Tag: basketball

LeBron James is heading to Miami to create what Harvey Araton in The New York Times calls the Evil Empire in South Beach or Miami in pinstripes, a corporate-behemoth masquerading as a sports franchise (which, in reality, underplays the reality of sports as industry).

Who outside of South Florida wants to root for Miami after the way James walked out on Cleveland and his home territory of northern Ohio in a mercenary reach for championship rings? On the other hand, who won’t want to see the fledgling super team take a big fall?

Araton reminds us that James not only left Cleveland, his hometown team, and followed the easy money to title town (or, that’s how this grouping of expensive superstars is being portrayed so far), where he will play, as Dave Zirin points out, A-Rod to Dwayne Wade’s Jeter (the Heat will always be Wade’s team). In doing so, he forgoes the opportunity to create his own championship legacy (winning a title in Cleveland with long downtrodden Cavs — or even with the Knicks or historically lowly Nets — would have been truly Jordanesque). Instead, a Heat title will be greeted the same way a Laker title is, or a Yankee title, as expected, no big deal, etc.

Wade brought Miami a championship in 2003. Wade would have the ball in his hands for many of the offensive sets. Wade would on some nights be the best player on the court. This is Lebron hiding in Miami. It’s the act of someone who doesn’t think he can create his own legacy, but has to ride on someone else’s. Wade would be Jeter, and Lebron would be A-Rod. It’s the worst possible choice because it immediately puts a cap on James’s career and mind-bending potential.

That’s what James is missing here, I think, is that should the Heat fail to win or win often enough, he will be the guy to take the blame; if they win, it will be Wade’s victory or a team victory (see A-Rod in New York). It truly is a no-win situation from a basketball standpoint, both for James and for the fans.

***

I should add something to yesterday’s post on the same subject regarding the NBA pantheon. I left Bill Russell of my list, an purposeful oversight, though not because I doubt his greatness. I just didn’t see him. He, and Bob Cousy and the Big O, and a few others, belong on any list of the the greatest of greats.

My point was that James, if he were to choose Miami, would be viewed as buying his title in a way that the other greats did not (Shaq chased the big payday; the title was never viewed as guaranteed as this still-to-be-won title already has been).

Here is a list of some of the other greats that I left off my list. Feel free to add yours in the comment section: Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Bob Pettite, Willis Reed and Walt Frazier, Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, Earl Monroe, Dr. J, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and John Stockton, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Moses Malone, Bernard King, Bob Pettite, George Mikan.

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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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An already loaded free-agent class looks to be getting even more overstocked with talent, given reports that all-stars Paul Pierce and Dirk Nowitzki are opting out of their contracts and hitting the market.

Nowitzki would join premiere front-courters Chris Bosh, Carlos Boozer and Amar’e Stoudemire, while Lebron James (the prize of the off-season), Dwayne Wade, Pierce and Joe Johnson make up a serious set of twos and threes. And this does not account for David Lee.

There also are former stars — Allen Iverson, Shaquille O’Neal, Jermaine O’Neal — and some former high draft choices like Adam Morrison and Ray Felton that could help some teams. But the big eight will be the focus.

***

Ian Thomsen offers a bizarre scenario that he says is the Knicks’ actual blueprint for landing James:

A league source with understanding of New York’s plans told SI.com that the Knicks will recruit the Cavaliers’ two-time MVP with a grandiose vision of surrounding him with Hawks shooting guard Joe Johnson as well as an elite power forward — Chris Bosh of the Raptors or Amar’e Stoudemire of the Suns — to form a starring trio capable of contending for championships for years to come.

The idea would be to take the Knicks’ cap space and divide it by three, which would require the players to sign for less than they could get as max players. The draw is supposed to be the chance to bring New York a title and create history.

Is that something that might happen? Seems a long shot. More importantly, does it make sense? James obviously is a dominant force, while Bosh and Johnson are legitimate second bananas. The problem, however, is that the team would lack power in the paint (ask the Celtics what happens when you’re undermanned in the middle) and a point guard.

The team also would lack something that David Lee, the odd man out, brings — a lunch-pail ethos. The Celtics’ success in recent years had as much to do with strong, scrappy secondary players as with the big three plus Rondo. This Knicks team would lack that.

In any case, I suspect this is nothing more than a pipe dream.

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

This gets old pretty quickly. A Celtics-Lakers matchup in the finals — feels like we’ve been here before.

The teams have matched up 11 times, with the Celtics winning nine. Boston has won 17 titles, the Lakers 15 — for a total of 32 of 63 titles overall. The Celtics dominated in the ’50s and ’60s, winning 12 of their championships; the Lakers have been more dominant more recently first behind Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar and more recently behind Shaq and Kobe.

So, here we have another go.

This should be a good series. Kobe Bryant is the league’s dominant big-game player and he has an able supporting cast led by Pau Gasol in the paint. The Celtics are deep, boast one of the best young guards in the game (Rondo) and feature a trio of superstar veterans with varied talents.

I’m going to pick the Celtics because they can play suffocating defense, but this thing is going seven.

And I’m going to root for both teams to lose. As a Knicks fan, I have no other choice. If this were “Star Wars,” both of these teams would be the Evil Empire.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.