Every once in a while I have to write about something that is entirely unrelated to health care. If you read the piece on Mother's Day, or Star Wars, or Osama bin Laden, you know this. Today the subject is LeBron James. King James? Not so much.
I have been a basketball fan for four decades, which is plenty of time to form quite a large number of opinions. I have watched too many games to count - not literally, perhaps, but no one was counting - on both the collegiate and professional levels. I have seen some great players. I even got to talk to one live on the radio once. Do you know what a triple double is? It means a player gets at least ten (double digits) points, assists, and rebounds in a game. There are two other categories (steals and blocked shots), but it is much more difficult to reach double digits in those in a game. If you are a true fan of the game, you already know the player to whom I am referring. Oscar Robertson holds the all-time NBA record for triple doubles (181 in his career). He is the only player to average a triple double for a full season. He also averaged a triple double over his first five seasons in the NBA taken together. He was once a guest on a call-in radio show, and I got to talk to him about why the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh refused to carry "The NBA on CBS" on Sunday afternoons, instead showing old movies.
In the 80s and 90s I had the pleasure of watching the magnificence that was the NBA career of Michael Jordan. I freely admit I didn't see Jordan coming. When he played for North Carolina, sports commentator Dick Vitale said Jordan was the greatest player ever to come out of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and I thought Vitale was spouting the sort of hyperbole in which he could occasionally indulge. But he was right, and I was obtuse.
In the 90s I watched Jordan lead the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships. (I think it would have been eight if not for his ill-advised detour into baseball.) Of course he didn't do it alone, and his "supporting cast" included players who were superb in their own right, most notably Scottie Pippen. But Jordan proved time and again that he knew how to win the big games. If you have any doubts, look up the "Flu Game," the astonishing nature of which I will not recount here. Even better, the next time you're feeling just a bit under the weather and thinking about calling off work, read about the "Flu Game" and ask yourself if perhaps you're just being a wooss.
But aside from all the remarkable numbers - scoring titles, times being named defensive player of the year, NBA championships - Jordan had something no one else ever had, and perhaps no one else ever will. There were so many times I watched him do something on the court and thought, "I have learned physics, and I'm fairly certain what I just saw him do is not actually possible."
So what about LeBron? No NBA titles yet. A talented player, to be sure. Fun to watch. Makes big plays on offense and defense. But he definitely lacks the consistency Jordan showed.
And he lacks something else, as demonstrated by the way he left Cleveland and the way he has talked about other players and about fans this season. If I had to pick a single word, it might be "class." There are nuances and subtleties that word may not capture. But LeBron doesn't have it, and Michael did. Maybe it's not all LeBron's fault. I'm a big believer in character development. LeBron went to the NBA from high school. Jordan went to UNC, where he was coached by Dean Smith. Anyone who could spend three years being coached by Dean Smith and not leave UNC a gentleman might qualify as a hard-core sociopath.
Even after his lackluster performance in this year's NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, and especially the way he didn't "show up" in the fourth quarter, there are some who will continue to think LeBron James will ultimately prove to be the best player ever to step onto the hardwood. But I (and, I suspect, Dick Vitale) will always say that title will forever belong to Michael Jordan.
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