LEBRON’S BITTERSWEET TWILIGHT: MOST POINTS, NOT ENOUGH TITLES
Any celebration for topping the NBA’s career scoring list is tempered by the tormented visuals of an all-time great who doesn’t have help, can’t get calls and is losing many more games than he wins
The only way it’s going to end well, in LeBron James’ tortured mind, is if he wins a title. That will not be happening, this year or next year or the year after. If it’s possible to muster sympathy for a man who has conquered sport and society like few others, yes, I do feel for him. He’s about to become the leading scorer in NBA history, which accentuates the emerging truth: There never has been a greater, all-encompassing individual player — really, who syncs 38,271 points with 10,327 assists? — and no one has maximized a basketball prime longer.
But when we renew the old barstool argument next week, as he passes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar atop the list of who scored the ball most, James will continue to fall short in any comparison to Michael Jordan. And it’s not only because Jordan won six championships and six MVP trophies in his six NBA Finals appearances — 666, sign of the devil — while James has managed two fewer titles in 20 seasons as a hopscotching, ring-hunting mercenary. While playing only 13 seasons in Chicago, and missing two more chances amid a regrettable baseball experiment after his father’s murder, Jordan achieved more than James in considerably less time.
LeBron is the numbers king, the longevity king.
Jordan is the Greatest Of All Time, the biggest sports icon of our lives.
These debates are settled only when examining the totality of careers. As it was, Jordan mesmerized the planet with eternal moments, killer daggers, forehead-pounding dunks, demoralizing defense, inevitable mid-June celebrations and appointment showmanship beyond anything in Hollywood or on Broadway. But then he knocked down the walls of entrepreneurship and marketing, becoming a billionaire not as a lowballed employee in Jerry Reinsdorf’s world but as a global pitchman and sneaker mogul. If you think James and Tom Brady are mega-celebrities, consider how massive Jordan would have been with tech evolution and social media. They walked through the rubble of his disruption, neither approaching the magnitude and riches of his Jordan Brand empire. When James tells NBA commissioner Adam Silver that he wants to own an expansion team in Las Vegas, who made that dream possible? Jordan, who has controlled the Charlotte franchise since 2010.
And all those points and assists and minutes? What do they mean if James falls short in the ultimate sports metric: championships? Brady is the football G.O.A.T. because of his seven rings, and as a crazed NFL fan, LeBron knows it. Isn’t he the Peyton Manning character in this equation? The one who ruled the stat sheets but watched someone else smoke the cigars far more often than not? If James harbored hope that the Lakers could make a fun run this season, they’ll be fortunate to make the Western Conference play-in round, dragged down by Anthony Davis’ predictable health absences, poor roster construction — for which James should be partially blamed — and a slew of rotten officiating calls. At 38, without much help, he has been extraordinary, averaging 35.2 points a game since his birthday on Dec. 30. But he knows circumstances, and fortune, are stacked against him. He senses his final years won’t be ending well, with a famous championship scene, something he’ll have to create via deepfake A.I. in his movie studio pursuits.
His despair was apparent to anyone who saw him bull-rush the sideline last weekend in a maniacal, out-of-body rage, then drop to his knees in God-hates-me misery. Another officiating crew had missed yet another late-game call — James was smacked on the arm by Jayson Tatum in the final seconds of regulation in Boston — an error so egregious that the crew chief admitted it and the official NBA Referees account called it “gut-wrenching” on Twitter. Admissions of guilt haven’t reduced James’ suspicions that he and the Lakers are being targeted by officials. Twice in the last month, they’ve lost when referees have swallowed whistles instead of putting James on the free-throw line for would-be victories. Suspect calls contributed to two other losses. It makes no sense, in a league known for catering to superstars via the zebras. Does the NBA not want LeBron James in the postseason? At this point, the Lakers have the West’s third-worst record, 23-28, and must climb three spots to bump off the supposedly rebuilding Utah Jazz for the 10th seed and final play-in berth. Playing through ankle soreness and other ailments to come, he could be looking at a season as gruesome as last year’s 33-49 crash.
This is not how the career of LeBron Raymone James Sr. was expected to conclude, was it?
“I don’t understand,” he said, exasperated by his locker after the Boston loss. “I don’t understand what we are doing and I watch basketball every single day. I watch these games every single day and I don’t see it happening to anyone else. It’s just weird. … It’s one of the best games we’ve played all year, and for it to fall on somebody else's judgment or non-judgment is ridiculous. It's ridiculous.”
“The best player on Earth can’t get a call,” said Darvin Ham, the third man to coach James in Los Angeles.
“It’s all bullshit,” Davis said. “We got cheated.”
His legacy would have been lifted with six or even five titles, but after winning his fourth in the Disney World Bubble through a pandemic and racial unrest in America, he made the mistake of thinking Russell Westbrook could help him get there. In the end, though Westbrook has improved off the bench, James only sabotaged himself by pushing for a trade that gutted the roster. He will end with those four rings — no disgrace there — but he’s the one who occasionally has touted himself as the G.O.A.T. He most famously did so in a TNT interview last year, referencing the 2016 title when he and the Cavaliers overcame Golden State’s 3-1 series lead and won a long, lost championship for James’ native northeast Ohio.
“At that moment, I was like, I am the greatest basketball player people have ever seen. In all the facets,” James said then. “I can play one through five, I can guard one through five, just literally doing something that’s never been done in the history of the sport. Teams that go down 3-1 were, like, 0-for-32 in Finals history. There was nobody ever coming out of that and nobody gave us a chance. I just felt like, ain’t nobody better than me at this. I felt like Jay-Z when he made ‘The Blueprint.’ ”
Since then, he has fled Cleveland for Los Angeles and played for four losing teams and a fifth that lost in the first round of the playoffs. If not for the Bubble breakthrough, James’ twilight would be abysmal, filled with vocal frustration, fired coaches and bad personnel ideas. Twice in recent weeks, he has spoken emotionally about his discontent. “I want to win. (This is) not sitting well with me," he told ESPN. "I don't like having accomplishments, and it don't feel right, when it comes in a losing effort. … So as we sit here right now as a franchise and as a team that's below .500, I want to win at the highest level. Breaking records or setting records or passing greats in a losing effort has never been a DNA of mine.”
Earlier, he said after a loss in Miami, where he won two titles a long time ago: “I'm a winner, and I want to win. And I want to give myself a chance to win and still compete for championships. That has always been my passion. That has always been my goal since I entered the league as an 18-year-old kid out of Akron, Ohio. And I know it takes steps to get there, but once you get there and know how to get there, playing basketball at this level just to be playing basketball is not in my DNA. It's not in my DNA anymore. So we'll see what happens and see how fresh my mind stays over the next couple years. I think about how much longer I'm going to play the game. I don't want to finish my career playing at this level from a team aspect.”
He is hearing the clock tick, as the home fans boo. For a team that has won 17 NBA championships, with several retired jerseys on the arena wall, the LeBron Era has been a letdown. The fans will celebrate him next week, when he eclipses Abdul-Jabbar, but James is not a true Lakers legend like Kareem, Kobe, Magic and The Logo. He has failed to make the talent around him better, unlike Jordan. In a lone-wolf context, he’s closer in legacy to Wilt Chamberlain, a scoring/rebounding machine who won one title in Los Angeles in an era when vertical leaps were a few inches.
Would Wilt, at 7-1 with a 7-8 wingspan, have beaten Jordan in a one-on-one challenge? I assume. Which just feeds the argument that Jordan, maximizing his 6-6 body, is the G.O.A.T. with six championships that could have been 10, if he hadn’t played baseball and the Bulls hadn’t been prematurely dismantled by ownership. You could say Bill Russell is the greatest, as the winner of 11 NBA titles in 13 years, but revered as he’ll always be, he played in a time when dynasties were easier and his abundant social contributions weren’t appreciated. In a modern-day discussion, Kobe Bryant won five titles — and his two without Shaquille O’Neal were with rosters inferior to any James has won with — and Magic Johnson won five while revolutionizing the game. They belong in the G.O.A.T. discussions, as does Abdul-Jabbar, even if he (and Wilt and Shaq) had massive advantages as 7-footers and even if he made only one career three-pointer, 3,289 fewer than Steph Curry. Pat Riley, Abdul-Jabbar’s coach in Los Angeles, still thinks he’s the best. “I always said Kareem was the greatest player of all time because of his longevity," Riley told ESPN. “Kareem was unique from the standpoint that he could play at a high level, play 80 games a year ... get beat up because of double- and triple-teams and guys just taking shots at him. He just developed this mental toughness along with a great physical body to really last forever. We don't win championships without the greatest player in the history of the game, who had the greatest weapon in the history of the game. The skyhook was unstoppable. Last minute of the game, it's going to one guy. Kareem was the guy, and he'll always be the guy.”
So, LeBron will be seen as secondary even on the night he surpasses “the guy.” It doesn’t seem fair, but when the stakes are elite, not everyone can be the greatest. The better question is whether he belongs among the all-time top four on Mount Hoopsmore. It’s not a layup that he’d gain a spot, not that there actually is a Mount Hoopsmore.
He’ll never admit defeat, saying last month of his future, “I'll still be able to compete for championships because I know what I can still bring to any ballclub with the right pieces.” If another season is lost, James will try once more next summer to renew acquaintances with Kyrie Irving. Now playing terrific basketball, after wrong turns into antisemitism and vaccine refusal, Irving made the jumper to win the title for LeBron in 2016. As a free agent, he can sign with the Lakers when Westbrook’s albatross contract expires. He says he no longer needs to be his team’s alpha male, his reason for fleeing Cleveland for Boston in 2017. “I wanted to be the guy that led us to a championship. I wanted to be the leader,” Irving said. “I wanted to be all that, and the responsibility of being the best in the world and leading your team is something that is not meant for many people.”
Would he at least help LeBron contend? Much too late, I’d say. Even if James stayed healthy in his final two contract seasons — when he’s on the doorstep of 40 — would he and Irving jibe? Wouldn’t Davis get hurt again? Besides, doesn’t the West now belong to Nikola Jokic and Ja Morant, the Denver Nuggets and Memphis Grizzlies, as the Warriors struggle for footing? Would James demand a trade next summer if the embattled front-office boss, Rob Pelinka, can’t land Irving and Draymond Green? It’s possible James will seek another escape hatch, but no team will break up a championship-caliber nucleus to acquire him short-term. Not even Cleveland, built for a promising future, will invite LeBron home. There’s a good chance he’ll be in L.A. through the 2024-25 season, whereupon he would instruct the Lakers to draft his son, Bronny, unless another team selects him and wrecks the old man’s fantasy.
No longer is this a nepo-baby story. Bronny has made remarkable strides as a 6-4 guard in his senior high-school season. He’s now considered a five-star recruit who will play next season at either Ohio State, to wear scarlet and gray as his father once dreamed; Oregon, where Nike’s influence weighs heavily; or USC, close to the family home in Beverly Hills. LeBron has been adamant about playing in the NBA with his son. Will he wait 21 months for something that might not happen? Will terminal losing force him to pull the plug early?
“I think about my son graduating high school soon, going off to college, and I'm still playing,” he said. “My youngest son will be a junior next year — how much more time I'll miss. So throughout the course of a day, to the weeks, to the months, I think about a little bit of everything, you know?"
The time has come to reconcile. He can finish out his career, score more points and continue to lose more games than he wins. Nothing is wrong with settling. He hates that word, but there’s a bigger one at play.
Reality.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.