Storyline: Testimony to Lebron’s leadership abilities: he can bring players to play at a level that’s above their heads. Only the best leaders do that.
What Lebron is doing for the Cleveland Cavaliers is something that we’ve never seen before. We’re witnessing a man ‘willing a team’ throughout the playoffs with a shot to win it all.
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Averaging nearly a triple-double a night.
Playing without the team’s best supporting players.
Even when Lebron had Irving and Love at his side, Irving was nowhere near 100%. Love was lost extremely early. So even if we have this debate 10 years from now–and Lebron James is able to win this series–you’ll be hard pressed to find a more impressive individual performance.
Lebron will always be compared to Michael or Kobe. That’s just the nature of the game. He’ll never be seen as great as Michael. Michael never lost a series that was about winning the crown. But one thing that we didn’t witness was Michael having to win a championship without the likes of Pippen, Kerr, and the other supporting cast members he had to work with.
This is a Cleveland Cavaliers team that was 15 games below .500 last year … with the same team. And that team had a healthy Kyrie Irving.
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Is this a testament to how one man can mean so much to a team — in a sport that’s dominated by individuals? Or is this a performance for the ages?
Basketball will always be a sport that enables one man rise a team out of the ashes. But we’ve seen nothing like this. I’ve never witnessed quite what we’re watching here. In my opinion James should win MVP even if the Cavs don’t win the series.
This couldn’t happen in other sports. In hockey, goaltenders can carry you, but you still need somebody to put the puck in the net. In football, quarterbacks still need players around him to make plays. In baseball, starting pitchers can only pitch once every four or five days. Basketball is the lone sport where a player can take a team on his back and lead it a ring.
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Here’s testimony to Lebron’s leadership abilities: he can bring players to play at a level that’s above their heads. Only the best leaders do that. Matthew Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson are prime examples; they’re playing over their head–playing defense with fire and making big shots at clutch times. Because of what Thompson has been able to do in these playoffs a future team is going to be overpaying for his services.
There’s no question that Lebron’s performance has galvanized his reputation for greatness–even if he doesn’t win the series against Golden State. But if he somehow pulls off the miracle by winning a championship–when the team’s next best player is JR Smith–I’ll put an asterisk beside these finals.
You can really see the difference in Lebron now, from the time when he was with Cleveland, previously. He isn’t making excuses, even though he could use multiple. He has had his eyes set on the prize–finally bringing a championship to a city that has been in a drought for decades.
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I was cheering for Golden State at the start of this series. But now I feel enamored with the idea of seeing something magical. Being able to talk about Lebron’s out-of-this-world performance is mouth-watering to me.
Even if you don’t like Lebron–and don’t like whispering his name in the same breath as “Michael’s”–you at least have to give him a round of applause for what he has been able to do with this team.
It will be the single best performance in the history of the game.
