http://espn.go.com/chicago/nba/stor...reatness-not-surpassed-lebron-james-dominance
The unsettling thing about this whole Michael Jordan weeklong birthday celebration is that a great number of people, many of whom think of themselves as basketball fans, appear to have forgotten how impossibly great Jordan was as a player. They recognize the shoes and worship the jersey. They know the six NBA championships and that he was the star of the '92 Dream Team. They can identify historic clips, such as the shot over Craig Ehlo or the one over Bryon Russell or the signature dunks. But they have no handle whatsoever on the extent of his night-after-night basketball genius and competitive relentlessness.
You'd have to be 35 years old minimum to remember the details of Jordan's insanely prolific season, 1986-87, when he averaged 37 points a game. And even some who are old enough to remember have instead locked themselves in the prison of now, perhaps worn down by the constant bombardment of right this moment, the overbearing and maddening insistence that anything that happened today is better. We have more information and more ways of accessing it than ever, yet seem increasingly less inclined to do so.
It's probably a good thing that what has been proclaimed as the greatest stretch of LeBron James' basketball career just happens to coincide with the celebration of Jordan's birthday.
You're not going to read a single negative word about LeBron here, and why would you? He's an athletic marvel in any generation whose physical, intellectual and emotional maturity have all come together at once to produce some of the best basketball we've ever seen.
But this notion that what LeBron has done over these past six games is the best stretch of basketball in the history of the sport is -- to use one of my favorite Bill Russell phrases -- "in error."
"SportsCenter" asked whether we'd ever seen a roll like the one LeBron is on: six straight games of 30 points, each carrying a shooting percentage better than 60 percent. And the answer was pretty simple: yes, of course. I obsessively followed Jordan's entire career, much of it live and in person as a sportswriter for The Washington Post. In 1989, when Jordan was probably at the height of his physical powers he recorded 10 triple-doubles in 11 games. He averaged 34 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists on 51 percent shooting during that barrage.
One of my ESPN.com editors, a man who was a sportswriter in Chicago during most of Jordan's career, said when he first heard the stat Sunday afternoon, that Jordan had 10 triple-doubles in 11 games, his first thought was, "That can't be right."
It was my first thought too, because who does that in today's NBA? Not LeBron James, not Kobe Bryant, nobody. But there it is in black and white, from March 25 to April 14. Magic Johnson, who earlier in the day had said LeBron might be on the greatest roll he had ever seen, shook his head in disbelief and said, "I should know better. I should have known Michael would have had a stretch that was better."
I guess you can argue whether you'd rather average 30-plus points on 71 percent shooting or record 10 triple-doubles in 11 games. To me, it's not even close; the standard for all-around brilliance in modern-day basketball is the triple-double. You know what Jordan did in the game before his streak began? He put 34 points and 17 assists on the Trail Blazers in Portland.
The unsettling thing about this whole Michael Jordan weeklong birthday celebration is that a great number of people, many of whom think of themselves as basketball fans, appear to have forgotten how impossibly great Jordan was as a player. They recognize the shoes and worship the jersey. They know the six NBA championships and that he was the star of the '92 Dream Team. They can identify historic clips, such as the shot over Craig Ehlo or the one over Bryon Russell or the signature dunks. But they have no handle whatsoever on the extent of his night-after-night basketball genius and competitive relentlessness.
You'd have to be 35 years old minimum to remember the details of Jordan's insanely prolific season, 1986-87, when he averaged 37 points a game. And even some who are old enough to remember have instead locked themselves in the prison of now, perhaps worn down by the constant bombardment of right this moment, the overbearing and maddening insistence that anything that happened today is better. We have more information and more ways of accessing it than ever, yet seem increasingly less inclined to do so.
It's probably a good thing that what has been proclaimed as the greatest stretch of LeBron James' basketball career just happens to coincide with the celebration of Jordan's birthday.
You're not going to read a single negative word about LeBron here, and why would you? He's an athletic marvel in any generation whose physical, intellectual and emotional maturity have all come together at once to produce some of the best basketball we've ever seen.
But this notion that what LeBron has done over these past six games is the best stretch of basketball in the history of the sport is -- to use one of my favorite Bill Russell phrases -- "in error."
"SportsCenter" asked whether we'd ever seen a roll like the one LeBron is on: six straight games of 30 points, each carrying a shooting percentage better than 60 percent. And the answer was pretty simple: yes, of course. I obsessively followed Jordan's entire career, much of it live and in person as a sportswriter for The Washington Post. In 1989, when Jordan was probably at the height of his physical powers he recorded 10 triple-doubles in 11 games. He averaged 34 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists on 51 percent shooting during that barrage.
One of my ESPN.com editors, a man who was a sportswriter in Chicago during most of Jordan's career, said when he first heard the stat Sunday afternoon, that Jordan had 10 triple-doubles in 11 games, his first thought was, "That can't be right."
It was my first thought too, because who does that in today's NBA? Not LeBron James, not Kobe Bryant, nobody. But there it is in black and white, from March 25 to April 14. Magic Johnson, who earlier in the day had said LeBron might be on the greatest roll he had ever seen, shook his head in disbelief and said, "I should know better. I should have known Michael would have had a stretch that was better."
I guess you can argue whether you'd rather average 30-plus points on 71 percent shooting or record 10 triple-doubles in 11 games. To me, it's not even close; the standard for all-around brilliance in modern-day basketball is the triple-double. You know what Jordan did in the game before his streak began? He put 34 points and 17 assists on the Trail Blazers in Portland.
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