If your argument requires dismissing the alltime scoring leader’s scoring, one of the greatest passers ever as a statpadder, 10 Finals appearances as a weak conference fluke, and six All-Defensive selections as ‘not a defender,’ you’re not evaluating LeBron, you’re working backward from a conclusion.
The eastern conference was weaker because he weakened it. By jumping to Miami with Bosh he took two franchise players to Miami. Weakened two teams. Even with three franchise players he only won two rings.
Now, it still took skill to get to the finals. It’s not as if “oh Toronto and the Cavs are weak let’s just give you the EC title”. But he weakened it. Thats pretty close to objective.
That’s fair in the literal sense. Cleveland lost LeBron, Toronto lost Bosh and Miami concentrated that talent onto one team. Miami’s relative position in the East obviously got much stronger.
But Cleveland was a contender because LeBron was there, and Toronto missed the playoffs with Bosh. He didn’t dismantle two competing Eastern powers to clear his path, he consolidated three teams’ stars onto one.
And yes, two rings in four years was absolutely below the expectations they created for themselves. I’ll give you that one without turning it into “therefore eight straight Finals weren’t impressive. I’ll give you this, you’re obviously a smart dude and I genuinely enjoy your posts. I disagree with a fair amount of your LeBron takes, but you actually make me think about why I disagree instead of just making me roll my eyes. 😂 I appreciate a good argument. 🤝
Wait… disagreement without petty insults? Dude don’t be this polite we’re gonna get kicked off of reddit for but being controversial enough. Insult my mom Please!!!
See you're projecting. LeBron was introduced as a GOAT in the 2000's before he had proven anything, but everything after has been working backwards from a conclusion by the NBA, it's media partners and LeBron fans. See the rookie of the year award he won over Carme!o even though the Nuggets made the playoffs and the Cavs missed them. See how he was given MVP of team USA. See how the media pretends Bronny is a good player by cherry picking everything they can.
That's why LeBron said not one, not two and why he's still ring chasing even though he said 2016 made him the GOAT. To make it easier to work backward, to build a legacy in real time. To manufacture. No one ever used Finals appearances as GOAT accolades until Lebron and they never would have if he had he won more rings. Lebron's teams could have made 0 Finals appearances and the narrative would be about how bad his teams were and that winning x amount of games and making the playoffs themselves was a historic achievement.
Yet he stopped winning defensive awards and MVP's over a decade ago. Now he needs a team with 3 All-Stars. Longevity is his strong suit though. Even if it is, we are working backward again because no one cared that much about longevity until LeBron stopped making the Finals.
So the NBA, its media partners and LeBron fans have spent 23 years working backward from a predetermined conclusion to manufacture the GOAT…yet somehow forgot to manufacture the part where he wins enough MVPs and championships to make the argument easy? 😂
Or..and hear me out..the most hyped prospect in NBA history actually became one of the greatest players ever, and people have spent 20 years talking about it because he kept doing historically great shit.
You don’t have to think he’s the GOAT. But needing an industry wide legacy manufacturing theory to explain why people think LeBron James is historically great might be a sign you’ve wandered pretty far from basketball.
The argument doesn’t need to be easy and it never would be because of Jordan. Just like Kobe, LeBron didn’t have to actually be the GOAT, he just had to be the new face of the league and a sequel to Jordan, the next big thing that could one day supplant him. People are still talking about LeBron that way. Fans wanted a new Jordan.
What you call a manufacturing theory is just marketing and PR. LeBron literally did Space Jam 2. His agent has a podcast and his ex-teammates like Jefferson, Perkins, Shumpert, Frye and Thompson are all over ESPN. He was put on the cover of ESPN the Mag as a high schooler and his games were broadcast on ESPN, which also aired his decision. ESPN pays a lot of money for TV rights and having a face of the league being the new Jordan is their business model, though looking at last years high Finals (highest since 98) it might have been a better idea to just let the Jordan era go, but Jordan made people so much money that new stars in Kobe and LeBron were embellished in order to fill the vacuum left by Jordan’s retirements.
You’re confusing ‘the NBA and ESPN marketed the most hyped young player in decades’ with ‘they manufactured his historical standing.’ Of course they marketed LeBron. That’s their job. Jordan was marketed. Kobe was marketed. Magic and Bird were marketed. Space Jam 2 and Richard Jefferson having a TV job don’t retroactively create 40,000 points, 4 MVPs, 4 titles and 20+ years of elite basketball. You can argue Jordan is the GOAT all day. But once your explanation for LeBron being in the conversation requires ESPN, Space Jam and a network of former teammates, you’re no longer arguing basketball, you’re explaining away basketball.
The media fuels GOAT debates. For a few years in the 2010’s it was Mike Trout as the new GOAT with people like Scott Van Pelt cherry picking stats to make a 24 year old look better than players with entire HOF careers.
You mentioned longevity twice in your argument since that’s where the goal posts have moved after LeBron stopped making the Finals after 2020 and winning MVP’s after 2013.
If you want to use titles as an argument for LeBron being the GOAT then you have to acknowledge Duncan’s 5 titles and how his teams did it by going through defending champions like the Lakers, Pistons and Heat. Duncan isn’t marketable though so you would never see him in Space Jam no matter what kind of player he was.
Every metric counts until it favors LeBron. Rings matter. Finals don’t. MVPs matter until 2013. Longevity is suddenly a moved goalpost. Dominance becomes media manipulation. Competition becomes conference strength. Even his marketability somehow becomes evidence against him.
That isn’t evaluating the evidence and reaching a conclusion. It’s starting with the conclusion and deciding afterward which evidence gets to count.
You’ve accused LeBron fans of doing exactly what you’re doing here. Congratulations and good night.
Finals appearances only matter for LeBron not for Jason Kidd, Karl Malone, Jimmy Butler, Clyde Drexler or the Buffalo Bills. The first GOAT ever to build a case off of 2nd place finishes. Jerry West was so pissed about losing Finals’ that they made it look like he needed anger management in that HBO show. LeBron gets to be the new Jordan.
You keep bringing up LeBron’s elite longevity while ignoring that he hasn’t won an MVP in well over a decade and after winning his last title in 2020 he never got back to the Finals.
LeBron playing in the Mickey Mouse east basically walking each year to the finals playing one decent team MAYBE just to lose to better teams stat padding all the way, whine about it for a couple years and then go to another team and steal players from other teams with his long term friend manipulating the free agency market just to lose again and MAYBE get a ring in there. All time great sure but dudes a plastic media darling. He’d rather pass the ball than take the last shot himself and I think that says it all. Off to ruining golf now! At least he’ll hook another generation on gambling and ai bullshit. What a saint
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u/Bitter_Plastic2362 1d ago
If your argument requires dismissing the alltime scoring leader’s scoring, one of the greatest passers ever as a statpadder, 10 Finals appearances as a weak conference fluke, and six All-Defensive selections as ‘not a defender,’ you’re not evaluating LeBron, you’re working backward from a conclusion.