I get it, his supporting cast sucked, but when the ESPN hype machine touts his performance as "historic", they fail to mention that his shooting percentage was among the worst of all time for a star in a finals series. Don't get me wrong, I like LeBron, I really like him, in fact I'd put him in my starting five of all time greats, but he does not have a well rounded offensive repertoire for a player of his greatness and his shooting numbers in the finals support that.
As a comparison to LeBron's sub-40% shooting
- In his prime (pre-1996), MJ never shot below 51% in a finals series, including a high water mark of shooting 56% in 1991.
- The only finals MVP to shoot below 40% since 1987 (first year for which I could find the stat) was Chauncey Billups, who shot 39% for the series in 2004
- Of the 11 forwards who have won the award since 1987, the average shooting percentages is 55% (11 winners who were guards averaged 48%)
When the talking heads start saying that no one else could have won two games with that team or even going so far as to call LeBron the greatest player of all time, I wonder if they even saw MJ play and some of the other greats play, or just assume that because today's athletes have better training and nutrition, that automatically makes them better players.
As I've posted before, I still believe that over the next four or five years, LeBron has a chance to make an argument for himself as the greatest player of all time, but he needs to grow up, take an honest look at himself and address the following:
1) His mental toughness, warrior mentality, whatever you want to call it, is not in the same league as the other legends of the game.
2) When his defender manages to stay in front of him he is not a great finisher and he doesn't have a low post game to go to when his drive to the basket is taken away. Go to YouTube and watch how Michael used pull up jumpers to keep his opponents off balance and could change mid-air to get his shot off even with defenders draped on him and you'll see what I mean. LBJ is an amazingly well rounded player, but he needs to round out his offensive game, which is something that MJ had to learn as well.
As a comparison to LeBron's sub-40% shooting
- In his prime (pre-1996), MJ never shot below 51% in a finals series, including a high water mark of shooting 56% in 1991.
- The only finals MVP to shoot below 40% since 1987 (first year for which I could find the stat) was Chauncey Billups, who shot 39% for the series in 2004
- Of the 11 forwards who have won the award since 1987, the average shooting percentages is 55% (11 winners who were guards averaged 48%)
When the talking heads start saying that no one else could have won two games with that team or even going so far as to call LeBron the greatest player of all time, I wonder if they even saw MJ play and some of the other greats play, or just assume that because today's athletes have better training and nutrition, that automatically makes them better players.
As I've posted before, I still believe that over the next four or five years, LeBron has a chance to make an argument for himself as the greatest player of all time, but he needs to grow up, take an honest look at himself and address the following:
1) His mental toughness, warrior mentality, whatever you want to call it, is not in the same league as the other legends of the game.
2) When his defender manages to stay in front of him he is not a great finisher and he doesn't have a low post game to go to when his drive to the basket is taken away. Go to YouTube and watch how Michael used pull up jumpers to keep his opponents off balance and could change mid-air to get his shot off even with defenders draped on him and you'll see what I mean. LBJ is an amazingly well rounded player, but he needs to round out his offensive game, which is something that MJ had to learn as well.
