TERRY MOSHER
LEBRON JAMES
LeBron James was ranked by Sports Illustrated No. 5 on the magazine’s all-time top 50 NBA players. Only Michael Jordan (No. 1), Kareem Abdul Jabbar (No. 2), Wilt Chamberlain (No. 3) and Magic Johnson (No. 4) were ahead of him.
The 6-8, 250-pound James is averaging for his 13-year career 27.2 points, 6.9 assists and 7.2 rebounds and has two NBA titles, both obtained in Miami.
So why am I bothered by him? Why don’t I like him?
Those thoughts overwhelm me whenever I see James play, and he and the Cleveland Cavaliers have made it through the first round of the 2016 NBA playoffs and have a good shot at giving the 31-year-old James his third NBA ring so I currently see a lot of him.
First, there is a qualifier to my negative thoughts about him. Watching NBA players on TV is fine, except you don’t get a good picture of how truly athletic and imposing they are unless you see them up front and personal from good seats in whatever arena they are playing in.
I have to go back to 1990 when I covered for the Bremerton Sun the basketball games at the then KeyArena in Seattle. I had seats courtside and I was wowed by what these players from all over the globe could do and how big they were. The European players, many of them 6-10 to 7-2 could not only handle the ball well, but shoot it from distance, and this was way before players in the NBA got exceedingly good at hitting the three-point shot.
So TV definitely distorts the reality of just how big and athletic these players are. You have to be there to fully appreciate their abilities.
So I know from my experience at the Goodwill Games that James is more imposing in person than he seems on TV, and on TV he is imposing. But, there is still some things about him I don’t like.
I believe it was last season I noticed in several Cleveland games that James seemed to be out of place on defense. In fact I tweeted he was not a good defensive player, and got some people questioning my sanity.
What I saw was a guy who lost his player on many situations. Guys would blow right by him while he was cherry-picking and scrambling back to hopefully get a long pass for an easy and uncontested dunk. That didn’t seem superstar-like to me. If you are going to be a superstar then play hard on both ends of the court.
The second thing I saw and many others saw the same thing, especially early in his NBA career, was that he was reluctant to take charge of a game. In fact, you might recall, James used to fade when the going got sticky.
Well, superstars are supposed to take over a game. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, for examples, picked their games up an extra notch or two when their teams needed them to do so. They were not afraid to take charge. James still doesn’t. He will often pass the ball when a key shot needs to be made.
And there is something about his emotional reactions when things are going good that bothers me. He appears to be to be a front-runner. If things are going good, he’s right in the center of celebrations, yucking it up and enjoying himself.
Superstars don’t do that. They don’t have to do that. They know they are supposed to be winners; they don’t have to rub it in. They play the game at the highest levels, get the good results they expect, and walk off the court with a straight face. And if there is any celebration, it is done in the lockerroom or away from the arena.
I wish sometimes when I’m watching James that I had half his ability, because I would love to challenge him. I think he can be psyched out. I think you can get under his skin and bother him to the point he backs off his game. At the very least, I would love to test that theory to discover for sure whether he is, as I expect, weak psychologically.
The end result is that I find myself rooting against the Cavaliers in their quest to win the 2016 NBA championship. I would like for James to prove me wrong and watch him take over the games as a guy with his physical ability should.
In the meantime, I’ll stumble to my chair in the living room and drink my ice water as the NBA playoffs continue and pretend that I could do what they do.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.