LeBron James embodies everything that we love and hate about the NBA. Whenever the lockout ends, the league will need him more than ever.
The NBA lockout continues as of the writing of this piece. We’re probably not going to have any games this Christmas, which means my father and I will have to give a crap about our stocking stuffers, and we’ll lethargically discuss the non-fiction books on the New York Times’ Bestseller list with my moms. We’ll be lost, like most NBA fans. Sure, football will be in full swing, but it’s not the same.
With billionaire owners arguing against millionaire players, the general consensus from fans is: stop pouting and get this deal done. But have the prolonged negotiations gone too far? With millionaires deriding billionaires and vice versa, there are no heroes in the 2011 NBA lockout. That’s why it will take a villain to save the NBA.
As I see it, only one man can make us all forget about all the games we’re going to miss, and he’s already got all of Cleveland against him. Judging by the outpouring of congratulations from both Dallas and non-Dallas fans nationwide after this past summer’s NBA Finals, most of America hates him now too. That’s a good thing! I’m talking, of course, about one LeBron James.
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If you don’t have a Michael Jordan, and we don’t—contrary to recent reports out of the 2010-2011 MVP’s camp in Chicago—the next best thing for the NBA is a villain, or at least a combination of players that really hate each other (i.e. the 2000-2003 LA Lakers). LeBron James is that villain. Average fans can easily ignore Tim Duncan fundamentals, Popovich’s genius defensive rotations, and Larry Brown’s homogeneously team-first attitude in Detroit, while they take a nice nap. They can’t ignore a player they loathe.
Regardless of your individual team’s fortunes, all NBA fans breathed a collective sigh of relief when Dallas won game 6 last June. In fact, more people watched game 6 on ABC than NBA Finals game on ABC except Detroit’s upset of Los Angeles for game 5 in 2004 (underdog winning), and 2010’s game 7 between Boston and Los Angeles (historic rivalry in a game 7). What does that mean? America loves watching traditional rivalries, and the over-confident superstar lose. Or watching the over-confident superstar follow through on his prognostications and winning (think Moses Malone’s “Fo,’ Fo,’ Fo’” proclamation in 1983). The dominant players win, or they lose; in both cases, we’re satiated as fans.
Let’s compare last 30 years of NBA Final ratings, and see if you can’t find a connection. Keep in mind the ‘80 and ‘81 NBA Finals were tape-delayed games (much to the chagrin of Magic Johnson idolaters).
In red, we have the CBS, Magic-Larry years where those two basically saved the NBA, even though they only met in the Finals three times. Then, we have the blue Michael Jordan years, with [H]akeem providing some superstar titles during his baseball sabbatical, and the Lakers dynasty picking up the slack after MJ retired the second time.
Pay particular attention to the differences between 1998 and 1999. That’s the last time we had an NBA lockout. We went from MJ’s highest-watched NBA Finals series ever (18.7 share) to a ho-hum 11.3 for the Spurs-Knicks laugher after the strike-shortened 1999 season. Lost games coupled with the loss of the sport’s greatest player: the perfect way to get no one to watch.
After that, even for the Lakers titles, fans started to tire of the Spurs/Lakers dominance over whomever the Eastern Conference plugged in to get slaughtered in the Finals.The first year of ABC’s NBA television contract was a HUUUGE drop off. Even in tape-delayed 1980 and 1981, they were still pulling in more than the 6.5 rating of 2003’s Spurs-Nets series most people missed.
Highlighted in green is the current ABC deal, featuring slight up-ticks near or above a 10.0 Neilson share for the LA-Boston series (traditional rivalry) and Detroit-LA (classic case of the underdog David slaying Goliath). The ABC deal has consisted mostly of boring sub-10 ratings for various match-ups casual fans can’t get behind. That includes LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers squad getting swept by San Antonio for the last title (?) of the Duncan dynasty, which was the lowest rated NBA Finals series EVER.
CBS 1980 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Philadelphia 76ers 2: 8.0
CBS 1981 Boston Celtics 4, Houston Rockets 2: 6.7
CBS 1982 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Philadelphia 76ers 2: 13.0
CBS 1983 Philadelphia 76ers 4, Los Angeles Lakers 0: 12.3
CBS 1984 Boston Celtics 4, Los Angeles Lakers 3: 12.3
CBS 1985 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Boston Celtics 2: 13.7
CBS 1986 Boston Celtics 4, Houston Rockets 2: 14.1
CBS 1987 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Boston Celtics 2: 15.9
CBS 1988 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Detroit Pistons 3: 15.4
CBS 1989 Detroit Pistons 4, Los Angeles Lakers 0 : 15.1
CBS 1990 Detroit Pistons 4, Portland Trail Blazers 1: 12.3
NBC 1991 Chicago Bulls 4, Los Angeles Lakers 1: 15.8
NBC 1992 Chicago Bulls 4, Portland Trail Blazers 2: 14.2
NBC 1993 Chicago Bulls 4, Phoenix Suns 2: 17.9
NBC 1994 Houston Rockets 4, New York Knicks 3: 12.4
NBC 1995 Houston Rockets 4, Orlando Magic 0: 13.9
NBC 1996 Chicago Bulls 4, Seattle Supersonics 2: 16.7
NBC 1997 Chicago Bulls 4, Utah Jazz 2: 16.8
NBC 1998 Chicago Bulls 4, Utah Jazz 2: 18.7
NBC 1999 San Antonio Spurs 4, New York Knicks 1: 11.3
NBC 2000 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Indiana Pacers 2: 11.6
NBC 2001 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Philadelphia 76ers 1: 12.1
NBC 2002 Los Angeles Lakers 4, New Jersey Nets 0: 10.2
ABC 2003 San Antonio Spurs 4, New Jersey Nets 2: 6.5
ABC 2004 Detroit Pistons 4, Los Angeles Lakers 1 : 11.5
ABC 2005 San Antonio Spurs 4, Detroit Pistons 3: 8.2
ABC 2006 Miami Heat 4, Dallas Mavericks 2: 8.5
ABC 2007 San Antonio Spurs 4, Cleveland Cavaliers 0: 6.2
ABC 2008 Boston Celtics 4, Los Angeles Lakers 2: 9.3
ABC 2009 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Orlando Magic 1: 8.4
ABC 2010 Los Angeles Lakers 4, Boston Celtics 3: 10.6
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Americans really enjoy watching dominance, but also rebirth, retribution, and a long shot. LeBron James accentuates all those feelings in fans—at least now he does. He’s a dominant basketball player, but he also fails in the “clutch.” He’s the worst and the best thing about the NBA. He’s a Rorschach test for NBA viewers, able to play whichever role we assign for him. Visceral reactions to his game, his career, and his decisions (lowercase) are a part of life as an NBA fan. You simply can’t avoid him.
Before the Decision (capital), LeBron James was only a dominant basketball player (maybe the most dominant of all time) on a bad team. We only judged him on his play—which was incredible (in some ways he’s like pre-Thanksgiving Tiger Woods: dominant in a fashion that’s almost blasé). We tuned in to see him overcome long odds like beating the Detroit Pistons in the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals, with an abysmal supporting cast (Mo Williams as your go-to scorer?).
Now that LeBron’s gone on TV and betrayed his not-quite hometown, he’s a villain, and rightly so. He was an egomaniac throughout the free agent process in the summer of 2010, and his super team flew in the face of all the competitive superstars before him. Barkley laughed about him on TNT, and you could just imagine MJ smirking when LeBron announced he was going to South Beach to join Dwyane Wade’s team and try to win “not 1, not 2, not 3, but 7 NBA Championships.” LeBron didn’t want to be the man anymore, and we crucified him for it.
Aside from being thrust into the villain’s role, there’s also the fact that LeBron James is an unquestionable NBA superstar. James is a member of the top-tier illuminati that separates the NBA from the rest of the world’s top leagues. The top European or even Asian clubs can play and produce with the role and bench players in the NBA. The difference in skill is negligible or nonexistent.
Via ESPN’s True Hoop Blog:
Thorpe has long maintained that the very best NBA players are in a class by themselves. No other league in the world has players like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. But after those top stars, whether that’s 30 or 40 players, he says it’s very hard to tell anyone apart. The non-star NBA players, he says, are interchangeable with professionals all over the globe, which he sees in his own gym every summer, where, for instance, Italian Serie A starters hang comfortably with NBA rotation players.
That’s not the case with the Kevin Durant’s, Kobe Bryant’s, LeBron James’, and Dwyane Wade’s of the world. Their athleticism and skill is literally at a different level: a level that makes the NBA the world’s greatest league. A level that ingratiates NBA superstars into our psyche like 1992’s Dream Team did in Barcelona, and Michael Jordan’s whole career did around the world.
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LeBron James took a lot of Heat for his decision, but it also allowed us to root against him. Before, we saw his 6’8” 250-pound body running faster and jumping higher than everyone else, and we couldn’t help but root for his greatness, especially playing for a Cleveland franchise that had made an art of failure. Now that he’s a villain, we root just as hard, if not harder, for him to fail. We think he took the easy way out for a title, and we’ll never forgive him.
But, because of the charged backlash, once Miami had wrapped up the Chicago series, analysts and announcers kept repeating that the Heat squad was unbeatable. Everyone jumped back on the LeBron James bandwagon. Even Scottie Pippen uttered blasphemous comparisons to Jordan and hinted LeBron was better! Then, the Mavericks beat the super-team Miami Heat in less than 7 games without home court advantage. David slew Goliath, and viewers loved it.
Now just think if it can happen again? Just think if LeBron decided to develop a post game, and a mid-range jump shot, and dominates, more than he’s dominated before, the strike-shortened 2012 season. Don’t you think fans would tune in to his crowning moment in the NBA Finals? They would either be hoping he’d choke again in those final games, or hoping he’d overcome his tendency to disappear in fourth quarters. The point is they’d hope.
LeBron James can save the NBA from that inevitable lull that’ll come from a (hopefully) strike-shortened season. It doesn’t matter if he wins or loses because we’ll care either way. He’s the only one who inspires us to loathe or exult someone in equal measure.
I don’t care if the average fan roots against LeBron James or for him. I just want them to root.
—Photo FromTheBeanBag.com