His team is in a zero to two game hole against Boston.
They got blown out at home against Indy in the first round.
They were down 1-3 against Golden State and came back to win a championship.
I read one article that said LeBron James "exhausts" teammates, coaches, franchises. The article said it happened in Miami, it's happening in Cleveland, Return Mistake. It was the first time I had ever heard it put that way. It's true. He does. It did happen in Miami. Pat Riley opened his notorious end 2014 press conference by slapping both hands on the table and saying, "You want to trend something? I'm pissed." The players, almost to a man, were mentally "exhausted," Riley said they had told him in their exit interviews. Riley said he understood but did not sympathize. "This is hard!" he yelled. "But you don't take the first door and leave!" Well, one of them did.
Riley and Mickey Arison run a tight, secretive cruise ship in Miami. Stuff almost never gets out. If it does via a player he gets fined. Call the cruise ship the Hotel California because you can check out any time you want (as LBJ did in the 2014 Finals) but you can never leave. There were just a few signs that got out that LeDrama was not a "Heat Lifer" and they were missed by the ship captain and its owner. Imagine that after what we've seen in Cleveland the last four years.
The first that I am aware of was during the on-court trophy presentation in 2013. Right after Miami had won the NBA championship! You know how those occasions present the ridiculous spectacle of normal height owners hugging gargantuan players? It's always a bad look but this one was downright painful to see. There are two photos taken camera clicks apart. The first shows Arison with a beatific smile on his face looking way up at LeBron, one arm extended way up over LeBron's left shoulder. LeBron has his arms around Arison in the manner of a mother cradling a baby. LeBron looks down into Baby Micky's face...absolutely stone-faced. No smile. Cold. Mother looks as if contemplating infanticide.
The second photo, taken an instant later, shows Arison's realization and the smile disappear.
The second incident occurred, as I recall, in the winter of the last year. For luxury tax reasons Arison got rid of James BFF Mike Miller. James let it be known, almost sotto voce, that he was hurt that he had lost Miller. And pissed at Arison for being parsimonious. Again, if this had happened in Cleveland, there would have been nothing sotto voce about it and it would have meant headlines. On the Hotel California it was barely a ripple at the time and only became Omen as that last season wore on and James refused to commit publicly and unequivocally to Heat 4 Life.
The third, a little thing at the time--Or was it?--LeDrama stood at the bench and sarcastically applauded head coach Erik Spoelstra with "Great coaching, Spo!" when Spo had done something unwise.
Then, there was James' body language in a crucial game of the 2014 Finals against San Antonio. Checked out body language. I'm here but I'm not really here body language. To my knowledge only Greg Cote of the Miami Herald took note of the body language in that game. That was ominous. That was Omen. For it was the same body language that James had displayed with Cleveland, the First Mistake. James realized in that San Antonio game, as he did in that Boston series his last year in Cleveland Parte Uno that his team as equipped was not going to win a championship. With Cleveland eliminated by Boston James famously took off his jersey and tossed it to the floor as he walked off. Omen!
Cleveland II. Oy vey, Cleveland II. It has been as if a dictaphone were hooked up directly to James' Id. Too numerous to recount. Off the top of my head: extracting a promise from Dan Gilbert before he agreed to Return that Gilbert would not pull a Micky Arison on him and would go into luxury tax hell and back to win; refusing to pass to Dion Waiters, getting Waiters exiled from the team. Berating Kyrie Irving to the point that Irving forced a trade; tweeting passive aggressive sweet somethings to Kevin Love to get on board; David Blatt. Lasted a year and a half; putting up gaudy statistics for the sake of making himself look good, not for the betterment of the team; quitting on teammates, especially Isaiah Thomas, sabotaging the team, until Thomas and like half the team were traded. All drama all the time.
All of the things James did in Miami and in Cleveland were deliberate, purposeful. All were done in James' subtle, passive-aggressive manner, always giving him plausible deniability.
For LeBron James, like for Donald Trump, the play's the thing. It is their world, everyone else just lives in it. Drama keeps attention focused on them. That is what it is all about for each man. Me. They both leave the entities for whom they were saviors the worse off when they move on. Like James, Trump is also chasing a ghost from Chicago.
LeBron wants to be known as the consensus greatest basketball player of all time. Him. One metric of G.O.A.T. is championships won. He knows that he cannot surpass Michael Jordan on that metric. A team metric. So he wants the, personal, the stats. Most this, fastest to that. Of course, LeBron James wants to win championships, wants to win one every year, but he has missed the B.O.A.T. on that measure of greatest. He has reconciled himself to attempting to achieve G.O.A.T.-ness alone. Embraced it. Without a great coach, a Pat Riley, a Phil Jackson, without a supporting cast. If he can carry Cleveland alone to the cusp of a championship, with David Blatt as coach, when his second and third wheels fell off, as he did in Cleveland II that first year, that is a degree-of-difficulty metric that in his conscious or sub-conscious discounts one of Jordan's many rings won with Scottie Pippen and Bill Cartwright, with Pippen and Dennis Rodman. "I almost did it playing with D-Leaguers and with a European coach." If he can win a championship with Irving and Love, the latter recruited by James, and with a cast recruited by him, with a coach he preferred to Blatt, in Cleveland, which hadn't won a championship in anything since 1864, as he did in Year II, then those are premiums on that championship that discounts another of Jordan's.
In the end it must all redound to James' legacy or it doesn't count. Championships won, championships lost--but for his heroic efforts--stats, all of the drama, each must be a brick in the personal shrine of and to LeBron James.
They got blown out at home against Indy in the first round.
They were down 1-3 against Golden State and came back to win a championship.
I read one article that said LeBron James "exhausts" teammates, coaches, franchises. The article said it happened in Miami, it's happening in Cleveland, Return Mistake. It was the first time I had ever heard it put that way. It's true. He does. It did happen in Miami. Pat Riley opened his notorious end 2014 press conference by slapping both hands on the table and saying, "You want to trend something? I'm pissed." The players, almost to a man, were mentally "exhausted," Riley said they had told him in their exit interviews. Riley said he understood but did not sympathize. "This is hard!" he yelled. "But you don't take the first door and leave!" Well, one of them did.
Riley and Mickey Arison run a tight, secretive cruise ship in Miami. Stuff almost never gets out. If it does via a player he gets fined. Call the cruise ship the Hotel California because you can check out any time you want (as LBJ did in the 2014 Finals) but you can never leave. There were just a few signs that got out that LeDrama was not a "Heat Lifer" and they were missed by the ship captain and its owner. Imagine that after what we've seen in Cleveland the last four years.
The first that I am aware of was during the on-court trophy presentation in 2013. Right after Miami had won the NBA championship! You know how those occasions present the ridiculous spectacle of normal height owners hugging gargantuan players? It's always a bad look but this one was downright painful to see. There are two photos taken camera clicks apart. The first shows Arison with a beatific smile on his face looking way up at LeBron, one arm extended way up over LeBron's left shoulder. LeBron has his arms around Arison in the manner of a mother cradling a baby. LeBron looks down into Baby Micky's face...absolutely stone-faced. No smile. Cold. Mother looks as if contemplating infanticide.
The second photo, taken an instant later, shows Arison's realization and the smile disappear.
The second incident occurred, as I recall, in the winter of the last year. For luxury tax reasons Arison got rid of James BFF Mike Miller. James let it be known, almost sotto voce, that he was hurt that he had lost Miller. And pissed at Arison for being parsimonious. Again, if this had happened in Cleveland, there would have been nothing sotto voce about it and it would have meant headlines. On the Hotel California it was barely a ripple at the time and only became Omen as that last season wore on and James refused to commit publicly and unequivocally to Heat 4 Life.
The third, a little thing at the time--Or was it?--LeDrama stood at the bench and sarcastically applauded head coach Erik Spoelstra with "Great coaching, Spo!" when Spo had done something unwise.
Then, there was James' body language in a crucial game of the 2014 Finals against San Antonio. Checked out body language. I'm here but I'm not really here body language. To my knowledge only Greg Cote of the Miami Herald took note of the body language in that game. That was ominous. That was Omen. For it was the same body language that James had displayed with Cleveland, the First Mistake. James realized in that San Antonio game, as he did in that Boston series his last year in Cleveland Parte Uno that his team as equipped was not going to win a championship. With Cleveland eliminated by Boston James famously took off his jersey and tossed it to the floor as he walked off. Omen!
Cleveland II. Oy vey, Cleveland II. It has been as if a dictaphone were hooked up directly to James' Id. Too numerous to recount. Off the top of my head: extracting a promise from Dan Gilbert before he agreed to Return that Gilbert would not pull a Micky Arison on him and would go into luxury tax hell and back to win; refusing to pass to Dion Waiters, getting Waiters exiled from the team. Berating Kyrie Irving to the point that Irving forced a trade; tweeting passive aggressive sweet somethings to Kevin Love to get on board; David Blatt. Lasted a year and a half; putting up gaudy statistics for the sake of making himself look good, not for the betterment of the team; quitting on teammates, especially Isaiah Thomas, sabotaging the team, until Thomas and like half the team were traded. All drama all the time.
All of the things James did in Miami and in Cleveland were deliberate, purposeful. All were done in James' subtle, passive-aggressive manner, always giving him plausible deniability.
For LeBron James, like for Donald Trump, the play's the thing. It is their world, everyone else just lives in it. Drama keeps attention focused on them. That is what it is all about for each man. Me. They both leave the entities for whom they were saviors the worse off when they move on. Like James, Trump is also chasing a ghost from Chicago.
LeBron wants to be known as the consensus greatest basketball player of all time. Him. One metric of G.O.A.T. is championships won. He knows that he cannot surpass Michael Jordan on that metric. A team metric. So he wants the, personal, the stats. Most this, fastest to that. Of course, LeBron James wants to win championships, wants to win one every year, but he has missed the B.O.A.T. on that measure of greatest. He has reconciled himself to attempting to achieve G.O.A.T.-ness alone. Embraced it. Without a great coach, a Pat Riley, a Phil Jackson, without a supporting cast. If he can carry Cleveland alone to the cusp of a championship, with David Blatt as coach, when his second and third wheels fell off, as he did in Cleveland II that first year, that is a degree-of-difficulty metric that in his conscious or sub-conscious discounts one of Jordan's many rings won with Scottie Pippen and Bill Cartwright, with Pippen and Dennis Rodman. "I almost did it playing with D-Leaguers and with a European coach." If he can win a championship with Irving and Love, the latter recruited by James, and with a cast recruited by him, with a coach he preferred to Blatt, in Cleveland, which hadn't won a championship in anything since 1864, as he did in Year II, then those are premiums on that championship that discounts another of Jordan's.
In the end it must all redound to James' legacy or it doesn't count. Championships won, championships lost--but for his heroic efforts--stats, all of the drama, each must be a brick in the personal shrine of and to LeBron James.
