LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

We can go over the cap to sign Ingram since he's ours. And 36 year old Lebron will still probably be solid, and if our home grown talent actually flourishes, they'll be carrying the load by then anyway. In an ideal world our kids are ready faster than we thought, we find someone willing to take Deng with Nance and some first rounders attached, and we sign PG13 and Cousins. We have Ball/PG13/Ingram/Kuzma/Cousins as our starting 5, with Clarkson and Randle as our super subs. But even if ALL that somehow came to fruition, adding Lebron and PG13 this offseason still probably gives us a better shot at a ring at some point over the next 7-8 years. We may not have as good a chance at multiple rings because of Lebrons age, but we have a better chance of getting at least one.

 

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

What did I miss?

 

Okay, now I've got a couple minutes away from my family. Here we go:

LeBron IS a better athlete than Kobe and regardless of your personal feelings toward, Kobe that's the truth. That has zero basis on the rest of their contributions on the court and in fact has allowed LeBron to have a great career for a good 7-8 years with less-than-ideal NBA skills (post game, footwork, etc). If you need evidence of LeBron being a better athlete:

LeBron James vertical is 44 inches, Kobe's is 38 inches (Jordan's was 48 inches apparently). http://www.topendsports.com/testing/results/vertical-jump.htm
That's just one test of athleticism, sure, but there's no easily accessible athletic testing results for Kobe or LeBron. I'd say, just watch the two players and tell me who is more athletic. If you'd like to argue that Kobe is more athletic than LeBron, there's just not much here to talk about because you aren't seeing things clearly.

With that established, you wanted scientific proof that the using Kobe as an indicator of LeBron's injuries is a flawed premise. Here is an article that gives you good insight into genetics and what genetic codes determine strength, speed, endurance, and of course injury: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993978/

This article goes into depth about what codes determine what we all are as athletes. You of course ignored completely my examples, but those examples can be found in this article. A player with tremendous cardiovascular endurance that lasted 20 years and played 74 or more games in 18 of those seasons. He made the playoffs in 18 of those seasons and added 8851 minutes over that span without suffering a catastrophic injury towards the end of his career. He had debilitating injuries for sure, but that was into his late 30s and 40s by the time he was hobbling around the court. Karl Malone was a massive person. He played 19 seasons and frequently weighed a reported 250 pounds (I would think it was more than that) and he played nearly every game for all those seasons. He made the playoffs in each of his 19 seasons and added 7907 minutes. He didn't break down until he was 40 years old unfortunately with the Lakers. These athletes all had varying degrees of genetic advantages in order to maximize their playing time.

Couple that with the fact that we don't start to truly deteriorate muscularly or along our ligaments/tendons until our 40s at the latest, and there's just zero ability to use Kobe's breakdown as an indicator of LeBron's. Age defeats all athletes, that's an undoubted truth and one that I do not deny. It's entirely possible that tomorrow LeBron blows his knee out or ruptures his Achilles. However, Kobe is no indicator of that. Just tracking the type of athlete that LeBron is, it's impossible to actually predict injury.

In fact while age is a massive factor, genetics are an equal factor. Andrew Bynum and Brandon Roy broke down in the years that should have been their "prime" seasons. We see players tearing ACLs (Exum) in their rookie seasons.

So predicting LeBron's injury within the next 5 years is an educated guess that is probably a decent bet, but it's not a given. There's examples of athletes that have made it through their 30s and succeeded. After watching LeBron for more than a decade, I think it's clear he's an athlete above the rest. It's what has really driven him forward moreso than skill. The only sign of slowing I've seen from LeBron was that twisted ankle, but the severity of that wasn't high and he sat out until he improved. When he was ready to go, he went and he went at full strength. We all hate on him for taking his siestas during the season, but they're helping him add time to his career.

I will repeat this because you obviously are having a hard time reading it with an unbiased eye: I am not a LeBron fan. I've been on this site and CL before it for years hating on LeBron for being a wuss, for shrinking in big moments, and for running when the writing was on the wall. He's pompous, fatuous, and narcissistic. That doesn't mean I am too proud to admit that he's by far better than any player on our team and I would take him here in an instant. There's no greater connection between the playoffs than LeBron James and if he were to sign here, we'd almost certainly attract a second player to come with him (ideally Paul George). I'm willing to give up any player not named Ball, Ingram, or Kuzma to make this a reality because I am a Laker fan and I want to be competitive again. I'm not content winning 30 games, then 35, then 45 games over the next three years if we can skip that process altogether.

@Barnstable argument that the team might not be able to pull it together quickly enough is a pretty good argument, but what is the difference? Say we don't sign him because he's older and a potential injury concern, then what happens? We maybe get lucky and sign Cousins this summer? We win 43 games if we're fortunate? I'd rather have two years of the Lakers competing for the conference championship than two years of us scraping a playoff run together. Then even if LeBron breaks down after 2 years (although I think I've shown there's little evidence of that conclusion), we still have all of our young players in their early 20s which is years before their prime. The value of adding those playoff runs is astronomical for the growth of our young players who wouldn't be getting their big pay days until after LeBron's contract expires anyway. I'd rather take him and deal with it if/when he breaks down because the alternative is spending our money on guys that likely aren't worth that money. Or worse, getting stuck paying only our young guys and waiting for them for 4-5 years to be truly competitive. Are we all willing to wait 4-5 years because LeBron is a douche? I'm not. If you are, that's cool, but we're going to disagree on this.

And as a last note: if it wasn't for sirron's irrational hate, I wouldn't spend so much time defending LeBron. I don't actually care about LeBron. This started as a fun counter to sirron's teasing. Hopefully you see that, but I have a feeling much of this won't hit home for at least a couple posters.