LABron James Discussion: Olympics MVP

Do his records even count?

 

i like that the community notes just uses the word "Repitlian" as a noun, as if it's a real thing and that the debunking is just that lebron doesn't belong to this class of "real things".

 

Cute. 21 seasons and only 4 titles as the "best ever"? Too many lost opportunities. Should have 6.

 

2011 and 2014 are the years he should have won. He also should have won Finals MVP in 2015 even in the loss. NBA voters again with their skewed horse**** retardom voting.

 

Should have won a chip two seasons ago..but Tinkerbell went MIA.

If you are talking talent and longevity, James is the best to ever play this game. The All-time GOAT conversation, involves other things tho.

 

i'll say something i'm surprised hasn't been said:

the reason lebron is thriving now is the flipside of why he struggled early in his olympic career. then, he relied on sheer (and absolutely incredible) athleticism to excel, primarily. he's always been a smart player, but early in his career, the easiest path (like for ant now) was just overpowering individual dominance. the international game doesn't reward this (the nba still does, see: ant in the playoffs for most rounds). the most valuable assets in international play are strength (they call fewer fouls) and hoop iq (particularly an understanding of how to use your teammates for yourself and vice versa on offense). lebron is stronger and smarter than basically everyone out there (save maybe jokic), and so his team has a distinct advantage when he's on the floor. international teams have a harder time punishing his footspeed in recovery on defense (also, he quite frankly plays harder defensively here than he does for the lakers, imo).

anyway, it's been interesting to watch lebron's game change over time. i've discussed before that i thought he'd finish his career as a karl malone type, but that's not how it went. i think the game changing was part of that--malone would have shot more stepback threes if he had been time-warped to modern times.

i know folks are going to point to the olympics and say "see...the lakers should win more". i get that, but i think the game is different (for better and worse), and international lebron is better than nba lebron now (reverse from 20 years ago). i'm hoping he and AD can get the gold again, and i'll try to appreciate it in a vacuum (even if three C Bags also get a medal, lol).

 

wait, so some of ya'all don't believe there are reptilians?



what rock do you live under?

 

I don't blame him at all for 2014, the Spurs completely outclassed them. In that Finals LeBron was 28ppg on 65% eFG% and a +4 net rating in a series in which they got completely obliterated. Wade sucked, Danny Green really bothered him. All their role guys that contributed the year before (Battier, Chalmers, Birdman, Cole) were pretty washed. The whole "unfinished business in Cleveland" thing overshadows the fact that the Heat were pretty done at that point, the Cavs were just a better basketball situation.

I've always thought that with everyone on both teams healthy and available (Kyrie and Love in 2015, Bogut and Green in 2016) the Warriors and Cavs each win one ring. I think they switch years winning. Also do not blame him whatsoever for 2017 and 2018, that 2017 Cavs team in particular was awesome but was playing against probably the GOAT team. Durant is such a little b**** lol.

 

in fairness, he just upped the ante on lebron. joining wade and bosh was a b**** move, imo. never convince me otherwise. the move to cleveland was much more of a challenge. it might have been better than miami was at the time, but nowhere near the lead pipe lock that miami was in 2010.

lebron only lived down the heatles s*** when he won rings with two other franchises, both in cases where people were--rightfully--questioning that possibility.

but i still view lebron joining up with the other two biggest FAs on the market in a year when several big market teams had space really robbed fans of more interesting basketball and was just a lame, cowardly move.

durant's was worse, but he was emboldened to do it because the fans and media forgave lebron almost immediately. i didn't.

 

For me The Decision wasn’t nearly as bad because the Heat ultimately weren’t as good as we thought they’d be. They lose in 2011. Go down 3-2 to a C Bags team on its last legs. Should have lost to a very good Spurs team in 2013. Crushed by largely the same Spurs team in 2014. They were obviously a great team, but never an all-time great IMO. I think our 2020 team was better than their 2012 and 2013 championship teams tbh. The LeBron/Wade fit was always a bit awkward and Wade’s prime ended in 2011.

 

Don't EVER, argue with me again.

 

Nullo Modo

 

Lebron going to Miami wasn't really his wanting to. He had to. Chris told Lebron, he ain't coming to Cleveland. Lebron knew no one of any prominence would ever go to Cleveland. He and Dan Gilbert were not really connected. Lebron had the choice of being the next Kevin Garnett or take the bullet and win titles. Turned out he was still the #1 in Miami and won two titles and two more league MVP's. Issue in Miami was he should have won all 4 years. Prime PRIME Lebron who is suppose to be the best ever has to win those years when you get to the finals. His game never translated to unwavering dominance. He is dominant in physical prowess, longevity and dedication but he left too many opportunities to win titles because of passive decisions and his inability to stop meddling.

 

Cleveland literally put the worst team around a potential GOAT candidate for the first 7 years of his career.
I mean his best player around Lebron was Mo Williams? post broken feet Ilguaskas? . Literally just awful.
Kareem had Oscar, Bird had a great Cletics team, Magic got Kareem, Dr. J got Moses or vice versa, Jordan got Pippen, Hakeem had Sampson, Shaq got Penny and then Kobe, Kobe got Shaq and Gasol. Durant got Harden and Brick, Curry got Klay, Draymond and Lebron got Anderson Varegjao.

In no way does it compare to the team that Durant had with OKC IMO. Lebron was a d*** for the way he left Cleveland (i.e. the Decision) but him joining the Heat wasn't something that I considered bothersome. Those Cleveland teams were awful

Also, outside of Dallas (which is one Finals which hurts his legacy) the teams he's lost to in the Finals have been great teams. That SA team was awesome and so were all those GS teams. I don't think any team Jordan beat in the Finals were great TBH - he got lucky with the league watered down with expansion and for all his b****ing about Krause that dude was a good GM (name one Lebron team that would have gotten to one shot of the conference finals without him)

 

cavs did try to surround lebron with talent in his first stint there, but there were a number of things that kept them from being able to acquire a legit #2

-no one wants to live in ohio. wade and bosh were not going to sign in cleveland

-lebron was a star right off the bat which meant lower, unattractive draft picks and inability to tank. no younger players to use as trade chips either

-established stars not wanting to play second fiddle to a kid

-there were always rumors lebron was going to ditch cleveland for a big market. why would any star go to cleveland with the chance that lebron wouldn't even be there in a year or two?


that's why aside from larry hughes, mo williams, and antawn jamison at the end there, the guys they did manage to acquire were all washed up old dudes. ben wallace, wally sczerbiak, donyell marshall, shaq, etc. FO fumbled the bag on a couple occasions too, like letting boozer walk and not wanting to part with jj hickson to acquire amare. they also drafted terribly during those years

i don't blame him for going to miami and the cavs are certainly to blame to an extent, but they also didn't just sit back and not try to acquire another star

now what KD pulled on the other hand, is as b**** move as it gets

 

i don't get how this excuses it. yes, they were worse than everyone (especially they) predicted. but if any of them were truly competitors, they wouldn't have stacked the deck. they'd have paired up somewhere, sure, but the three biggest names on the FA market went to the same place in the same year. garbage. weak.

yes, they should have after that bs. and the fans and media forgave that, too (see responses in this thread for current evidence).

432j answered some of what i was going to say to pika. lebron in cleveland is like luka in dallas--they're too good too early, and nobody wants to play in either place. dallas had to take swings at porzingis as a second star (lol) and then had to take a huge gamble on kyrie (that paid off until he disappeared at the most important time, leaving luka looking like lebron against the spurs his first finals trip).

anyway, the other thing i'll say is everyone is acting like it was cleveland or miami. no. that's false. ny, chicago, and miami all had two max slots and there were a ton of good players who were FAs:

• LeBron James
• Dwyane Wade
• Chris Bosh
• Amare Stoudemire
• Joe Johnson
• Carlos Boozer
• Dirk Nowitzki
• Paul Pierce

lebron could have joined any one of them in a major market, and nobody (including me) would have blamed him one bit. it was about joining two of them and trying to game the system. i actually don't care about the decision at all. i care about the utter lack of competitive spirit that this move normalized. no way durant pulls what he did if he didn't watch lebron get away scot free here. hell, just today i saw durant on twitter answering a critic about this by just saying that his gs rings are in the history books, so eat it. this was what lebron showed him was possible, so he did it. others will in the future, but lebron was the pioneer. it sucked and still sucks.

 

The Cleveland history is not because of anything Lebron did other then being extremely good really fast
And the Cleveland no one wants to play with is belied by teams like SAS, Indiana, and Toronto places where NBA players do not want to go building solid to title winning teams throughout the years.

That management was terrible - got tricked by Boozer, traded multiple first rounds picks to get guys like Jiri Welsch and Sasha Pavlovic so that they didn't have the assets to do sign and trades, drafted luke jackson with the lottery pick they had left. It was just bad - the exact opposite of what SA was doing with Wemby.

I don't think you can understand the Miami move without taking into account that Lebron since then simply and rightfully doesn't trust management to build a winner and he took his destiny into his own hands. He didn't want to be KG and I don't blame him for that at all. Crazy to talk about competition and that without acknowledging any of this. This is very different then Durant who left an extremely talented team and it's weird that we don't criticize teams like GS for breaking competition but we criticize Lebron for leaving a s*** situation in Cleveland and taking control of his destiny. Miami talent level was very good but it's wasn't the level of Lakers/C Bags 80's, Bulls 90s, or GS.

 

yeah, i don't think it's crazy to say that move was fully noncompetitive. i think suggesting otherwise is the break from reality.

once again, you're strawmanning that he had to stay in cleveland. he did not. he just didn't have to join two other superstars. it was and is lame. his rings with cleveland and here are much more impressive to me. i also think it's funny to whitewash the self-congratulatory 7-ring predictions by saying "well, they weren't really the showtime lakers"--they certainly thought so! that was their whole point!

what they did would be like ant, luka, and SGA colluding to form a super team now. of course, we wouldn't bat an eyelash because it's already happened twice, which is again why i'm mad about the first one that blew the lid off competitive spirit.