Diss Guy: LeBron James
On this blog, and especially when selecting the Diss Guy and Miss Guy of the week, we usually run counter to common basketball narratives. When the rest of the blogosphere zigs, we tend to zag. We have no sources, don’t break any stories, and abhor writing game recaps.
But this blog is about basketball, and when something so great is happening on the court, we can only ignore it for so long. In the Miami Heat’s comfortable victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder last night, LeBron James went 14–24, including 4–8 from deep and 7–9 from the free throw line for 39 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and dished out 7 assists. And that was probably only his third or fourth best game of the last ten days. His heat checks, like all of those shots in the video above, aren’t even really heat checks anymore, they’re just shots.
LeBron is so goddamn good at basketball that it is unfair. The list of best players in the league looks like this:
1. LeBron James
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2. Kevin Durant
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3–450. Everybody else
Miss Guy: Michael Jordan
In an interview with NBA TV, the legendary Michael Jordan said that he thinks Kobe Bryant has been a better player than LeBron James, essentially employing a “COUNT THA RINGZZZZ” argument. Ignore for a moment the fact that Kobe has played seven more seasons than LeBron James, or that Michael Jordan himself didn’t win his first title until he was 27. Ignore for a moment that, by any statistical measure other than points scored (especially ignoring that since LeBron entered the league he has taken 507 fewer shots than Kobe yet scored 135 more points) LeBron James is a far superior player to Kobe Bryant and redefined positionality. Especially fight back the urge to make a joke about how this is just another example of Michael “Worst Owner in the League” Jordan’s inability to evaluate talent. The real question is…what the hell is Michael Jordan doing?
Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time. By the end of his career maybe LeBron James will surpass him, maybe he won’t. Who knows? But what is Jordan doing lowering himself into a stupid, petty, dumb argument? Why is a guy that reached the pinnacle of his profession, stayed there for years and is still almost-unanimously considered the best ever so unbelievably insecure about his legacy that he offers an opinion on something this inane?
Just stay out.
Great article. It is sad to see how unnecessarily fragile Jordan’s ego is. He’s never really faced a legitimate threat to his reign as The Game’s Greatest until LeBron, and based on what we’ve seen the last 1.5 seasons, it seems likely LeBron will surpass him. Jordan so desperately does not want that to happen, and it just seems weird. Jordan is willing to give Kobe props because Kobe will never be considered better than Jordan. Jordan knows this. Thus, according to his logic, if Kobe is better than LeBron, then Jordan > LeBron. (Transitive property FTW!)
It’s so odd. Jordan is so concerned about his legacy as the Game’s Greatest, yet he’s willing to tarnish it by wading into these absurd comparisons. (And running a franchise into the ground, but that’s another discussion.) He needs to follow the playbook of other retired greats: accept that the game is bigger than any one player, including you, sit back and enjoy what these young guys are doing.
I don’t know why I want to get sucked into this Jordan business. I thinki it’s the 12-year-old in me who still believes MJ is flawless and feels the need to defend him. But childish biases aside, I watched MJ’s conversation with Ahmad last night and just didn’t pick up on a man who was threatened or coming off as defensive. The tone, the comments, his demeanor … it was completely different from the defiantly defensive posture he took during his HOF speech.
Is MJ unnecessarily petty? More than likely. But is he threatened by Lebron, I don’t see it … at least not yet.
I will admit to not watching the actual conversation (that whole not having NBA TV thing) and only reading the various quotes from it.
That being said, I don’t really know why he dips into this argument, and really I don’t care. Whether or not he comes off as defensive, he understands that he is considered the best player in the history of basketball, and any sort of conversation about who the best player currently is/the importance of rings vs individual attributes or anything of the like is commentary on his own standing. Openly caring about your legacy as THE BEST that much isn’t a good look (nor are those huge ripped jeans BOOM ROASTED).