Where Are the LeBron Haters?

            The 2003-2004 NBA season was the first one where I wanted to take the NBA seriously. It seems like forever ago- Ben Wallace had one of the greatest afros of all time, Metta World Peace was Ron Artest and one of the best all-around players in the league, and Kobe Bryant wore number 8 and was facing jail time. It was also the rookie year of LeBron James. Despite being a Laker fan for as long as I can remember, there was something special about watching LeBron James as an 11 year old. I was shocked that he was only a few years older than me and was dominating these athletes that I looked up to and had a blank slate there for him to write his legacy. I was his biggest fan ever since.

            What a career he has had. There has never been a shortage of drama or of prestige. The records speak for themselves: 4 MVPs; 2-time Finals champion; currently on a streak of 5 consecutive NBA Finals reached; top 5 MVP finishes for 8 consecutive seasons and top 10 in MVP votes every season of his career. These are all things we’ve heard before- LeBron James is a good basketball player, okay?

            Part of what needs to be said about LeBron’s legacy, however, is the enormous amounts of hate he has received throughout his career. The criticism has essentially never stopped. In 2007, when he struggled against the Spurs in his first NBA Finals, the “LeBron has no clutch gene” narrative was born, completely ignoring the fact that he carried the team on his back to the Finals, including his outright domination of the Pistons in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. After leaving Cleveland for Miami made him a villain in fans’ minds, he was criticized after failing to win in the Finals again against Dallas, again ignoring the fact that Dallas’ entire gameplan was to take LBJ out of the game and force the rest of the Heat to beat them. He followed up that season by winning two consecutive MVP awards and his team repeating as champions. You can hate him, but you just can’t beat him.

            Upon returning to Cleveland in 2014, LeBron's approval rating was sky high after an especially cheesy letter written to Northeastern Ohio. But something seemed off about LeBron James. His team failed to take off in the depleted Eastern Conference, and for the first time in his career he missed extended time due to an injury. After his return, Cleveland went on a tear to the NBA playoffs and moved from the 7^th seed in the Eastern Conference in early February all the way to the 2^nd seed in time for the end of the season. It was the same old LeBron, but you could start to see a crack or two in the armor. But Cleveland was tearing through the league, so none of that mattered.

The injury bug bit Cleveland hard once the playoffs began. After Kevin Love had his arm practically yanked off by Kelly Olynyk, Kyrie Irving began to suffer from a knee injury that would eventually end his season after a broken bone in his knee cap. LeBron put up seemingly monster numbers in their absence (30 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 8.5 assists per game), but if you look a little closer, it was easily the worst he had played in the playoffs in his entire career. Take a look at some of his advanced stats- there’s almost nothing impressive about this. Putting up career playoffs lows in True Shooting% and offensive rating, there were finally actual reasons to criticize The King. If you are a 23% three point shooter, that’s not good, but I’ll deal with as long as you shoot very sparingly. If you are shooting 23% and you are shooting 5.5 per game, I don’t care who you are- you are hurting your team. Yet all we ever heard about was how amazing it was for LeBron to be carrying his team, to be doing everything for them to get them a win, even if he was performing below average. For the first time in my life, I caught myself wondering, “Where are the LeBron haters?”

It couldn’t be that no one was paying attention- it was the most watched NBA Finals since Michael Jordan’s last championship. Could it be that LeBron had earned the benefit of the doubt, so no one was going to criticize him? Somehow that one doesn’t feel right, since he has responded to harsh criticism year after year without it ever going away. If there was any time for someone to hate on LeBron, it’s right now. This is a really eerie feeling for someone who has spent his entire basketball watching life defending LeBron James from ignorant critics. Keep that in mind as we progress during this regular season. For some reason, we’ve flipped the script on the narrative of LeBron, to the point that we are ignoring his slow decline as a superstar. This is not a  hit piece on James- I still maintain that he is the best player playing and I watch Cavaliers games almost more than I watch my Lakers play. But soon the skeptics are going to have grounds to their arguments, and us LeBron apologists have our work cut out for us.

Stray Observations from Around the League

• ·      It wouldn’t be fair to not bring up Steph Curry as my first observation. My goodness, he’s looked incredible. Somehow, the Warriors are even more fun to watch this year.
• ·      James Harden has looked rusty, along with the whole Houston Rockets team. I’m still predicting him to be the MVP, but where has he been? Note to self: don’t ever date a Kardashian, no matter how many times she begs me to (I think I can do this).
• ·      This might be the year of bad uniforms. Not just those awful Clippers unis, but those orange OKC ones are hideous, and the new Raptors uniforms are especially sloppy. Why do we feel the need to rebrand every few years?
• ·      The most fun team to watch this year has to be the Golden State Curry Gifs (their new team name as far as I’m concerned). The most boring team? Has to be the Utah Jazz, not only because of their weak offense but because of how sloppy they force the other team’s offense to be because of their stifling defense. I’m excited for when Quin Snyder gets things rolling for them in the future, because I can only take so many bricked three’s on both sides of the ball.