I have to hand it to you Brick -- you're the first person to ever make me feel like I'm some sort of LeBron apologist (especially since I happen to think Kobe is better, but that's another debate for another time) 
Hey, I tend to exaggerate my stance on things to make my point, so I'm glad to hear it's somewhat effective 
I too agree that Kobe is a better player than LeBron, but as far as their relative classiness goes, I'm not touchin' that one with a ten foot pole.
Fair enough about Wade -- just wanted to make sure you would levy the same judgment on him as you do on Bron thanks to the '06 Finals.
Nope, I'm an equal opportunity hater
I'm not entirely sure I follow the claim about Kobe/Pierce treatment versus LeBron. Could you elaborate that?
Absolutely.
Or does it have to do with the market these guys play in? If so, what makes that more justifiable?
OK, so I've come to appreciate that my opinion here is kind of an odd-ball stance, and tried to convey that with my parenthetical comment earlier ("as strange as it sounds"). Yes, I did mean that the Pierce/Kobe treatment (which for posters not reading the whole thread, I referred to as "comparable") is more justified than the LeBron treatment partly because of not only the size of the market that they play in, but because of the iconic nature of the franchises they play for, combined with the dearth of talent on the those franchises during the time interval in question (circa 2002-2007 AD).
Put yourself in a ruthless business man's shoes for a minute or two. If you owned a company that was famous for two products, ones that revolutionized your industry, and all of a sudden those products fail to have the market impact that put your company on the map, what would you do? You couldn't simply get rid of those products, because your customers would lose faith in your brand and you would lose your job. Could you continue to put out those sub-quality products at the risk of reducing your profit margin, potentially losing your job anyway? Or would you do whatever you could to try to revive those two products, short of blatantly violating anti-trust or criminal laws? Even those without graduate business degrees know the answer to that question.
So that begins to explain what I meant by "justifiable"...
Is the suggestion here then that PP is more worthy of the star treatment from the zebras than Bron? Lot of questions to throw at ya, I know...just curious is all.
Even disregarding my vivid analogy above, YES!, for a couple of reasons. Maybe I'm wearing green-tinted glasses, but Pierce's game is more "old-school"; thus, as one who considers himself a basketball purist, I sympathize with that. LeBrick, on the other hand, hoists up an inordinate amount of "questionable" shot attempts. Yes, Pierce has had his fair share of those as well, but my perception is that LeBron is bailed out more than anyone else in the league.
One thing Pierce, LeBron, and the others who receive "star treatment" do, with regularity, is initiate contact. I feel that James initiates contact to the point that he can and evidently will severely hurt someone. He is allowed to virtually barrel through opponents. Am I holding his athletically ability against him? Some would argue, yes, but I don't agree. I do realize that calls like these are legitimately hard to objectively officiate. I'm going to leave this point at that along with the two following side remarks: (each of which could be threads of their own)
- officials more often than not aren't objectively officiating. We've already had plenty of hard evidence for this.
- Given the regularity at which adjectives like "freakish", "superhuman" and "other-worldly" are used to describe him, I am not convinced that LeBron's athletic ability is 100% natural.
If you want to go back to the original post and talk about his off-court comments, I'll buy that some of his "global icon" bit along with a few other comments he has made have been rather self-centric. But as far as his game?
Yes, I made the mistake of openly agreeing with frontierboy in that LeBron is "slightly above average without the attention of the refs", and it detracted from my original point, the point of this thread, which is that he is NOT a class act. Lesson learned, I guess.
The two aspects of his game almost universally considered to be what make him so unique (although there is plenty of competition; the guys has plenty of assets) are his size and his unselfishness.
Well, now you know I think his size is un-natural, and I don't like the way he is allowed to use it. You also acknowledged that he is unselfish off the court. I see it on the court as well. Going back to frontierboy's point, if he weren't allowed to do the things he does, I don't think he would garner nearly as much defensive attention, and his lack of true ability would brought into the limelight. Again, we already both know that we are not going to see eye to eye here.
Thanks again for taking the time to keep coming back to this discussion. I'm certainly intrigued by it.
-sw
You as well. I know you are an author and I've read some of your pieces. All I ask is that if you want to use any of these arguments or are inspired by this conversation in your future posts/disseminations, just give me a little shout out.
Thanks
Hell of a post, Brick. Thanks for responding to me -- and apologies in my slowness responding. The family Scrabble game called for an hour -- and fortunately I can continue to subsist on the Celtics' victory today, because it wasn't my final hour at the true table of champions.
Some assorted thoughts after reading through the points you made a few times (please bear with me on my general random jumble here):
Re: Kobe/Paul marquee franchise treatment versus LeBron -- I understand the line of thinking here; to some extent, it's the same school of thought that spurred the frozen envelope belief about the Knicks and the Pat Ewing lottery. That said, I ask here only that you think of the other side of your own business analogy as well when talking about what is most justifiable to Big Business Brother Stern: The marquee
player. We hear the media talk all the time about how the NBA is a star-driven league, and the fact remains that -- whether you like him or not -- the NBA has made it clear over the past few years that this guy is its primary star going forward to build around. To follow through your analogy, if you were a businessman who believed that you had found the individual who could save the interest in your overall product in the big picture, wouldn't you do whatever you had to in order to cater to that individual? The prevailing belief is that this is a guy who cares enough about his image to not turn off most of America (whether you think he's a great guy or not, he clearly
is concerned with image, no?) and that he has the skills and physicality to wow the masses -- which thus far he has. Thus, I argue the answer to the question I pose to you is just as much of a yes as yours about Kobe and Paul. Thoughts?
Re: Paul/LeBron -- I love Paul Pierce (certainly loved what he did this afternoon), and I'll go to my grave a Celts fan. But I'm simply not buying the belief that PP gets some nod over Bron from a 'basketball purist' standpoint. I've seen Paul take far more than his share of questionable shots over his Celtics career, and I've seen Bron take a few that weren't great, too. It happens with guys who are up the leaderboards in shot attempts. That said, given LeBron's greater physical talents, it seems logical to me that he would be able to hit a higher percentage of 'questionable shots' (thus making them less questionable in my book), and further, I would direct you to their differing efficacy rates from the field. In ten seasons, Paul has shot above 47 percent from the field just once and is a 44.2 percent field goal shooter for his career. In five seasons, LBJ has shot less than 47 percent just once (his rookie season) and is a career 46.7 percent shooter from the field. I'm not ready to believe that the whole of that difference is explained by 'more of LBJ's questionable shots being discounted thanks to bail-out calls' especially because for their careers, LBJ gets less than one more FTA per game than Paul does (8.6 to 7.9). LeBron is a better rebounder. LeBron is a better passer. Somehow, it's hard to accept the argument that Paul is the more appealing player to the basketball purist. I'll buy that those of us who live and die with the green will always have a lot of love for him (self certainly included), and we'll stand by him to the end, but he isn't LeBron. It makes what he did this afternoon all the more impressive and commendable.
Re: LBJ's strength and physique -- Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what you described, it sounds to me as though the compliments heaped on LeBron's special brand of body type have led you to believe that he has artificially enhanced himself. Unless I'm missing something, that seems like an all but completely baseless accusation against a man who has given us absolutely zero reason to doubt his credibility in this department. I realize that we are in an age of cynicism about physiques, particularly in light of BALCO and the steroids mess of the last few years, but has it really gone this far? Is it possible for you to elaborate on this? I certainly feel LBJ as worthy of 'innocent until proven guilty' treatment as anyone else at this point. Why should he not be entitled to such?
That's quite a bit to start...so I'll post this for now and then catch up on a few of the other points I've missed while writing this out...looking forward to hearing more from everyone.
-sw
