LeBron James – A Legacy Of Lies

Since the Cavs dramatically came back from a 3-1 series deficit to beat the Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals, LeBron’s legacy has been a hot topic. The LeBron James versus Michael Jordan debate raged during the 2017 NBA Finals, and even after the Cavs lost in five games, there are those who still think there’s a case for LeBron to be the G.O.A.T.

I am here to tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt, these people are lying to you, lying to me, and in some cases lying to themselves. They might try to fool you with a few cherry picked stats, like Colin Cowherd did the morning after the Warriors series clinching victory in Game 5. Colin says that averaging a triple-double in the Finals, and filling the box score with more rebounds and assists, somehow makes LeBron better than Jordan.

He goes on to say: “Congrats on the 6-0 argument, because every other metric favors LeBron“. Now that statement right there is completely laughable. Perhaps Colin was a poor student in school, because he doesn’t seem to know about something called scientific control (eliminating variables from experiments). So when Colin talks about stats in today’s NBA, he fails to realize that these stats are useless if the conditions in today’s NBA are different than they were in the past.

The last time Jordan played in the Finals, his Bulls scored an average of 87.8 points in a 4-2 series win over the Jazz. He averaged 32.3 points per game in the series. LeBron’s Cavs scored an average of 114.8 points in this year’s Finals, that’s almost 25 percent more scoring overall. That means more points, more shots, more rebounds and assists to go around. Times have changed, the rules have changed. Scoring is up, and any comparison of today’s stats to the 80s and 90s is like comparing apples and oranges.

That being said, I still believe that if you take the time to analyze all the stats, Jordan still comes out on top. He’s a six time Finals MVP, 10 time scoring champion, and he averaged a record 33.4 points per game in the playoffs.

Let’s forget about the stats for second though, and let’s ask ourselves why so many people are trying so desperately to make a case for LeBron. The answer is simple, it’s human nature. People want to believe that they are witnessing greatness (and they really are). LeBron won’t go down as the best ever, but he’ll be near the top. Perhaps the most intelligent thing Charles Barkley said during these NBA Finals: “If LeBron beats the Warriors, I might put him level with Kobe“.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the media try to sell an athlete as the greatest of all time. When I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s, the sports world was almost evenly split on the debate over the best hockey player of all time. Wayne Gretzky was coming to the end of his career, and Mario Lemieux was making a strong push as the new face of the game. Now 25 years later, you’ll struggle to find anyone who doesn’t believe Gretzky is the G.O.A.T.

We see it almost every year in Major League Baseball, when a young player jumps out to a hot start. In 2013 it was Yasiel Puig, who just two years later was back in the minors. Last year it was Trevor Story, who broke the rookie home run record in the National League. So far this year he’s barely batting over the Mendoza Line, and has just eight home runs in 52 games.