The Book of Basketball (84 page)

20. LEBRON JAMES

Resume: 6 years, 6 quality, 5 All-Stars … ’09 MVP … ’04 Rookie of the Year … Top 5 (’06, ’08, ’09), Top 10 (’05, ’07) … All-Defense (2x) … 4-year peak: 29–7–7, 48% FG … ’09 Playoffs: 35–9–7, 51% FG (146) … best player on runner-up (’07 Cavs) … youngest player to reach 10,000 points (age 23)

A dopey ranking for obvious reasons: he’s twenty-three and headed for the top eight (possibly higher) in the
The Second Book of Basketball
, which should be released somewhere between 2016 and 2018 after my wife leaves me and I need a quick influx of cash.
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He might be our reigning Finals MVP when I’m signing this book for you in the winter of 2009—or when you’re smiling thinly because somebody just gave it to you as a Christmas present and you’re deciding how fast you could rewrap it for
someone else, either way—which would propel him into the top fifteen obviously. So we’re doing a little projecting. Barring a Penny-like swoon or a Vick-like fall from grace, LeBron will become one of the twenty best players who ever lived. We can say that safely. Here are a few LeBron-related pieces from my columns (edited for space), and if they don’t give you a relevant feel for his evolution over the past six years, then I should quit writing and dig ditches for a living.

January 2004.
When LeBron hits his prime and finally gets surrounded by quality shooters and big guys who run the floor, he’ll toss up a triple-double for an entire season. Comfortably. We’re talking 33/12/13 every night. LeBron sees everything in slow motion; he’s always thinking two moves ahead, like he’s playing chess.
If I dribble here, this guy moves there, that guy moves here and then this should happen.
Not since Magic or Bird has someone connected with teammates like this. He controls his body in traffic like MJ, explodes to the rim like Dr. J, manages a game like Isiah. From what I’ve seen, there’s nothing he can’t do except convince skeptics he’s worth the hype. With the nonstop Jordan comparisons—which are wrong, since he plays like a more athletic Magic—some expected LeBron to dunk on everyone and score 40 a game and were sorely disappointed to see a cocky kid with a crooked jumper on the wrong night. But doesn’t that say something about us? With everyone in such a rush these days, we never give anything a chance. Why spend time forming an opinion when we can make a hurried evaluation and move on to something else? For many, sampling LeBron was like trying out the new Chicken McNuggets: “Yeah, I saw him once, he wasn’t that good.” If that’s you, you’re missing out. Watching LeBron blossom—a once-in-a-generation player learning on the job—has been one of the most rewarding fan experiences I can remember. It’s like my dad once said about Bobby Orr: “You stayed home every night to see what he’d do next.”
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I get to say that about LeBron’s rookie season someday. And it won’t even be hype.

January 2005.
Somehow LeBron is headed for 55 wins on a team with an overmatched coach, two decent starters, three role players and a bunch of stiffs. He’s reached “There’s nothing on right now, maybe I’ll flick on the package and see if LeBron is playing” status, which hasn’t happened since MJ started playing in Chicago (and we didn’t even have the package back then). He’s going to
average
a triple double within the next five years. And he just turned twenty. Two questions remain: Over the past three months, have you seen anything to make you think that we’re
not
watching someone in the early stages of becoming the greatest basketball player ever? (Um … no.) And did you ever think we would see a player who combined the best qualities of a Young Jordan and a Young Magic? (Me neither.)
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July 2005.
LeBron’s situation in Cleveland reminds me of Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy and Chevy Chase at their peaks on
SNL.
Yeah, they were the undisputed stars and had some great moments. But at some point, they outgrew the show and it became inevitable that they’d start making big-money movies. In LeBron’s case, he’s the best young player in NBA history—both statistically and aesthetically—as well as someone destined to become the biggest superstar in any professional sport (maybe ever). He’s going to accomplish things we didn’t think were possible anymore—averaging a triple double for a season,
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leading the league in scoring and assists, stuff like that. Eventually, he’s going to start “making big-money movies” (translation: join the Knicks or Lakers), if only because it’s in the best financial interest of everyone involved (and I mean,
everyone).
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April 2006.
Twenty-five months. That’s how long it took before a Cleveland coach (and LeBron has had three) realized, “Instead of sticking LeBron in the corner or the wing and having entire possessions where he never touches the ball, maybe we should run the offense through him!” Really, you want to stick him at the top of the key and run the offense through your best playmaker, as well as someone who’s completely unstoppable whenever he decides to drive to the basket? You think that might work?
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Now he’s putting up 33–8–7’s and figuring out how to take over games. (Note: At least once a game, LeBron does something so explosive, so athletic, so incredible, you can’t even believe it happened. The last time I remember feeling this way about a professional athlete was Bo Jackson, who wasn’t just great
… he stood out.
I once attended a spring training game when Bo scored standing up from third base on a 180-foot pop fly. LeBron reminds me of Bo on those plays when he says, “Screw it, I’m scoring” and barrels toward the basket like a runaway freight train. He’s like a young Barkley crossed with a young Shawn Kemp crossed with young Magic, but with a little Bo thrown in. Of anyone in the league, he’s the only player who can cripple the other team with one monster play.)

As LeBron took over the last few minutes in Jersey, he made one of the more startling plays I can remember, pulling the “runaway freight train” routine in transition and careening toward the basket as one Net hacked him, then another Net fouled him from the other side, then a third guy fouled him just to make sure he wouldn’t score. LeBron was cradling the ball, taking supersize steps toward the basket and absorbing those karate chops.
Boom-Boom-Boom.
Any normal human being would have lost the ball or gone tumbling to the ground. Not LeBron. He kept plowing forward like a tight end bouncing off defensive backs. As the last guy walloped him, LeBron jumped (where did he get the strength?), regained control of the basketball, hung in the air, hung in the air for another split second, gathered the ball (at this point, he was drifting under the right side of the rim) and spun a righty layup that banked in. The shot was so freaking incredible, the referee practically
hopped in delight as he called the continuation foul. Say goodbye to the Nets—they were done. He ripped their hearts out, MJ-style. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. And he’s only twenty-one.
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February 2007.
LeBron coasted through Saturday’s Skills Challenge and played Sunday’s All-Star Game with the intensity of a female porn star trying to break one of those “most male partners in one afternoon” records. Could we end up putting him in the “Too Much, Too Soon” Pantheon some day, along with Eddie Murphy, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and every other celeb who became famous too quickly and eventually burned out? Here’s what I know. I had four conversations with connected NBA people centering around the same themes: LeBron isn’t playing nearly as hard as last season; it seems like his only goal right now is to get his coach fired; he’s regressing as a player (especially his passing skills and shot selection); he made a huge mistake firing his agent and turning his career over to his overwhelmed buddies back home; he was a much bigger problem during the Olympics than anyone realized; he doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself anymore; he has an overrated sense of his own impact in the sports world (as witnessed by ESPN’s interview last week when he answered the “What are your goals?” question with two words: “Global icon”); he’s been protected by magazine fluff pieces and buddy-buddy TV interviews for far too long; he lacks the relentless drive to keep dominating everyone that set Wade and Kobe apart; and, we’re much closer to LeBron reenacting the career arc of Martina Hingis, Eric Lindros and Junior Griffey than anyone realizes. This will evolve into
the
dominant NBA story of the next two months. You watch.
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June 2007.
This wasn’t just about the improbable barrage of points (29 of Cleveland’s 30) down the stretch, those two monster dunks at the end of regulation, the way he persevered despite crummy coaching and a mediocre supporting cast, how he just kept coming and coming, even how he made that game-winning layup look so damned easy.
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Physically, LeBron
overpowered
the Pistons. Like watching a light heavyweight battling a middleweight for eight rounds and suddenly realizing, “Wait, I have 15 pounds on this guy,” then whipping the poor guy into a corner and destroying him with body punches. The enduring moment? LeBron flying down the middle for a Doc retro dunk and Tayshaun Prince ducking for cover like someone reacting to a flyby from a fighter jet. The Pistons wanted no part of him. They were completely conquered. They didn’t knock him down, jump in front of him for a charge … hell, they were so shell-shocked by what was happening, they didn’t even realize they should be throwing two guys at him.
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Down the stretch, LeBron turned into a cross between Bo and MJ, seized the moment, made it his own, took everyone to a higher place. As a reader named Billy emailed me afterward, “Watching LeBron finally enabled me to understand the Pele speech that the cook gave to Louden Swain in
Vision Quest.
When the game was over, I wanted to wrestle Chute.”
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Me too. Like so many other sports junkies, I watch thousands and thousands of hours of games every year hoping something special will happen, whether it’s a 60-point game, a no-hitter, a seven-run comeback, a back-and-forth NFL game, a boxing pay-per-view, or whatever else. Occasionally, it pays off. Maybe there are degrees of the word, but still, every time we’re clicking on a television or heading to a ball-game, deep down we’re hoping something special happens.

Well, Thursday night was ultraspecial. Watching King James finally
earn his nickname made me feel like my basketball life was being irrevocably altered.
Hold on to your seats, everybody … it’s happening! LeBron James is making the leap!
If you care about basketball, you’ll remember where you watched this game twenty years from now.
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If you care about basketball, it meant something when Marv Albert blessed the night by calling it “one of the greatest performances in NBA playoff history.” If you care about basketball, you enjoyed TNT’s postgame show, when a giddy Barkley was so hyped up that he couldn’t remain still in his seat. If you care about basketball, this game immediately joined the Bird-’Nique Duel, The Flu Game, the Willis Game and every other classic that can be rehashed in three or four words. We’ll call this LeBron’s 48-pointer someday. ’Nuff said.
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I had a reader compare it to a player catching fire in the old NBA Jam arcade game, when every jump shot turned the basketball into a ball of flames. I had a Pistons fan named Duane email me, “Watching LeBron’s performance in Game 5 made me feel like Ron Burgundy. LBJ pooped in my refrigerator, ate the whole wheel of cheese and I’m not even mad. That was amazing.” I had a reader compare LeBron’s performance to the “No Effing Way Game” in Madden, when the computer makes the executive decision, “Look, you’re not winning this game.” I had a reader named Justin Jacobs email me, “After LeBron single-handedly beat the Pistons tonight, I looked at my ten-year-old brother and told him, ‘You just bore witness to one of the greatest performances in NBA history.’ You know you’re seeing a great moment in sports when you’re happy that your little brother was there to see it.”

Look, I don’t know where we’re headed with the LeBron era—how high he’ll go, what he has in store down the road, even whether Game 5 will end up being an aberration along the lines of Vince Carter’s 50-point game in the 2001 Philly series. But for the first time, I feel confident that we’re headed for the right place.

February 2008.
A friend from NBA Entertainment and I were discussing LeBron’s career and trying to figure out where it might be headed.
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This is one of my favorite basketball friends, someone who has spent the past twenty-plus years working for the Association and legitimately cares about it. I joke about how I’m one of the last nineteen NBA fans; the number is obviously higher, but it’s still a small number who care not only about the league right now but also about what the league used to be and how everything ties together over the years. We are fanatics. Kool-Aid drinkers. Quite simply, the league means a little too much to us. It’s a relatively small group that takes a noticeable hit every time we lose someone like Ralph Wiley, who would have absolutely adored this particular season, but that’s a whole ’nother story. Anyway, I asked my friend what he thought the ceiling for LeBron’s career could be. Again, this is someone who was overqualified to answer that question, as well as someone who loves the NBA too much to exaggerate his answer. I knew I would get an honest take from him. Here was his answer: “Doesn’t have one.”