This week Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson have all gone on record about LeBron James seemingly planning to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami to play for the Heat, Wade's erstwhile team. The team that Wade led to a title. The team that plays in the re-named "Wade County". And I admit, from the time that LeBron made "The Decision", there has been a part of me that feels the things that the Legends have expressed...
...The great ones shouldn't take the easy way out...
...The best of the best shouldn't go play on someone else's team to get to the promised land...
..LeBron making this decision...changes something about the way I think of him.
And to some extent, these things are still true for me. But to have Jordan, Magic and crew call him out for his choice...bugs me. Because it deals with something that has become a pet-peeve of mine: the implicit and accepted notion that luck is an ignorable part of determining a player's individual greatness. It bugs the crap out of me.
For example, Magic Johnson began his career next to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. A man who was still in his prime, and who is on the extremely short list of players that can make a claim to being the best of all time. Tim Duncan began his career next to David Robinson, one of the best centers ever, still close enough to his prime to be a huge impact player. Kobe Bryant began his career next to Shaquille O'Neal, another of the 10 best players to ever play the game, and he played next to him at the absolute peak of Shaq's career. Larry Bird and Bill Russell both won multiple championships playing on squads dripping with Hall of Fame Talent. Michael Jordan got to play for one of the greatest coaches ever next to another historically unique player on well structured teams.
So, the seeming outrage over LeBron's Decision doesn't stem from him getting to play next to Wade and Chris Bosh, because literally all of those that are universally accepted to be the greatest players of all time got to win multiple titles with teams just as stacked as the Heat look to be. No, the indignation seems to swirl around the fact that LeBron had the temerity to CHOOSE to play next to such talent, while the other legends were just LUCKY enough to not have to make that choice themselves.
And when I consider it in that light, it feels hypocritical. Very hypocritical.
Because frankly, all LeBron did was decide to take his luck into his own hands. Russell vs Wilt Chamberlain was before my time so I can't speak intelligently about it, but I know that many of the accounts I've read from people that witnessed them greatly conflict on who was better. The accepted narrative seems to be that Wilt was more talented and more dominant, but many feel that Russell was better because he had some nebulous "winning trait" that separated them. But the funny thing I've noticed about the "winning trait"...it seems to almost always, quite coincidentally I'm sure, develop exactly when the supporting situation gets better. Jordan suddenly developed that winning trait right around 1990, just when Phil Jackson came aboard and Scottie Pippen came into his own. Kobe had the winning trait next to Shaq, mysteriously lost it for a few years at his absolute athletic peak, then re-discovered it when Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and (sometimes) Andrew Bynum combined to give him a dominant frontline. Kevin Garnett supposedly lacked the winning trait, which was why he was never quite as good as that winner Duncan despite basketball geeks everywhere drooling over his advanced stats...but if you give him two reasonable over-the-hill talents like Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, or even better give him viable All Stars like Paul Pierce and Ray Allen to play with, why, he can lead championship caliber squads even well into his own 30s. How lucky he was to develop that winning trait 12 years into his career!
It's ludicrous that we, as fans, buy so hard into the narrative that winning is primarily an individual trait that some great ones have and others don't. Oh, I won't suggest that some players aren't better winners than others, but there is absolutely no way to completely divorce that ability to win from their surroundings. Nor can you absolutely judge one person's ability to win vs another purely by counting rings. But that is what we do. And woe be to someone who comes in and upsets our apple cart.
Because at the end of the day, that is what LeBron has done. If he goes on to win 5 rings with this Heat squad, he will have punched another hole in the tired thought that winners are born and luck has nothing to do with it. By choosing to make his own luck, he has broken an unwritten rule because he forces our faces into the reality that in a team sport, having one individual superstar that would die to win isn't enough. And maybe, just maybe, it bugs the Jordan's and Magic's off the world because if we really think about that hard enough it might just eat into their own pedestals as well.