

The Lakers impressive lead in free throw attempt discrepancy is not a matter of opinion, just counting, often hundreds of times greater than the next team. It produced the epic 'complete crap' rant from a coach of the Toronto Raptors who was so incensed by the refs exclusive use of whistles for the Lakers that he said if it was already decided that the Lakers were winning tonight, they could have told him and they wouldn't have bothered to show up.

And documentarians like Angry Old Hoops have collated the receipts and uploaded them night after night to youtube. Lebron is allowed to travel, Lebron doesn't have to play defence, if Lebron uses his forearm to completely dislodge a defender, that's a defensive foul on the defender, if anyone touches Lebron on the drive, that's a defensive foul, if Lebron travels then it doesn't count, if Lebron carries then it doesn't count, if Lebron passes the ball to Austin Reeves and Reeves dribbles down the court charges the lane and scores then Lebron gets an assist on his statline and so on and so on.

The entire NBA institution suddenly exists to prop up a tired old billionaire as a viable all star. Again it isn't opinion, just counting. Lebron often will get 12 of his points in 'garbage time' for some reason he is still on the court when the game is clearly lost or clearly won having every offensive play run through him even though nobody else cares anymore.

When the Lakers make it to the post season and suddenly any team they play is being really serious, and the refs are behaving like professionals because people are watching the game and your team having to play 4-on-5 defense because Lebron is too unfit to run back and help, and if he does make it back he isn't any help because he can't move his feet or raise his arms anymore, and the Lakers get swept or gentleman-swept in the first round, year after year, by the Denver Nuggets or the Minnesota Timberwolves or pretty much anyone bar the Houston Rockets, then it can't be because the Lakers have an old billionaire who needs the minutes, and he needs the play to pad his stats out, but is a defensive liability and can no longer play offense unless the refs suspend the rules of basketball for him, it cannot be his fault which means Darvon Ham needs to be fired, Russel Westbrook needs to be traded, D'Angelo Russell needs to be traded, Anthony Davis needs to be traded.

The Narcissistic project that is prosecuting Lebron's "goat" case, has been enabled to a terrifying extent by his being embedded in the Lakers, the largest media market in the NBA by far. The defacto control Lebron appeared to have over the organization up until the Buss family sold their control of the franchise to a more sober billionaire, I think had a profoundly negative effect on the NBA which in turn has had a profoundly crazy-making effect on people who want to watch the game and see good basketball.

There is a clip of Charles Barkley on inside the NBA from a few years back, complaining about why they have to talk about the Lakers, pointing out that the Lakers were currently 10th in the Western conference and talking about them made as much sense as talking about the 10th place Washington Wizards (or something) in the Eastern conference, a team I can't recall, because nobody has to talk about them.

Just multiply that out to pretty much every day of an NBA season up until the Lakers got knocked out of the postseason typically in the first round. You had to hear about Lebron every day, all day, as he racked up bullshit longevity milestones and meaningless events like the first father and son duo to play in the NBA (and on the same team, what are the odds? incredible if literally nobody in their right mind would ever draft Bronny James, officially statistically the worst person to ever play modern basketball - there was a 46 year old who played two games for like the Provedence Profilactics back in the 1960s who is the all time worst player back when a coach could literally decide to play and nobody would demand a refund for their 2c ticket to see Provedence Rhode Island play Palookaville Nova Scotia)

The actual NBA where athletes compete in the game of basketball to win it all got condensed down to a month and a half of the postseason the past three years. It was like "oh look the Denver Nuggets sent the LA Lakers packing in the first round, now we can finally talk about the Nuggets, the Mavericks, the Wolves, the OKC Thunder, the Celtics, the Heat, the Bucks, the Cavs, the Knicks...you know, all the teams actually playing good basketball with a hope of making it to the second round of the NBA playoffs.

And it wasn't even that, because Lebron would also just create drama, so we could still hear about Lebron and the Lakers every day. Like that year he pretended he was considering retirement, only to appear at the ESPYs wearing a pearl necklace and declare he wasn't going to retire, or when he is putting his podcast cohost JJ Reddick forward to replace his coach Darvin Ham and forcing the Lakers to draft his son.

Lebron was a sickening disaster, and the Lakers share a blame for prolonging the deletorious effect he has had on the NBA by his example. I think Lebron knows he fades into irrelevance about 2 weeks after his retirement. An article will be written and published somewhere days after his retirement questioning his legacy, while a fluff piece of bullshit stats nobody cares about will farewell Lebron on both the ESPN, NBA and 'Inspiredbyhoops' Youtube channels. Someone though will be liberated to point out that Lebron achieved less than Kobe with twice the help in twice the time, and from there all the comparisons will diminish in favour. 

There is some residual drama in where he lands, and he may find nowhere suitable, his family now based in LA and chatter about his best prospects being some kind of semi-homecoming to Miami or Cleveland. Cleveland seems unlikely to me, because they are dark-horse contenders. I don't see any contender actually wanting Lebron James believing that people in the know, must know, by now, that Lebron is actually dead weight on a roster. 

That leaves non-contenders that might benefit from selling a bunch of jerseys and merch to Lebron fanboys. Maybe he would consider the symbolism of finishing his career with the Washington Wizards where Jordan did his farewell tour, again a big nostalgic cashgrab, moreso on the Wizards part than Jordan who does not need more cash because he has his shoe sales, something Lebron does not have. The Wizards would also put Lebron close to the person he most resembles in legacy - Donald James Trump. But again, I think now Lebron is down to his last great hope being a kind of geriatic Harlem Globetrotters on the Golden State Warriors, a team he can uber to from his LA residence. 

But I can see that not panning out either, and James having to retire in humiliation this off-season sooner than recognize that he is likely worth less to any team, than what Russell Westbrook has been forced to accept as a result of Lebron's failed superteam 3. Extra humiliating because 2 seasons ago he could have had a final swansong season at the Lakers and everybody would have been happy. He couldn't do that though because he knows if he exits with only 4 rings, his memory will fade faster and farther than Kobe's ever will.