Can you see though why I find LeBron's leadership untrustworthy? A finals team shouldn't just melt like this, even with the Spurs pressure. It's not about being perfect, if you look back at other top ten players, you'll find flaws. But, we've seen LeBron do this four times in a row now. From a leadership/intensity standpoint, he hasn't been there more than he has been. I don't understand how I'm supposed to look at this guy as some kind of mythically great player.
Maybe I'm overrating the guy, but as a fellow basketball fan, I feel like you're doing yourself a disservice by not appreciating LeBron more. The dude's a gem and I consider myself lucky to be able to watch him play. Some other musings on the matter:
- LeBron's leadership style is certainly very different from guys like Bird, Jordan, Kobe, etc. I think it's fair to criticize him for having such a blatant on/off switch, and there's no doubt his inconsistent effort was contagious as times, especially during the regular season.
That being said, while LeBron's leadership may be weak in some areas, it's very strong in others. His teammates love playing with him and all of them have praised his unselfishness at some point or another. While Jordan and Kobe might have made their teammates better implicitly through fear, LeBron makes his teammates better explicitly with his passing, something Jordan and Kobe never consistently did.
The bottom line is that there's not only one way to lead. Guys like Magic, Duncan, Hakeem, and Shaq are prime examples of all-timers who were not bullies but rather very well-liked by their teammates and were more likely to encourage than they were to scold.
- To say that "so much of LeBron's reputation is hype" is a tough thing to support. For starters, he averages 27/7/7 for his career. In the playoffs, he averages 28/8/6. Those are insane numbers. In 2009, he averaged 35/9/7 for the postseason including 38/8/8 against the Magic. In 2012, he had one of the great championship runs ever: 30/10/5 while defending four positions and carrying a team whose second best player was hobbled the whole time and whose third best player missed significant time due to injury. In 2013, he had the greatest regular season ever by a small forward (27/8/7 on 57% shooting) and followed it up with an impressive 26/8/7 title run. He's had a lot of stinkers along the way, sure, but he also has the second highest postseason game-winning shot percentage in NBA history, the highest scoring average in elimination games, and I believe he's way up there in Game 7 scoring as well.
- Also hard to argue that the MVP Award is not important. It's an honor awarded to (usually) the most impressive player, based off a sample of hundreds and hundreds of games. It's incredibly difficult to win and represents an absurdly high level of performance.
- A problem I see with a lot of contemporary basketball analysis is that it overrates almost every all-timer pre-2000. Most fans and writers act like Kareem and Russell never had a bad game. The reality is that there is a long history of great players underperforming.
Take Bird in his first Finals, for example. He averaged 15 rebounds and 7 assists per game, but only 15 points and on a very weak 42% shooting. Not as bad as LeBron in 2011 but close. LeBron was 18/7/7 on 48% shooting that year I believe.
Take Magic in 1984. He had a great statistical series but played so badly late in two of the games that he was dubbed "Tragic Magic".
Take Kobe in 2004. Bar none the worst Finals performance ever by a superstar. 23/4/3 on 38% shooting.
Heck, even Jordan had bad games. He had a stretch in the 1997 playoffs I think where he shot 33% over four or five games. In the 1996 Finals he had a very average series: 27/5/4 on 41% shooting.
Look, I'm not trying to say that LeBron's bad games mean nothing. I'm also not trying to convince myself that he's the most reliable player ever. I'm just trying to say that he's not the first great player to underperform here and there. To put it a little more strongly, if you don't think what he's done the past five or six years is impressive, then maybe you need to learn a little more about NBA history, because he's pretty darn special. I hate saying that because it makes me sound like a pompous prick (you can handle it though - you know I like you), but based on what I know of the league, very few players have ever been as good as LeBron James. I guarantee you that when it's all said and done and LeBron is basically a consensus top five player ever that you're going to regret not appreciating him more.