LeBron is among the greatest athletes to ever play the game. I'd put him in the same breath as Shaq or Wilt as far as what he was gifted with.
And that's what makes Lebron so freaking insane. He has the athleticism of Kobe in his prime...in the body of Karl Malone. But if you would have given Kobe Lebron's physical gifts...we'd have been looking at an ocho-peat or some crazy number. Another crazy thing about Lebron is he never gets hurt. He gets dinged once in a while, but his HGH/Rogaine cocktail makes him almost impervious to injury.
LeBron fanboys are losing their mind seeing Kyrie being praised over LeBron, talking about "Oh LeBron isn't allowed to have good teammates around him" I thought they weren't enough? That's why I can't get behind the LeBron train. The media's/fanboys attempt to paint his career as blemish free is annoying.
With Barkley recently saying if Lebron beats the Warriors in the Finals, he would put Lebron on the same level as Kobe, maybe slightly above. That has caused a lot of discussion on how you'd rank Jordan, Kobe and Lebron. Sure there's some legitimate arguments to be made for all of them but man, there has been a lot of people saying some of the dumbest things. Recently there was a caller on ESPNLA710 commenting on this situation and he said the dumbest thing that, honestly should have, stuck with me for a couple days. He said you'd rank Lebron ahead of Kobe and on the same level as Jordan. Why? Because if you take Jordan off the Bulls team, that team didn't/wouldn't make the Finals. If you take Lebron off his teams, they wouldn't make the Finals. But if you take Kobe off his teams, they would still make the Finals. And how Lebron and Jordan make their teammates better but not Kobe, all he does is shoot. The guys didn't comment on this but I think it was Keyshawn who said, yeah look at Dellavedolva, what has he done without Lebron besides getting paid. Funny thing is he put up the same exact numbers with the Bucks as he did with the Cavs. Take a deeper look into the latter two of Kobe's championships, how can those teams still make the Finals? And then you look at their careers post-Lakers and probably only Ariza was playing at the same level or better. I was going to go more in depth but I shouldn't care this much over some random person's comments. But its so annoying how much disrespect Kobe get while people are bending over backwards to prop up Lebron while ignoring his flaws. /rant
And people will argue that, well, Kobe had luck too with Horry's shot vs. Kings and Sixers, Fisher's clutch 3's against Magic, and Ron's huge 3 at the end of Game 7. But all of those were not the kind of shot that where if they miss Kobe losses a ring/championship like Ray and Kyrie's shots were. You could really only argue that Ron's 3 against the C Bags was just as big, but even if he doesn't hit that shot we were up by 3 points with 1 minute 2 seconds to go.
I think luck is a big thing in general. Lebron has been insanely lucky with Kyrie and Ray Allen and etc., but he got Mike Brown early in his career and unfortunately made him look like a "good" coach that screwed us over. Then the basketball gods felt bad for Lebron and we have what we have today.... Kobe got Shaq and Phil and Duncan got Robinson and Popovich early in their careers. Who knows what would've happened if they ended up in different situations.
So apparently LeBron has had the sniffles the last 2 games, so give him a break guys, gosh! Nobody has ever played amazing while sick, or with badly sprained ankles or broken fingers..
One of the most healthy athletically gifted athletes ever (as they call him) can't play with a snot nose? The horror!
Hmmm sports media spent nearly two decades making sure no other athlete is mentioned in the same breath as MJ, now they're basically pushing for LeBron to surpass MJ any way he can. Anything out of Jordan praise was considered disrespect. Weird... No one will top MJ's 10 scoring titles, one of which he averaged 30+ 8 times, while going up against some of the most cut throat defenses. LeBron has 1. He can match his championships and 6 MVP's if his body holds up. I guess that's enough to dethrone him? Also take into consideration MJ didn't come straight out of HS. They don't play alike either, not that any of that matters anymore though, oh well. I think it's more of an accomplishment comparison thing.
They didn't want to give Kobe the title of "next Jordan" (for various reasons) so they saw an opportunity with Lebron and pushed him up the throne before he even accomplished anything just to get Kobe out the way.