LeBron James is transcendent, but it may never be enough: Arthur

LeBron James is a generational talent, of that there is no doubt. But in these NBA Finals, he’s run into Steph Curry and the Warriors, and things aren’t looking good for James and the Cavs.

Imagine, for a moment, being LeBron James. The first thing you would want to do is you run around a gym, fly in the air, contort this insane six-foot-eight, 260-pound aircraft carrier of a body. Holy, this thing. This body was made for basketball, and it would have been a crime to have broken it on a football field. Your basketball mind may be the best in the game. You can decode anything. You are so good you have gotten to choose your team in the NBA, and you can almost do anything, although free throws are a problem. Jump shots, too. You lost confidence in those, at some point. But right now, you have bigger worries.

If you are LeBron James, you are probably tired. You have played 123 playoff games in the last six years, a season-and-a-half of extra time, plus an Olympics. You have played 39 minutes per game over your 13-year career, the highest number of any active player. You have played almost as many career minutes — regular season and post-season —as Bill Russell or Michael Jordan ever did. You were on the cover of Sports Illustrated when you were 17. A shortened version of the headline, The Chosen One, is tattooed across your wide shoulders. You have two championships to show for all this, but you must be at least a little tired.

But right now you can’t be tired. After two games of the NBA Finals, everything the Golden State Warriors does is easy. Steph Curry has 29 points in two games and Klay Thomson has 26 and the games have not been close. The matchups are bad. Golden State makes Cleveland look the way Cleveland made the Raptors look. The last 12 times these teams have played Cleveland has won three, and has been outscored by an average of 11.5 points per game. Golden State won a record 73 games in the West, and is building a case as the best basketball team of all-time.

From the post-game transcript after Game 2:

Q: Draymond, do you think this defensive performance puts you guys or solidifies you guys as one of the best teams of all time?

Draymond Green: No, we’ve got two more wins before you can even consider saying that. I don’t really look at, ‘Are you the best team of all time, are we the best team of all time?’ Because I think it’s all subjective. To say we’re better than the Showtime Lakers, how can you say that? We never played them.

Klay Thompson: We are better than the Showtime Lakers.

Draymond Green: Like saying we’re better than the Bulls, it’s like we’ll never play them. It’s two completely different eras. So I don’t really get off on the, ‘Are you the best team of all time?’ I’m trying to win rings, and that’s (the) only goal. Everybody else can decide what they want to decide on who is the best team of all-time, who is not.

Thompson’s dad Mychal played for the Showtime Lakers, but circle to Green’s second answer. There’s no way to determine whether Michael Jordan was truly better than LeBron James. Or Oscar Robertson. Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. We can compare numbers, memories, eras, context, and titles. LeBron James And His Legacy is a game we play every year, sometimes every game. It is exhausting and fun and a little ridiculous. Before the series began Jerry West, who went 1-8 in the Finals and who works for Golden State, told reporters, “He’s carried teams on his shoulders. He’s been to the Finals six straight times. How many times has he been the favourite? None. Zero. Grossly unfair to him.

“I don’t want to sound like Donald Trump, but it’s hard for me to believe someone doesn’t recognize his greatness. This guy does everything, and he’s competitive as hell. Frankly, I wish people would leave him alone.”

And LeBron said, “I don’t really get involved into the whole pressure thing. I think I’ve exceeded expectations in my life as a professional. I’m a statistic that was supposed to go the other way, growing up in the inner city, having a single-parent household. It was just me and my mother. So everything I’ve done has been a success. So as far as the game of basketball, I just go out and play it and have fun and love it, and be true to the game and to my teammates and live with the results. So I don’t — doesn’t really get to me too much.”

But there are people in Cleveland and Miami who both say you wanted to win before you went to South Beach, and were obsessed by it afterwards. And barring one hell of a switch, you are headed for 2-5 in the Finals, and some people forget that the first time your wingmen were Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden. Some people will laugh and ignore that this year there are four guys in Cleveland’s starting lineup a good offence can exploit.

You chose this team, though. That’s the trap. You are LeBron James, and you are running up against a power bigger than yourself, and you have to wonder if you will ever win a title again. You can play better. You have played better. You are the defining player of your generation. It may never be enough.