Confessions of a girl with too many options.

Also, read this. It’s not by me but it’s one of my favorite articles of 2012 by Stephen Roper. http://thepettypulpit.tumblr.com/post/23697711419/the-tragic-case-of-lebron-james-a-theory-about

By: Stephen Roper

I’ve never met Lebron James in person, but my ‘introduction’ to him during my junior year of high-school played a somewhat pivotal role in the trajectory my life would eventually unfurl. … … I’ll explain.

It’s not something I dwell on all that often since it’s depressing on a variety of levels to think about, but Lebron James and I are the same age (27 years old). I know this because it was during my junior year of high school—when he himself was a junior in high school—that we became acquainted. I learned about him at a time when basketball consumed my life in a much different way than it does now, when I was not fan or enthusiast, but player of the game for my high-school. I’d wormed my way into the starting line-up by that time and had my sights set on becoming a college player, even allowing in times of extreme reverie the hope of attaining an athletic scholarship. Lofty? Sure—maybe even delusional—but in my head I was a junior starting on a formidable team, which meant I had another whole year to really assert myself, get coaches’ attention, and by that time I could sprout up a few more feet/inches and, as I honestly imagined it, go to Furman or Davidson or a D2 school like Wingate and sit the bench and be happy doing so.

Then I heard about the ‘phenom’ from Akron, the next MJ, the future of the NBA, the one-and-only Lebron James and, having never seen him, scoffed. Balked even. See, I knew, or felt I knew, that assessing skill and ‘potential’ was more or less an ‘eye-test’ when it came to recruiting. This belief stemmed from years of playground ball where the biggest and fastest and most physically imposing weren’t always the ‘ballers’ their appearance suggested. Sure, they could dunk or hit five shots in a row with no one around, but when it came time to play and people were moving at full-speed there was no hiding behind the nice shoes or headbands or tattoos or Iversonian-sleeves or whatever: either you could play or you couldn’t. In fact, I’d gone to great lengths to subvert this playground caste system by wearing New Balances and high socks and basically look like a Big Bang Theory reject hoping to shoot some hoops. And it worked! If I was even picked to play—in and of itself no small feat—I was inevitably guarded by the weakest link on the opposing team, yet slowly but surely defensive assignments would change until I was up against the alpha dog’s best impression of Bruce Bowen, i.e. I was ‘locked up’ by the other team’s top player. Anyways, as word spread of a guy my age getting national attention for playing the sport I loved, I felt like he was another guy that looked good in basketball attire and could handle the ball and shoot threes and, of course, dunk.    

But then I saw him, this 17 year-old ‘kid’ named Lebron. I can’t quite remember the footage of him I first viewed, but I can vividly recall what it was I felt:

1)      Awe: I’d seen kids that were 12-13 years old with full beards (thanks, Asheville Middle School), I’d seen kids 14-15 years old dunk (here’s looking at you, UNC Summer Camp), and I’d seen what top recruits to decent D1 schools looked like (shout out to Furman recruitment camp!). Lebron, at age 17, looked… Well, he just looked like he was already a superstar in the NBA, moreso than any college player I’d watched on TV or anyone I’d ever played against or, really, just anyone. But more than awe, I felt…

2)      Dejection: Looking at a fellow 17 year old do what Lebron did on those Youtube clips felt like what I imagine a student filmmaker entering their first festival and seeing someone their same age—with the same budget and same tools—enter The Godfather must feel; it was humblingand put things in perspective, revealing how much of a pipe dream my wildest ambitions really were. That was what a basketball player looked like. That was what college coaches and NBA coaches and people in general were looking for when they looked for a basketball player. That was why I’d never get a scholarship.

Now that’s not to say I gave up basketball or my hopes of playing in college immediately after seeing Lebron for the first time, but they were tempered considerably to the point of me wiling away free time not with jump-shots but writing and reading. The point is, upon seeing him my life was different. It’s kind of weird to type that, but it’s true, and while he has enjoyed far more fame and financial success than me I can’t help but feel like he did me a service and, at the same time, feel sorry for the guy.  

Why the pity? Because the thing that altered the trajectory of my life is the same reason why Lebron, now, is still overly critiqued and ridiculed: his athleticism. To be more specific, Lebron James—while widely considered the best player in the NBA (his recent MVP award validates that)—is still maligned for one thing: his inability to ‘close’ games. For many, Lebron’s greatest weakness is his proclivity for shrinking away from the ‘big moments,’ his sudden absence at the end of the game when his team needs him most. While he’s had some great finishes—the game-winning three against Orlando during Game 2 of the 2009 conference finals and his basketball display against Detroit where he scored 29 of his team’s 30 final points in the 2007 conference finals come to mind—many still contend that for Lebron to truly cement his legacy as one of the best NBA players ever he needs more than MVP awards and All-Star nods, he needs…well, obviously he needs a ring, but he also needs to become a ‘clutch’ player and develop that ‘killer instinct.’ From what I read/hear, the one thing naysayers continually harp on (no championships notwithstanding) is how he seems to physically change when games get close; biting his fingernails during timeouts, hiding in the corner away from the action on the final play, and deferring to ‘lesser’ teammates instead of taking the final shot himself have all been used as indicators for highlighting and supporting Lebron’s one apparent weakness.  

And what does Lebron’s athleticism have to do with this inability to close games? Think for a second about the top ‘finishers’ in basketball, the guys that you’d want to have the ball in their hands with your team down one and ten seconds left in the game. My list* (in no particular order) goes something like this:

1)      Michael Jordan

2)      Kobe Bryant

3)      Robert Horry

4)      Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

5)      Carmelo Anthony

6)      Larry Bird

7)      Chauncey Billups

8)      Ray Allen/Paul Pierce

9)      Allen Iverson

10)   Tim Duncan

Honorable Mention: Kevin Durant, Isiah Thomas, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Reggie Miller… I’m obviously out of my league here.

*I know there are a lot of others out there, but I don’t know enough about basketball in the 70’s and 80’s to pick anyone other than Mr. Sky Hook himself, Kareem, and the great white hope that was Larry Bird. … I’m not f’ing Bill Simmons.**

**Though I feel like a guy named ‘Big Games James’ i.e. James Worthy should be on there…somewhere.

Lebron doesn’t make this list—yet—not because he’s incapable of closing out games (again: Orlando and Detroit show that’s not the case) but because of his athleticism. Look at that list. Notice anything about the players on it (aside from the people you feel are inexcusably missing)? Other than Bird, Anthony, and Pierce all of these players played, at most, two different positions. Jordan and Bryant were always shooting guards even if they were down on the post, and Duncan was always a power forward even when he played center. Bird, Anthony, and Pierce played 3-4 positions (the role of point forward makes it tricky) but they still, for all intents and purposes, were small forwards that needed the offense to run through them, i.e. they still played their small-forward position albeit with a little more ball handling and distributing.

OK Stephen, great, but what does that have to do with Lebron’s ‘life-changing’ athleticism?Well Lebron, at any given moment, goes from point guard to center to small forward to power forward and—when Wade isn’t on the floor—shooting guard. At 6’8 and 250’ish lbs. with the speed of a wide receiver he’s blessed with an ability to be everything at any time and this is what hurts him at crunch time. Jordan and Kobe, with five seconds left, had only to get by a man for a quick pull-up, or back their guy down for a fade-away, or heave a desperate three from the top of the key because those were the tools they’d honed from playing their position the whole game/their entire life. Kareem needed only an inch to release his sky-hook because, again, that’s what he’d been doing the whole game. Duncan? Bank-shots and post-moves. Nowitzki? Tear-drop fade-aways. Billups and Ray Allen and A.I. found their groove either behind the arc or with pull-ups (or drawing fouls) in the lane and knew that’d be their go-to move in crunch time because they did it all game. And then there’s Robert Horry, who never met a corner three he didn’t like. My point is this: every one of these players, no matter their position, had specific roles and specific sets of skills they could tap into with ten seconds left since, again, they’d been using those skills all game. With that consistent use came honing and refining so that at the end of the game, when defense is cranked up to 11 and the slightest miscalculation means losing, an on-the-fly recalibration was not only possible but par for the course and the result wasn’t a clank off the rim but a swish or bank shot or whatever. Lebron,because of his athleticism, doesn’t have that luxury.

There’s an early episode of The Office when Michael Scott compares basketball to jazz and, really, it’s spot-on. No game, in my mind, is more fluid or open to improvisation. If we were to go with this jazz analogy real quick, I personally would be a one-note player (read: cowbell), a guy that hangs out around the perimeter, flares away from defenders that collapse into the paint, and relies on someone giving me the ball when I’m open. Tim Duncan would be a drum set, providing a bevy of percussive rhythms/implementing a variety of post-up moves that’d get the job done. And someone like Jordan or Kobe is a guitar, capable of posting guys up, creating shots for teammates (when they want), driving into the lane for a dunk, or firing off a three from beyond the arc. Lebron? Lebron is an entire f’ing band. He can do anything he wants at any time. When you’re as athletically gifted as he is you see the court differently, assess lanes and openings with more intensity because, feasibly, you can exploit those—not many people can look at the court and see 6, 7, 30 viable options for scoring every time they touch the ball, but he can and, again, that’s to his detriment. Because of his versatility he’s a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. Sure, he could just go onto the court with ten seconds left and say to himself ‘I’m driving to the elbow and shooting a fade-away’ or ‘I’ll go with my left and see if I can’t get to the baseline to post-up’ but it’s hard to do that with confidence when you haven’t been honing and refining those skills all game. And who knows what the defense will do/anticipate?

At the risk of beating a dead horse into the ground, I want to compare Lebron James’s plight to a participant on Iron Chef. You read that right, I’m using an entertaining cooking show for an analogy describing Lebron’s clutch time predicament. Now, let’s say Lebron isn’t an internationally renowned basketball player but instead a celebrity chef and on Iron Chef he has to make four different dishes or, in basketball terms, he needs to score (1), rebound (2), distribute the ball (3), and play top-notch defense (4). Chef B, on the other hand, is only tasked with making two dishes (scoring and defense). Let’s also say, just to drive the point home, that Lebron has a fully stocked kitchen, i.e. he has an oven, grill, crock-pot, etc. (or his multitude of weapons) while Chef B only has a grill (he can shoot well and intercepts passing lanes on defense). With me? Is this a little too convoluted? Now—for the sake of this ridiculous hypothetical—let’s say Lebron and Chef B tie. Lebron and Chef B turn in their dishes and the judges simply can’t decide who created the better meal, but—they all agree—there can be no tie. So, everyone decides, there’ll be a cook-off and the two contestants will cook one more dish with the tools and ingredients they’ve already used. Am I wrong in thinking that Chef B has the advantage? He a) knows that he can only use a grill and b) used (hypothetically) less ingredients to make his dishes, thus he can delve even deeper and explore/enhance the strengths of his grill and ingredients with his overtime dish. Lebron, on the other hand, has a myriad of cooking devices and ingredients to choose from and, I’d guess, be overwhelmed considering he has to make a decision quickly then act on that decision without second guessing himself. Chef B doesn’t have the pitfall of second-guessing since he’s equipped with only a grill and two dishes’ worth of ingredients, while Lebron might fret over whether or not the dish should be charred, or slow-cooked, or baked and if it should be spiced with cayenne or black pepper or whatever. Only in rare instances (read: Detroit 2007 conference finals) does the cocktail of numerous cooking techniques and a myriad of ingredients fall into place for a perfect ‘clutch time’ dish, but most of the time there are just too many variables, too many options, for anything to work out in such a pressure situation.*

*Thank you for humoring me with that analogy. Hopefully someone got my point…

In my opinion, no other super-athlete in the history of the NBA has encountered a ‘problem’ quite like this. Wilt Chamberlain?  Yes, he was an athletic monster compared to those around him but was always a center and had specific skills (read: overwhelming size and height) he could tap into at the end of a game. Magic Johnson? Probably the closest comparison to Lebron there is since he was known to play all five positions, and Magic wasn’t considered a great clutch player either (his famous hook shot against Boston notwithstanding) but a better facilitator. Dwight Howard is even more physically imposing than Lebron but, again, is relegated solely to the role of center and thus has specific moves he can revert to should the Orlando Magic be desperate enough to utilize him at the end of the game. Pippen was an athletic specimen himself, but he had Jordan to rely on and—as far as my 27 year old brain can recall—didn’t endure the scrutiny or criticism Lebron does for not being clutch. No, Lebron is in a league by himself because of the way he looks and moves and until he gets a ring the doubt and cynicism will only increase, which isn’t entirely fair. Because his skills are so ridiculously diverse he’s not meant to be a closer—which is why I, personally, feel like he teamed up with Wade (a closer) in Miami—and shouldn’t be punished for it. Jordan wasn’t a good baseball player, Kobe isn’t a very good teammate, and Lebron isn’t a closer with a killer instinct—it’s just not something they are. But because Lebron arrived with such fanfare and the burden of being the second coming of MJ, the comparisons and criticisms are inevitable and, in my opinion, unjust.

I’m neither fan nor hater of Lebron James. I’m, as Nike so eloquently put it, a witness. And all I’ve witnessed from King James thus far is the weight of that crown on his head.