Biscayne
Ocean air
Clyde Drexler (1987-1996), Rasheed Wallace (1997-2003), then Brandon Roy (2006-2010). 2003-2006 was a hiatus where I was mourning the Jail Blazers and unable to cope with the idea of a favorite player.
I liked Lebron since he entered the league, a lot, but he wasn't my "favorite player" until Roy's knees gave out way too early.
Why should I have rehashed Lebron's failures? First off, everyone on the Coli knows every one of them by heart because they are repeated perpetually. Second, I was answering a question ABOUT BIRD.
And your facts are faulty: Lebron James shot 40% in last year's finals, including 31% from three. Doing that while averaging 36-13-9 going 1-on-5 against a far superior team can hardly be considered a "failure". Larry Bird had similarly poor shooting finals where his stats weren't nearly as impressive - I didn't include them in any "failures" list for him either, except when he was in the teens in scoring and they lost.
I did allude to that.
"Can you imagine how much heat he would get if he was repeatedly averaging 20ppg or less over entire series? He did that ONCE and was lambasted for it, Bird did both those things at least four different times, while being worse than Lebron on the defensive end as well."
Poor reading comprehension? And, as you should have been able to see, Larry Bird averaged less than that in a series a number of times, even despite the much higher pace of the era.
Sorry, but someone making a shot isn't a failure. Lebron has made plenty of huge shots in the playoffs, he's had other players make huge shots too. Since Lebron already gets degraded far more for "But Ray Allen made a shot!" than any other player has for his own teammate's shot in all history, I don't see why you need to demand that I mention it. Especially since the question I was answering was about Bird, not Lebron.
Except that....
And when Lebron got his first All-Defensive 1st-team selection in 2009 and finished 2nd in DPOY voting in 2013, he was only "serviceable". Right.
There's a reason that Lebron has outscored EVERY player he's ever played 10+ times against. And I can think of times Lebron shut someone down - Paul Pierce in the 2010 WCSF, Rondo and Rose for stretches in 2010/2011, Tony Parker for a good bit of the 2013 Finals. Lebron shuts down Carmelo a lot too, who is usually almost undefendable but who averages 42% shooting for his career against Lebron.
But generally, Lebron isn't placed on a single player for an entire game, because that would only affect ONE player. He's better as a team defender who can guard anyone, switch to anyone, defend passing lanes, protect the rim, etc. He was ridiculous as an anchor for defenses in Miami and Cleveland that, man-to-man, REALLY should have been beaten up. We're talking about teams that had Joel Anthony or Chris Bosh and TT at center, Shane Battier and Kevin Love at PF, no elite defenders at the guards....and somehow they were playing great defense against elite teams? That was heavily on Lebron. In his entire 13-year career, he has NEVER played with a player who was selected to the All-Defensive team that year...and yet he's been on teams that could keep great teams shut down. That's on Lebron.
Regardless, he is a FAR better defender than Bird ever was, and there's no doubt about that at all.
Wade has 3 all-NBA 2nd Team defensive selections, and was actually among the names for DPOY in 2009. A great reason why those Heat defenses were so good was because LBJ had a solid defender/help defender on the wing in Dwade. In particular, Wade's defense on Harden and on Westbrook for stretches in the 2012 Finals is part of why Miami won. Also, Wade's defense in the 2011 Finals was masterful.
I still have LBJ ranked ahead of Bird all-time though(I have LBJ ranked 2nd All-Time). I just wanted to clear things up.
