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Professional sports reporting makes the televised pundit class look like the paragons of journalist professionalism. The kind of loosely sourced stories that pass for reporting on sports sites just would not fly at a reputable paper.
That said, ESPN is reporting that LeBron is heading to the Heat — a sorry conclusion to a free-agent summer that looked so promising.
I say this not as a Knicks fan, but as a basketball fan and as an admirer of King James. James in a Knicks’ uniform has always been my preference, even though I knew the chances that he’d end up in the Garden were far slimmer than any of us would admit.
The issue here is legacy. Which team offers James the best chance to create a legacy that rises to the level of Michael Jordan or even Kobe Bryant? Putting the question that way, of course, implies the answer: Jordan was drafted by the Bulls and was responsible for carrying the team across the finish line to six titles. Jordan had his wingman — Scottie Pippen — and a cast of solid role players. He was a Bull, through and through.
Kobe is in that rarified air now, with five titles with the only team he’s played for. His supporting cast, like Jordan’s, has included a hall-of-famer (Shaq) and a few top-notch talents (Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, etc.). Kobe was the 1A player on the first set of titles and has been A no. 1 during the last two — bu the key is that Kobe did not leave LA in search of an all-star squad on which to play.
James, if he signs with Miami, will look like little more than a mercenary (in a way that signing with the Bulls or Knicks would not), because it seem he took the path of least resistance to a title. There is not a team in the Eastern Conference with the same level of talent — Miami would have the top shooting guard and small forward in the conference and one of the two or three best power forwards. The team would become the prohibitive favorite to win the conference and probably the favorite to unseat the Lakers.
This brings me to the second part of the James legacy. Aside from the mercenary label he’d be forced to wear, James would move into Patrick Ewing territory. James, ultimately, will be judged based on the number of titles he wins — as Ewing has been, which is why many people rate him behind David Robinson, though Ewing was the better center. A James-Wade-Bosh troika, however, would raise the bar beyond needing a handful of titles to Bill Russell’s Celtics territory — a trio of relatively young stars in their prime would be expected to run off a long string of titles, to dominate in a way that only a couple of teams have in the league’s history.
Expectations, therefore, would determine his legacy to a greater degree than they do now, creating built-in disappointment. (To understand this, by the way, consider the reaction to his mediocre play against the Celtics in the conference finals this year; square that criticism and it doesn’t begin to approach what he’ll be subjected to.)
If he were to win a couple of titles in Cleveland, his legacy would solidified his placement among the true pantheon of super greats (Jordan, Magic, Bird, Chamberlain, Jabbar, Shaq, Kobe, Tim Duncan).
I’d still ove to see him in a Knicks’ uniform (yes, hypocrisy), but Cleveland is where he belongs.
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