The Legacy of LeBron James

Let me start by saying that I am not a LeBron fan. I don’t like him and nearly always root against him. That said, I know greatness when I see it. LeBron put together three of the best postseason runs in the history of the NBA playoffs in ‘15, ‘16, & ‘17 and isn’t being properly appreciated because his team of spare parts and cast-offs ran out of gas in ‘15 and couldn’t beat a super-team in ‘17. LeBron was the first player EVER to lead both Finals teams in points, rebounds, and assists. EVER. Not even Bird, Magic, or Mike did it. Like I said, all-time great stuff.

No, he’s not Jordan or Russell. He’s not undefeated in the Finals like Jordan or winning 11 rings in 12 years like Russell. [A quick aside here -- Russell won those rings when there were only eight teams, six of them made the playoffs, and the top seeds got first round byes. No disrespect, but it’s a heckuva lot harder now]. Point being, LeBron is nowhere near the champion those guys were, but when you stack him up against other all-timers, he measures up a lot better than you think.

Myth #1 – LeBron isn’t an all-time great because he loses too much in the Finals.

Below is a list of some all-time greats and their records in the NBA finals.

• Bill Russell – 11-1

• Jordan – 6-0

• Kareem – 6-4

• Duncan – 5-1

• Kobe – 5-2

• Magic – 5-4

• Shaq – 4-2

• Bird – 3-2

• LeBron James – 3-5

• Wilt Chamberlain – 2-4

• Jerry West – 1-8

• Elgin Baylor – 0-8

LeBron has a better finals record than Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and the Logo himself, Jerry West. Baylor & West were 0-8 playing in Finals together for the Lakers. Ironically, Wilt faced almost the EXACT same criticism as LeBron about disappearing in big moments and not being able to get over the hump. It's even more ironic that the great Jerry West didn’t win a title until 1972 when "un-clutch" Wilt joined him in LA.

Speaking of star players joining forces…

Myth #2 – Other great players didn’t need trades or “recruiting” to win their rings.

Seriously?

Jordan – Jordan's second three-peat included two other HOF players, one of whom was a 2-time Defensive POY. After losing in the ’94 Conference Finals to the Magic, MJ lobbied for the Bulls to get two-time All-Star and two-time Defensive POY Dennis Rodman so they would have someone to match up with Shaq. They also added Ron Harper who averaged 20 PPG the year prior to coming to Chicago. To put it in today’s context, the Bulls basically went out and added Draymond Green and Eric Bledsoe.

By the way – prior to the Bulls acquiring Scottie Pippen in ‘87, Jordan had one scoring title, ZERO MVPs, and ZERO rings. In Pippen’s rookie year he won his first MVP and Defensive Player of the year. Just saying.

Clyde Drexler - Drexler ASKED to be traded to Houston at the 1995 trade deadline...Houston had eliminated the Blazers from the playoffs the year before. Drexler was All-NBA that year and was being traded to the defending champions.

Kobe – After winning three of the last four NBA Finals, the Lakers signed the older, ring-chasing versions Gary Payton & Karl Malone after the Spurs eliminated them in '03.

After Shaq left for the Heat in ’04, the Lakers were in playoff purgatory for 3 years with Kobe playing out of his mind but the team struggling to make the playoffs each year. In February of ’08 they traded for a 26-year old Pau Gasol (easily a top-5 PF at the time) to join Kobe, Odom, and Bynum. The Gasol trade sent them from a marginal playoff team to the first of three consecutive Finals appearances and two championships.

After getting bounced by the Spurs in the 2012 playoffs, the Lakers tried to do the same thing AGAIN by trading for a still in-his-prime Dwight Howard and Chris Paul to team with Pau and Kobe. The league blocked the trade for CP3, so they settled for former two-time MVP Steve Nash instead. As we all know, Nash and Howard stayed hurt and the “super team” never materialized. .

Shaq – See the entry above about the 2003 Lakers. After one of the biggest upsets in playoff history (’04 Lakers losing to the Pistons in five), Shaq heads to Miami to play with a rising star named Dwayne Wade. He wins his fourth ring in ‘06.

The Big Three - A major reason LeBron went to Miami in 2010 is because he knew the misfits he had in Cleveland couldn't beat Boston's super team of three end-of-their-prime future HOF’ers. Nobody seems to hold it against KG's legacy for asking to be traded to Boston, and people seem to have forgotten that Ray Allen went to Boston to try and when a ring, then ditched them to go ring chase with LeBron in 2012.

Jerry West – West was 0-8 in the Finals before Wilt Chamberlain joined the Lakers for the ’72 season to bring West his only ring.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Five of his six rings came while playing with Magic Johnson. The other ring came after the Bucks acquired some guy named Oscar Robertson before the ’70-’71 season.

As for some of other players on the list above:

• Bill Russell – Played with 8 Hall of Fame (HOF) players

• Elgin Baylor – Played with 3 HOF players

• Wilt – Played with 9 HOF players

• Jerry West – Played with 3 HOF players

• Kareem – Played with 7 HOF players

• Larry Bird – Played with 7 HOF players

• Magic – Played with 4 HOF players

• Jordan – Played with 2 HOF players

• Shaq – Played with 5 HOF players (counting Dwayne Wade & Kobe)

• Kobe – Played with 5 HOF players (counting Shaq)

• Duncan – Played with 1 HOF player (three if you count Ginobili & Parker)

• LeBron – Played with 2 HOF players (counting Dwayne Wade & Shaq)

So why do we single out LeBron? None of the other all-time greats went looking for help in their prime...right? That argument is absolutely ridiculous.

It’s fine if you don't like super teams, but it’s frustrating when fans act like LeBron is the first and only superstar to team up with other superstars. If you’re gonna hate on Bron, just make sure you apply the same standard to other players as well.

The Case for LeBron

Why should LeBron be considered an all-time great? I'll keep it brief:

1. He is arguably the most versatile defender of all time.

I dare you to name another player who could lock down an MVP guard like D-Rose in 4th quarter of one playoff series (Bulls, ’11) and also be asked neutralize two all-star bigs like Roy Hibbert & David West in the conference finals (Pacers, ’12 & ’13). Not even Russell or Jordan could manage that.

It’s true that his “D” isn’t what it used to be and he doesn’t even pretend to play defense during the regular season as evidenced by the Cavs plummeting from from #10 in 2016 to #28 this year in defensive rating. This is due to a number factors including the loss of Matthew Dellavedova, the constant injuries to Iman Shumpert, and the reliance on limited veterans such as Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, Kyle Korver and Deron Williams. The Cavs have gone from worrisome on that end of the floor last year, to downright terrible this year.

But playoff LeBron is still an elite-level defender that elevates the defense of others and makes game-changing plays on that end of the floor. The numbers don’t bear that out for Cleveland as a team, but the eyeball test certainly does. He’s a nightmare against the pick-n-roll because he can switch and guard bigs just as easily as wings, he’s a great communicator, he plays passing lanes well, and he has the ability to make game-changing plays as a help defender.

2. He has done more with less.

I dare you find another all-time great that has taken a team as bad as the ’07 and ’15 Cavs to the NBA Finals. By all of the advanced metrics they rank statistically as two of the worst teams to reach the Finals in the last 30 years (right up there with Iverson’s ’01 Sixers). Seriously, take a look at these rosters. His second best player in ‘07 was Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

And in the ‘15 finals:

That roster looks good on paper, but don’t forget -- Love missed the finals with a dislocated shoulder and Kyrie fractured his knee cap in game one. The Cavs played five games with a starting lineup of Mozgov, Tristan Thompson, Bron, Iman Shumpert, and Dellavedova. Yes, THAT Dellavedova. And Mozgov was the second-leading scorer.

You can’t make this stuff up.

3. Lebron is clutch.

Lebron is the all-time leader in "go-ahead shots" in the last two minutes of a playoff game. He has more game-winning shots in the playoffs than Jordan and Kobe combined. I know... you're shocked. Look at Kevin Hart. He's shocked too.

4. He is undervalued because of his own Greatness

This is the Jordan effect...where you are so consistently good, people take your goodness for granted. As a case study, here are the stats for top three MVP candidates during the 2010-2011 season:

Not only, did Player A (Lebron) not win MVP, he finished third behind D-Rose and Dwight Howard. Yep, THIRD. He got four 1st place votes. Let’s take a look at the 2015 MVP Race:

Player B (Steph) won the MVP and Player A (Lebron) finished third again with a whopping FIVE first place votes. Curry and Player C (Harden) both had great cases, but it's very telling that Lebron finished a distant third with such strong numbers.

When you have great numbers every year and your team is good every year, people forget about you. That’s how D-Rose won his MVP in ‘11 and Steph one his first one in ‘15. It’s not that they weren’t great...they were. But they won because they were breakout superstars on elite teams. It’s the reason Kobe had to average a ridiculous 38.9 PPG in ‘08 to win his only MVP. In ‘06 he averaged 35 PPG on a 48-win team and finished fourth.

You could make a strong case for LeBron to have at least six MVP’s. But that’s the problem -- He's ALWAYS an MVP candidate. People are looking for what’s next. It’s the same reason Jordan has five MVP’s instead of the seven he probably deserves. It’s why Kobe has one MVP and Steve Nash has two. Sustained greatness eventually becomes overlooked. Kobe dealt with it in the late 2000’s, Lebron has dealt with it in the 2010’s, and it’s even starting to affect Steph Curry now. He’s averaging 28 PPG for the best team in the league and isn’t even on the margins of the MVP discussion. (Yes, part of that’s because he’s on a super team -- but Lebron still managed to win an MVP with prime D-Wade and Chris Bosh on his team.)

The point is that once you’re excellent for a long enough period of time, your excellence becomes boring. You become a forgotten man and your legacy actually begins to suffer because of it. People forget how good you are because you’re ALWAYS that good. Sound crazy? Here’s a sample from Jordan’s career just to further illustrate the point:

What does 32 PPG, first-team all-defense, and the best record in the league get Michael Jordan in 1993? Third in the MVP voting behind Sir Charles and Hakeem the Dream.

You get the point.

Conclusion

Let’s put LeBron’s greatness in context. He’s not the clutch performer that Jordan was. He isn’t the consummate winner Bill Russell was. He’s not the same ruthless competitor as Kobe. He is not charming, endearing, and fun to watch like Magic. But he is one of the most versatile, well-rounded, and physically gifted players of all-time and it’s time we give him more credit for what he’s doing right now.

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P.S. - If LeBron goes the Warriors I’m deleting this article and spamming his Twitter account.