NBA Finals: Column
LeBron James is headed to his eighth straight NBA Finals on Thursday night in Oakland, Calif. His Cavaliers arent likely to beat the Golden State Warriors.
In fact, if James orchestrates the upset, it will go down as one of shockers in the sports championship history. Which makes the upcoming Finals feel like a foregone conclusion.
Maybe they are.
Maybe thats why the conversation surrounding the league right now has little to do with who wins the title. And everything to do with James place among NBA greats.
Which always come back to Michael Jordan.
Everywhere you turn you hear the question: Who is better, Jordan or LeBron? Arguing it is almost as fun as watching the actual league, as its turned into the best barstool debate in team sports.
As with any argument, where you stand and why you stand there says something about how you view the world. But, beyond that, our collective obsession with this question reveals something about us, too.
Because, really, this shouldnt be a debate at all. James is the most talented basketball player weve ever seen. That part is easy.
For those of you under 40, its hard to imagine what it was like when Jordan rocketed onto the NBA scene as a rookie in the fall of 1984. I was living in Austin, Texas, a freshman in college, and within a few weeks of Jordans debut, the local news networks began showing highlights of his outrageous athletic feats.
We looked forward to them. Couldnt wait, actually. ESPN wasnt as entrenched then. And for a local news show to give up part of its airtime to an athlete in a market on the other side of the country, well, it was radical.
Because Jordan was new. The way he loped on the court and then pounced. The way he suspended himself midair. A combination of explosiveness and grace that felt impossible.
This began his story, and by the time he began winning championships seven years later, the narrative supporting him had a tidy backstory (cut from his high school team!) and hed outlasted the iconic franchises of that era the Lakers, the Celtics, yes, even the Pistons.
Despite his gravity-defying talent, he still was seen as an overachiever, a grinder, a mythic figure who combined the cultures fetish for sunrise-to-sundown work ethic with his own heavenly gifts. He would also stomp on his grandmother to win.
His perfect record in NBA Finals 6-0 is often cited among those who argue that Jordan is the superior player. He is, in that way, untainted.
And who doesnt like perfection?
That perfection, along with his above-the-rim dancing, his style in the culture at large, and his worldwide celebrity, fused an impenetrable wall around his greatness for a generation or more of basketball fans.
Which means that on some level this argument isnt so much about basketball or statistics as its about our collective memory. About how we remember things. About the power of emotion in how we catalog experiences.
In other words, we dont recall Jordans prime in a vacuum. Weve attached certain feelings to it. Those feelings can change how we remember. Its akin to an eye-witness who sits on the stand, who can get facts wrong even though they watched an event unfold first-hand.
