The NBA Finals just finished last Friday with the Golden State Warriors winning their third championship in the last 4 years. For some reason, most of the attention during this 4-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was focused on LeBron James. Yes, his team, whether it was the Cavaliers or back when he was with the Miami Heat, has made the NBA Finals 8 years in a row. But when you lose 5 of those 8, and 6 of 9 overall, doesn’t that make him more of a player that has, but rarely wins the big one?
Here are a few of the reasons that I always root against LeBron James. I first heard about him when he was in high school. A certain sports magazine made me sick of him even before he skipped college to go straight to the NBA. By the way, how did this poor kid end up driving a Hummer during his senior year in high school? Was this even investigated? I know that he said that his mother gave him the Hummer. That sounds wrong in a few different ways.
So the Cleveland Cavaliers made James the first choice in the 2003 NBA Draft. He did stick around for 7 years with the team that drafted him, even getting to his first NBA Finals in 2007, where his team was swept in 4 games by the San Antonio Spurs.
James didn’t get back to the NBA Finals until 2011, where he began his streak of 8 years in a row. But he was now with the Miami Heat, where he basically created this so-called super team that was supposed to win the championship how many times? Wasn’t it 7 or 8 times? James joined previous champion Dwyane Wade, and recruited Chris Bosh to join them. Well in 2011, the Dallas Mavericks, and mainly Dirk Nowitski took them down in 6 games.
The next year the Heat did win the championship against the Oklahoma City Thunder in 5 games. The idle worship from the media reached another a new level after this goal was finally attained. 2013 brought another championship for the Heat, thanks in large part to Ray Allen hitting the winning shot in Game 6, to stave off elimination and force a Game 7, which they also won.
This Miami Heat team would surely become an all-time dynasty now, right? Not exactly. In 2014, the San Antonio Spurs slammed the door in their face in 5 games. So James of course, worked harder, did all he could to win another championship in Miami right? Nope. He went back to Cleveland, where fans burned his jersey when he left, to join Kyrie Irving, and he recruited Kevin Love to join them. Does this sound familiar?
The problem with this was that a team was developing in Northern California, that hadn’t won a championship in 40 years. The Golden State Warriors met the Cleveland Cavaliers in the finals in 2015. The Warriors, led by Stephen Curry, beat the Cavaliers in 6 games. James probably would have left there, but he was under contract for at least one more year.
The Cavaliers regrouped and made it back to the finals in 2016, against the Warriors again. This time Golden State was up 4 games to 1, and blew the series. Cleveland won the last 3 games, with a huge assist from Kyrie Irving, James won his third title. This was his most impressive championship in my opinion. I thought it was over going into game 5.
Last year, guess who was in the finals? Golden State and Cleveland again. With the addition of Kevin Durant, the Warriors won in 5 games. Irving scored 40 points in Game 4, to delay the inevitable for one more game. But this would be the last finals that Irving and James would play together.
This year, it was 4th time’s the charm, with Golden State meeting Cleveland in the finals for an unprecedented 4th consecutive year. Without Kyrie Irving, who wanted out of Cleveland, the Cavaliers were basically a 2-man team. Irving is now on the Boston Celtics, who lost to Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals in 7 games, but Irving missed the entire series because of injury.
The 2018 NBA Finals resulted in a 4-game Golden State sweep, although Cleveland had a good chance to win Game 1. So James is now 3-6 in the NBA Finals. He can opt-out of his Cleveland contract now, and he will, because he wants to be on an immediate contender, which is what Cleveland was when he went back there. Hmmm.
All these comparisons to Michael Jordan are laughable to me. Jordan is 6-0 in NBA Finals. He had to try to get past the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics early in his career. The Lakers won 5 championships, and the Celtics won 3 in the 1980s. Then he had to fight with the Bad Boys in Detroit. The Pistons won back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990. That was what Jordan had to contend with in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics and Pistons. Jordan also took a really bad team in Chicago, to 6 championships in 8 years. It would have been 8 straight, if he didn’t play baseball in between the three-peats.
The Eastern Conference is getting better, with the Celtics and 76ers coming back to prominence, but in the last 8 years, it’s been a joke. James had a clear trip to the finals, to play whoever survived in the Western Conference.
James is a great basketball player, but why is most of the attention focused on the best player on a team getting swept in the NBA Finals? I heard Irving left Cleveland because he didn’t want to be in James’ shadow anymore. Maybe he didn’t like his big mouth, that he shoots off about any time a racial or political event takes place, usually without knowing the facts.
He should take a tip from Michael Jordan, who is still 3 championships ahead of James, even though he played 4 years of college basketball, which James didn’t, and spent almost 2 years playing baseball. When pressed to get political at certain times, Jordan basically refused. James has the right to free speech, but I have the right to not like what he says, and always root against him.
So to sum up why I always root against LeBron James. The media made me sick, and continues to make me nauseous, with their idol worship of him. He keeps switching teams, when his plans don’t work out exactly how he wants, and he shoots his mouth off about non-basketball related topics. By the way, Stephen Curry and company have now won as many championships in the last 4 years, as James has in 15 years.
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