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Lebron's Legacy

1) Made a NBA Finals with a Cavs team. Had zero help. they got SWEPT!

2) Made a NBA Finals with esentially the Eastern Conference All Star team, only won 2 games. What more help does Lebron need to win a Championship?

In this Finals Lebron was the 2nd best player on his team. The 3rd best player on the Court. Anyone who ever mentions him in the same breath as Jordan, Bird, Magic, Chamberlin, Russell,...etc is fooling themselves.

Lebron is a "good" player who has done little to prove himself to be a "great" or "special" player. Taking a bad Cavs team through a horrible Eastern Conference to a Finals, I mean Jason Kidd did that in NJ, AI in Philly, and even Reggie in Indy. That doesn't make a "legend". Lebron had a stage in the past 10 days to cement his legacy, and all he did was bury it by CHOKING time after time after time again! All he did was CHOKE in every big spot.

I disagree with you, in general and with pretty much every single point you made.

You are 100% incorrect and I am diametrically opposed to your viewpoints, I find your opinion to be shallow and lacking any depth of knowledge or understanding of basketball as a sport, or the dynamics of team play in general.

LeBron doesn't have a legacy yet...his career is not even mid way through it's lifespan. What you have so far is one of the most talented players to play the game, but he hasn't proven to be great....yet. Time will tell, but if Miami wins 1-3 titles in the coming years, LeBron will still be scrutinized because he took an easy route to get there.

Not entirely true. He was obviously the lone superstar on the team, but that Cavs team had a lot of great role players that complimented Lebron.


Hard to argue with this. I mean, if you can make the Finals then you can win them. Bounce goes here or there and it's a different game. I wouldn't be surprised to see Miami win it next year as, like you said, they are a walking All-Star team.


I would say Lebron is a great player, but he isn't a legend. Right now, he is Patrick Ewing. Everything else, I agree with.

I believe this is the worst Heat team you'll see. One that made it to the Finals. This isn't the Miami LeBrons. Holes will be filled. Smile America, Miami finally lost.

They may be worse next year as now the pressure is even greater on Lebron. You see how tentative he is in the 4th quarter, he just doesn't want to take the important shot. If the team doesn't change it's dynamic next year, it will probably be more of the same. If either Wade or Lebron agree to let the other one be the star and the other be the Pippen, then they have an excellent shot.

They are drinking tonight in Cleveland. Probably moreso than in Dallas.

Well, Lebron joined Miami because he knew he didn't have to be the man.  It's a flaw in character.  Most stars want to be the man.  Lebron, on the other hand, wanted to defer.  That says an awful lot.  And it's exactly what happened in this series.

I don't have the computer ability to post in my current state, but let it be said....



QUITNESS!

Must. Resist. Getting into. Silly. Arguments...

If LeBron hadn't totally quit after game 2, Heat win this series easy.  There is no argument.

Maybe, if Lebron hadn't have been outplayed by Brian FUCKING Cardinal in 2 games, maybe...just maybe... this would have been different.  In the end, Lebron had a chance and he shit the bed.  There is no other answer.  THERE ARE NO SHORT CUTS, LebBron.

what a clown.  complete collapse tonight, fuck you leBron.  enjoy never playing in another finals again, asshole.

Um, LeBron is 26 years old.  When Jordan was 26, he hadn't even sniffed a Finals.  LeBron has been there twice.

Calm down with the "He's done!" talk.

Please. Jordan never lost a Finals he appeared in, Lebron has lost two. Also the Eastern Conference was far more loaded and tougher than it is so far during Lebron's career. The Knicks, Celtics, Pacers, and Pistons were all capable of winning the title every year.
Lebron has been in the league for 7 years, Jordan already had a title by this same time.
Stop making excuses for this guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9BqUBYaHlM&feature=related

This is what Lebron (and the Heat) is all about. All Hype!

They can't help but make excuses for this guy. Even after what we just witnessed for the past week.

In 10 NBA Finals games now, Lebron has NEVER scored more than 25 pts in any game. And he averages 19pts in those games. The man is a choke artist!

After last nights game

Question: Does it bother you that so many people are happy to see you fail?

LeBron: "Absolutely not. Because at the end of the day all the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they've got to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They've got the same personal problems they had today. And I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things I want to do with my family and be happy with that."

Lebron..open mouth, insert foot!!

I wonder how many "LeBron sucks" threads the Haters need to complete their psychotherapy?

^^^

Now THAT is funny. Sweet stuff  'Stroke.

I wonder when I get to order my new Miami LeBrons jersey. I hope they can pick up LeBron in the offseason to compliment LeBron and LeBron. Coach LeBron has a lot on his plate this coming year.

Jordan lost a lot to the Pistons in the late 80's before he got "over the hump".

You guys heard about the new line of Lebron James lawn chairs?  They fold easily and are very easy to put away at home. 

I don't think this is a horrible statement. I am glad he lost but it doesn't change my life. He could have been an arse and said everyone who wanted him to loose just wishes they had his money!! 

Their money is already tied up and the players they had in role positions were playing for minimums basically (and were actually thought to be a steal for the money). So I am curious how you feel they will fill holes? Are they going to find better players to play for less money again?

Yet, Jordan did have a title by the time he spent the same amount of years in the NBA. I agree LeBron likely will return, but he will never get six titles. I think most everyone should agree these comparisons should stop.

Take the all star power, universal hate towards, and shocker of a loss of the 2007 Patriots and add in the arrogance and big mouth of Rex Ryan and you have the Miami Heat. 

Jordan didn't leave the Bulls to join the Pistons to get a title...that's the difference.

Well, I'm awake and sober this morning and have had a chance to see all the replays and analysis ESPN has to offer. 

I'm still amazed how little LeBron wanted to play in this game.  He was excited to be there in the 1st quarter, and may as well have left the arena after that.  The Heat wanted to get him involved, but he just wanted to pass the ball and stand around. He was mentally beaten and he got worse the longer each game progressed.  To me, it looked like he was afraid.  That's his legacy...for now.

In fact, I think if Lebron isn't on this team, they would have had a better chance of winning this series. 

I have no idea how anyone could be a fan of this guy after his repeated "performances" in the biggest moments of his career  (AKA this series).  He showed zero determination, zero tenacity, zero guts, zero heart, etc.  Lebron is like a pretty porcelain doll.  Nice to look at and marvel at the beauty, but fragile and empty on the inside.

The bright side for Lebron is that he has a chance to change all of that.  He's young and his book is not yet written.

But he did help orchestrate the trade that brought Dennis Rodman to the Bulls for Will Perdue.  That was such a lopsided trade, it isn't even funny. 

This is something that younger basketball fans don't realize.  Collusion among players to chase a title is nothing new.  A year after that trade for Rodman by the Bulls, the Rockets acquired Charles Barkley from the Suns to team with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.   And of course, we know about the Heat's moves in 2004 and the Celtics in 2007. 

It's not the fact he "left" (which, he was a Free Agent, which means he can "leave" if he wants to, which he did). That's the easy, boilerplate, explanation.

What people are upset about is the "The Decision" and then the "Pep Rally". Also, Chicago Bulls fans and New York Knicks fans and especially Cleveland loser fans are the three major markets that are upset and now "hate" the Miami Heat because they all got snubbed b/c they thought they were the ones who were going to win the LeBron James sweepstakes last off-season.

Let's take a look at Shaq - Shaq outright "left" the Orlando Magic to join the Lakers in 1996, after he "couldn't get it done' with the Magic. It took him 3 years to finally win out in L.A. Why wasn't there all this hatred for Shaq "leaving" the team that originally drafted him at the time? It's because the way he left wasn't like the way LeBron "left".

Maybe if Dan Gilbert knew how to build a team around a superstar like Kraus / Reinsdorf did back in the late 80's, then maybe LeBron wouldn't have chosen another team. Example: trading Scottie Pippen for Olden Polynice in 1987 (Jordan's 3rd season). Drafting Horace Grant that same year 10th overall. Then picking up the pieces between 3-peats and acquiring Ron Harper, Dennis Rodman, and signing Steve Kerr (and getting the "Croatian Michael Jordan", Toni Kukoc).

What move(s) did Dan Gilbert make to build a winner around LeBron James? Mo Williams? "Boo-Boo" Gibson? Zydrunus Ilgauskas? A fat, out-of-shapre, old Shaq? Antwan Jaimeson? Delonte West?

Now, with all of that being said, Michael Jordan will ALWAYS be #1, no matter what LeBron does (even if he wins the next 7 titles in a row and passes him in all-time scoring). It's just no question - Jordan is cut from a much different cloth than James - I knew that after he lost to the San Antonio Spurs in the finals 4 seasons ago.

There will never be another Michael Jordan - but Kobe Bryant is as close as you can get today to that.

So Jordan gets credit for losing before he got to the Finals?

Jordan's Bulls never beat Bird's Celtics in the playoffs, period.  They played two series and the Bulls were swept both times.
When the Pistons were good, Jordan beat them exactly once.  He beat them in the '91 conference finals and after that, they weren't even good enough to get to the conference finals any more.

And if your goal is to downplay LeBron's competition, Duncan's Spurs are light-years better than the Knicks and Pacers, and Dirk's Mavs are at least comparable (neither the Knicks nor the Pacers did anything equal to sweeping the heavily-favored defending champs).

26 is 26 is 26.  LeBron was in the league at 19 years old while Jordan was playing in college, and you're going to hold that against him?

This is absurd.  If LeBron had a) went to college instead of the NBA or b) lost in the conference finals twice more, your argument falls apart.  It's ridiculous to criticize a guy for doing better but not all the way better.  LeBron taking a garbage team to the '07 Finals is more than Jordan did with his early garbage teams.  Jordan does not get extra credit for losing to the Pistons or Celtics early.

If anything, the thing I would criticize LeBron for the most is the conference finals loss to Orlando two seasons ago.  But by your logic, LeBron would deserve more criticism for losing to LA than he would for losing to Orlando.

No, I am a Bulls fan and I never harbored any delusion that LeBron was coming to Chicago. All my friends that are Bulls fans felt the same way...it wasn't that he didn't come to the Bulls, it was the way everything came together. LeBron and "The Decision" (which I blame on ESPN as much as LeBron and his PR nightmare crew) seemed like a forgone conclusion when Bosh signed with Miami a day or two before. They tried to play it off like they didn't have their minds made up all along, which they did....they were always planning to play together. All these franchises did a lot of maneuvering for this free agent class on the basis that it wasn't a stacked deck...which it clearly was towards Miami. He basically held Cleveland hostage and slit their throats on national TV. And Chicago fans takes great pleasure in Miami losing because Chicago lost to them....not because LeBron didn't come there.

Completely agree, I wish people would stop with the comparison...they are not doing LBJ any favors by being compared to MJ.

I don't even think LBJ can be compared to Magic Johnson, to be honest. Magic Johnson had some unbelievable clutch moments (even as a youngster scoring 42 in game 6 in 1981 to win it for the Lakers, and the most famous hook shot ever in 1987).

LBJ is his own player who isn't really comparable to anyone in NBA modern history. We've never seen a 6'8", 260 lb NFL linebacker-sized guy play small forward / shooting guard / point guard (A "Point-shooting-forward", if you will).

Take a look at the rosters...the Celtics were a Juggernaut who had gone to the finals 4 straight years. Jordan had Charles Oakley as the 2nd best player on his team, who is basically a better Udonis Haslem. No one, not even Jordan could single handedly beat the Celtics at that time.

Same for the Pistons, they had gone to the finals 3 straight years, with the Bulls slowly growing and improving each year, until the Bulls finally took them out with a sweep in 91. The Pistons, even in their good years had to create the Jordan Rules specifically to deal with MJ.

My point is that Jordan never shrunk from a challenge and the moment. He thrived in the moment and took his game up a notch. LeBron had another top 5 player next to him and a top 10 big man and still shrunk when it mattered most.

And my point is that at the same age, Jordan had yet to do as much as LeBron has already (unless you are using the bizarre metric of losing in the Finals as somehow being worse than losing before the Finals).

With as many years of NBA experience, Jordan did far more than James.  You can't use age as a measuring stick when one went to college and one skipped over it.

I kinda see what Spider-Dan is saying here.

There is some difference between the # of years as a pro in relation to the age of that pro. Lebron James is only 26 years old - and yes Wade was like 24 when he won the MVP, but it's quite possible that James needed to lose yesterday to develop into a true closer and a true clutch player (we saw flashes in the Chicago series and in the Boston series, so the skill level and talent is definitely there).

Right now, LeBron's legacy is that he's a choker and can't "win the big one". They said the same thing about John Elway in the NFL (and, about Dirk). Is anyone calling Dirk a choker today? An NBA title has a nice way of pushing aside choke-jobs that occurred earlier in a career (and Dirk had some massively large ones).

What will LeBron's legacy be in 2016? 2020? It could be of an all-time great player with a few rings and Finals MVP's to his name, but we don't know that yet.

If the NBA labor situation gets resolved and we can play ball in 2011-2012, I don't think there is anyone that doesn't think LeBron and the Heat will be right back in the conference finals / NBA finals next years. Their best years are still yet to come.

That would only be true if you are claiming that Jordan gained nothing from his time in college.

And last I checked, the NBA does not have a cap on the number of seasons you can play; you play until you get too old to keep up.  Given that, the only real factor is age/health, which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not LeBron spent his late teens/early 20s playing for a college or playing pro.  Given that Lebron entered the league 3 years younger than Jordan did, and that Jordan took five years off during his career, it's silly to simply say that year x for Jordan should be the same as year x for LeBron.

I'm not saying Jordan gained nothing, but college ball is vastly different from pro ball.  James may continue to develop in to the guy who pulls it out in the clutch, he may not.  We don't know.  Right now, today, his image is of a self centered choker.  He is probably the most hated player in the NBA.  ESPN Sports Nation had a poll on who would you rather see win a ring, James or Nowitzki (is that spelled right?).  Only in Florida did the majority vote for James.  I don't remember the percentages overall.  I looked but could not find the poll on there anymore.

If public hate translated into basketball results, Kobe Bryant wouldn't have 5 rings.

I never said it did and it has nothing to do with the public perception of James.

Two-thirds of your post was discussing LeBron's image.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/miami-heat-lebron-james-dwyane-wade-chris-bosh-blow-up-the-big-three-061311

Jus for laughs. I do not fully agree with what he says, but it is amusing

Yes, and you replied about Kobe and rings.  I never said that the HEAT lost because a lot of people hate James. The title of the thread is "LeBron's Legacy", so I was speaking to how the general public feels about him right now.

Lebron came into the league at 19 going on 20. Jordan was 20 going on 21. Not a huge difference age wise there. Jordan played college with a loaded team and went to a crappy team that he carried into the playoffs in his rookie season in an Eastern conference that was much tougher than the conference Lebron has faced.
Jordan had to compete in the MVP race against Magic, Bird, Miller, etc in their primes. Lebron had to worry about Kobe.
To say the league that Jordan entered and conquered at a young age is similiar to this current league is crazy. How do you think Lebron would have faired in the league prior to the hand checking rule( aka the anti Knicks rule)?
Both Jordan and Lebron have earned their reputations in the early part of their careers. Now due to the hole he has dug as being weak and a choke artist, Lebrn has even a tougher road to hoe to become the heir to Jordan.

Totally agree. Bottom line is at this point, even if Lebron wins one championship it will mean little. Because one, of all the time he has choked before. And two, because he didn't do it being the best player on his team.

If the Heat would have won this series over Dallas, ok, Lebron could have made the case and argument he was "the man" and the reason they won. Right, wrong...you could make that case.  Now though with Dallas winning....Wade already won a ring without him, and after this series it comes off as Lebron holding Wade back now. Lebron's legacy is so badly beaten at this point winning 1 championship won't fix it.

Right now Lebron should not be compared to Micheal Jorden or Don Shula or Bill Belichick.

He should be compared to Rex Ryan.  Someone who runs his month and makes a big show but who hasn't actually won shit. 

 

The Miami Heat are very much like the NY Jets. Lot of talk about how great they are before any games are actually played. When it comes time for big games they come up short. Then afterwards they continue to talk like they accomplished something great and everyone who doesn't see things their way are idiots.

The Miami Heat are the NY Jets of the NBA!

Not even close.

LeBron was born on 12/30/84 and played his first NBA game on 10/29/03, making him 18yrs/10mos old.
Jordan was born on 2/17/63 and played his first NBA game on 10/26/84, making him 21yrs/8mos old.

Surely you jest.

CHI's record in Jordan's first three years: 38-44, 30-52, 40-42 (he made the playoffs all three years)
CLE's record in LeBron's first three years:  35-47, 42-40, 50-32 (he made the playoffs only in the third year)

I daresay that an Eastern Conference where a 30-52 team makes the playoffs is slightly worse than one in which a 42-40 team does not.

Jordan had to compete against Magic and Bird for MVP.  From 84-90, Jordan won 1 MVP, Bird won 2, Magic won 3.  Reggie freaking Miller is not worth discussing; that's like saying LeBron had to compete against Ray Allen.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that LeBron had to compete against Tim Duncan, Steve Nash, Kevin Garnett, and Dirk Nowitzki (you know, people who actually won the MVP).  If we are going to include people who didn't win, I'm happy to put Wade and Chris Paul in the mix.

How do you think Jordan would have fared in the Bill Russell era?

Let's not get crazy with the era excuses.

Are you saying you think LeBron is better than Jordan? Seems like your defense of LBJ, you are.

Like I said, and tex said LeBron should not have ever been mentioned in the same breath as Jordan....it is not doing him any favors being compared to the greatest of all time when he hasn't accomplished anything yet.

As I have said before, LeBron's legacy has not been cemented yet because he's still young. But he will always be questioned because of his late game struggles. And if he does win with Miami, and is carried by Wade, people will say it will be tainted.

I've delighted in hearing every single member of local and national radio and TV shows call Lebron out for witnessing his Quitness in action (or should it be "inaction?") this series.  His reputation is shot around the country today.  It will be an uphill battle to repair what was lost in front of more fans to watch an NBA title game in almost a decade.  I think it is likely people won't remember how great Dirk was in this series in the years to come as most fans will only remember how bad Lebron was when it counted.

Lebron could win a shit ton of championships as a tag-a-long, but his "legacy" will be tainted unless he goes out and wins a few playoff MVPs after his epic meltdown.

Any comparisons to Jordan are now silly and irrelevant.  Jordan NEVER quit on his team like Lebron did.

...and it continues. Jeeeeebus.

No, what I'm saying is that Jordan himself was not OMFG MICHAEL JORDAN at 26, so the talk of LeBron being a choker, a quitter, a failure... it's all premature.  At the age of 26, LeBron has done SIGNIFICANTLY more in the NBA than Jordan had at 26.  And it's not really even close.

^^^

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/lordthundergod/Random%20pics/2wbxo9z.gif)

Unfortunately, it all falls on deaf ears.

The truth hurts but it must be said.  Speaking of deaf ears, though... :P

Saw some stuff on ESPN today that blew my mind. Lebron only scored 18 points in all of the Finals 4th quarters. As if that wasn't insane enough, his Finals PPG average was the biggest dropoff from his regular season PPG average in NBA history amongst players who average more than 25 PPG aka "Superstars".

It's amazing to admit this, but I think the Heat have a better shot at the title next year if they dump Lebron and pick up a solid role player like Jason Terry.

No because you have conviently picked the one fact to make your whole arguement i.e. age, as if he is some immature high school kid incapable of making rational decisions. You completely ignore the fact that Lebron has been in the league for seven years now. In this timeframe he has established a legacy of overhyped MVP player who shines during the regular season to garner the MVP, but quits on his team when it counts the most, and cannot be counted on to take the big shot or even want the big shot everytime.
By that many years in the league Jordan was well on his way to unparralled greatness. You want to talk about Lebron's career and his future, yet you push away all comparisons to Jordan's career at the same point( 7 years in) and start crying about age as if being in his 20's equals not mature.
Hell Kobe showed bigger balls before age 26 when given the chance to shine and prove his worth and not just be a complimentary "star"
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If LeBron wants to accept all the comparisions to Jordan at this point in his career, he actually has to be able to handle the comparison of his career at this point( 7 years) to Jordan's at the same point, and by that score he fails.
You are correct in that his career may improve greatly over the next few years, but remember Jordan's career also skyrocketed after the 7 year mark too ( Three peat and Finals MVP) so LeBron has a canyon to crawl out of.

BUT....Jordan's mom didn't bang Delonte West either. DEBATE OVER!

Look, if LeBron leads his team to a championship (e.g. he shows up in the 4th quarter of the Finals and clearly is the factor), all of the previous choke-jobs get forgotten about. Like I said earlier, no-one today is calling Dirk a choker, but until the end of game 6, that was always a question, due to two historically-large choke-jobs in 2006 and 2007.

Same for LeBron. Instead of "choke-artist", the conversation will turn to "tainted" (e.g. plays with Wade and Bosh) if he wins it all.

One thing I'd like to know - LeBron clearly has massive amounts of basketball talent (no-one is arguing that, right?). He clearly can take over a game in the regular-season (we've seen it the past 7 years). He clearly can step up in round 1, round 2, and the Eastern Conference finals and take over and flat-out dominate (we've seen that not only this season but we've seen flashes of it in Cleveland and who can forget the way he completely took over that Pistons game where he scored like 25 points in a row the year they went to the Finals).

So what I want to know is why is there a mental block upstairs on LeBron for when the going gets really tough? We've seen him check out last season in Cleveland against the Celtics in the playoffs, we've seen him get completely and utterly shut-down against the Spurs in the 2007 Finals, and we've seen him completely tank in the 4th quarters of this NBA finals. It's not like those teams are doing anything overly special to contain LeBron - after all, the Bulls this season were a lock-down defensive unit and LeBron just smoked them when it counted (same with the Boston Celtics as well - both the Celtics and Bulls are much better defensively than the Mavericks).

So, what gives? When the going is somewhat-tough, he shines, but when it's completely tough, he doesn't? Is this a maturity issue, or did he just need to get completely hated by everyone not in South Florida to learn how to overcome this?

That's what I want to know.

Lebron is like A-Rod. Both incredibly talented athletes who have been called the greatest ever, but both are known as terrible chokers. Something snapped inside of A-Rod in 2009 and he had one of the most clutch postseasons in history en route to a title. Something has to snap inside of Lebron as well for him to get over his mental block.

As if those weren't enough comparisons, both have almost never stepped in front of a microphone without saying something stupid.

But Jordan had done significantly more in the same amount of time in the NBA.

But Micheal Jorden didn't do an hour long ESPN special declaring himself the greatest basketball player of all time at age 26 either. 

Any talk about Lebron's legacy is premature.  It is still possible that he wins the next the several championships.

Of all the talk about a HEAT collapse, they were close to sweeping the series.  One basket here or there, and the HEAT are the champions, and this is a different conversation.  I think we're being a bit too results based, this early in his career.

Could you point me to the link of this hour long special where he made that statement? I recall one where he declared where he was going to play ball after he left Cleveland, but I must have missed the show where he made the "I'm the greatest player of all time" declaration.

Perhaps you should read my post.

bsmooth was saying that Jordan had to compete against hall-of-famers for his MVPs, while LeBron had to compete against chumps.  My point was that a) LeBron also had to compete against great players, and b) when Jordan was competing against Magic and Bird in their primes, he won 1 MVP to their 5.

Furthermore, I was not saying that you can't compare players to other players of a different era (in the fashion that we have been doing it; namely, how well they did against their contemporary peers).  I was saying that it is silly to ask, "What would LeBron have done if he played in the '80s?", because you can easily turn that around and ask what Jordan would have done in the '60s, or what Wilt would have done in the '90s.  It's perfectly valid to compare players on how well they did against their competition, and it's arguably the only way to compare players across eras in a league with such drastic rule changes as the NBA has had.

Once again:

Does the NBA have a cap on the number of seasons one can play?

The number of seasons LeBron has played (with respect to his legacy) is irrelevant.  The limiting factor is not the number of seasons he is allowed to play, but rather his age/health.  And right now, he is exactly the same age as Jordan was at 26, by definition.

So barring an unforeseen catastrophe, LeBron has about as much time remaining in his career as Jordan did at 26.   And unless LeBron takes a 5-year break from playing basketball, he has the opportunity to do A GREAT DEAL MORE than Jordan did.

It's ironic that the LBJ haters have chosen Jordan as the point of comparison.  Using their logic, if we were sitting around evaluating a 26-year-old Jordan in 1989 and comparing him to, say, Magic Johnson (who had 3 titles and 2 Finals MVPs at age 25, including one of each in his rookie season), we would have to conclude that Jordan was a one-dimensional scorer who would never amount to anything.

That isn't irony. James fans are saying he is the greatest. There is only one greatest and that was MJ and James isn't there yet. MJ supporters didn't choose this comparison the James supporters did with their claim.

And yet the Heat could also have been swept.  The Mavs led most of the way in game 1.  They led at the end of the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd, and let it slip away with 5 minutes left in the game.  All this after missing shot after uncovered shot.  Mavs probably should have won game 3 also, but didn't.  After being so dominant in the final minutes of game 1, the Heat were the exact opposite in the closing minutes of every single game afterward.  The biggest reason is that no Heat player could play in the clutch moments.  Meanwhile, Dallas was the most clutch team I've ever seen in the final moments of every game since game 4 in the first round.  They let one lead get away from them and learned from their mistakes.  The Heat cannot say the same.  The Mavs learned from their mistakes in game 1 of the Finals.  The Heat never bothered to recover from theirs.

In reality this is a result based sport.  The only thing that matters is what the scoreboard says at the end of the game.  The Heat were thoroughly beaten in this series.  Not just on the scoreboard, but in their heads...especially Lebron.

I think it was when AROD got caught for cheating and hit the lowest of lows one could hit, he took all the pressure off of himself and he just played. Lebron by continuing to speak and say stupid thing after stupid thing keeps the spotlight and pressure on him and only makes it worse. I don't see him breakingthrough like AROD did anytime soon.

I also think if Lebron breaks through it won't be in Miami either, its too toxic of an atmosphere now. I think he bails on Miami in 3 years and wins his ring somewhere else.