The LeBron Debate

I'm getting a little annoyed about all the crap LeBron James has been catching this week.
Here's a quick recap and the reason for my annoyance.
1) LeBron leads the team in scoring and assists during the regular season and is second in rebounding. After winning the previous two NBA MVP awards, he is second behind Chicago's Derrick Rose.
2) LeBron carries Miami past Boston and Chicago and into the NBA Finals, despite Dwyane Wade basically not showing up for either series.
3) Through 4 games of the NBA Finals, Wade is the team's best player but the Heat is locked in a 2-2 series with Dallas.
4) After Game 3, which ends with LeBron making a behind-the-back pass to Chris Bosh for the winning basket, the media and the LeBron haters say this is "D-Wade's team" because Wade led the team in scoring, and that LeBron only joined Miami so he could ride Wade's coattails to multiple championships.
Then, after he admittedly played far too passively in the Game 4 loss, said haters blamed it all on James. (I guess it's only Wade's team when they win.)
To someone who has been a LeBron fan since he came into the league eight years ago, or to someone who enjoys common sense, this is quite annoying. It's especially annoying since the main hating seems to be coming from the Kobe Bryant fan club.
I posted something about LeBron the other day on Facebook, and the Kobe lovers came out of the woodwork to claim that their guy was superior. Never mind that my post had absolutely nothing to do with Kobe. I guess these guys are used to watching Kobe in the NBA Finals, and now that he is old and irrelevant and not playing in the Finals, they have nothing to do but troll Facebook and bash anyone who likes another player.
Obviously Kobe is a great basketball player. More important -- to the media and his fan club anyway -- he fits the "Jordan mold." He shoots the ball 30 times a game, when he's on he's unstoppable, and he demands the ball at the end of every game.
There's nothing wrong with that. Jordan and Kobe, in that order, are the top two shooting guards to ever play the game. They take over games, and lots of times they win them. But the general deification of Jordan, and to a lesser extent Kobe, has caused people to think that shooting 30 times is the only way to be good at basketball.
Everyone wants to compare LeBron to Jordan and Kobe, but he's simply a different kind of player. Judging LeBron only by how many points he scores or how many pretty fade-away 18-footers he hits at the end of games is like going to an art gallery and only looking at the frames.
LeBron's never going to stack up to those guys simply in terms of scoring. But he's better than either of them as a rebounder and a passer, and his playmaking ability is what makes him different from anyone who's ever played the game.
The whole "decision" thing this past offseason put a bulls-eye on James' back, and his every move has been scrutinized this season. Lots of people who were indifferent or liked him before now hate him, and they're quick to pile on when he underperforms in the playoffs.
But let's take a closer look at what a "bad" game looks like for LeBron and Kobe. LeBron was 3-for-11 for 8 points, but he also had nine rebounds and seven assists. In his worst playoff game ever, he almost had a triple-double!
Let's look at a bad game for Kobe, this one coming in last year's NBA Finals. Bryant was 6-for-24 for 23 points. When Kobe plays bad, he still scores 23 points because he took 24 shots. He shot a lower field goal percentage than LeBron did, but it doesn't look nearly as bad as scoring just 8 points in an NBA Finals game. Thus LeBron becomes a much easier target.
In team sports, players get a lot of credit and a lot of blame for things that are out of their control. Derek Jeter gets lauded as a winner and "The Captain," but how many titles would he have won in Pittsburgh? He got lucky to have spent his whole career as a Yankee, and his reputation has been boosted mightily because of it.
Kobe got drafted by Charlotte, but was traded to the Lakers. How many titles do you think he would have won in Charlotte? I'm going to say zero.
LeBron got drafted by Cleveland, a city that hasn't won anything in any sport since FM radio was invented. He single-handedly beat Detroit (the same team that has just beaten Kobe AND Shaq in the Finals) and took the Cavaliers to the Finals. That, to me, is the most impressive thing LeBron will ever do in his career. Nobody has come that close to winning a title with no help. Yet Kobe fans and LeBron haters labeled him a choker who couldn't win the big one.
Like LeBron, Jordan couldn't get past that final hurdle by himself in Chicago for the first several years of his career. Then the Bulls drafted Scottie Pippen and hired Phil Jackson to coach, and suddenly Jordan is the greatest player of all time.
I keep hearing the word "legacy" in regards to LeBron. Kobe fans love to talk about his. LeBron haters love to say he's destroying his legacy by teaming up with Wade or by having an off game in the Finals.
Here's my take on each player's legacy.
Kobe is a Hall-of-Fame guard who was the best player in the game at one time. That's no small accomplishment. He's won five titles, but his me-first attitude ran Shaq out of town and cost him at least two more (which ironically would have put him ahead of his idol, Jordan). That attitude also led to him being charged with rape. Attitudes are things we can control, as opposed to draft-day trades that happen to land you in Los Angeles with the richest franchise in the league (or in Cleveland with one of the poorest). Nevertheless, Kobe deserves credit for a tireless work ethic and a will to win, two more things he had control over.
LeBron's been getting ridiculous hype since he was 13. His high school games were on ESPN. Most child-star actors or athletes end up being disappointments, addicts, or both, but LeBron has been every bit as good as advertised for eight seasons, all without a single DUI or domestic issue. The worst thing he's ever done is hold a press conference. He's the best player in the game today, and he's going to win his titles, whether he gets one this year or not.
Instead of just looking at a point total or piling onto a guy because he held a press conference, appreciate LeBron's game for what it is. Don't compare apples to oranges. LeBron's game is much more similar to Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson than Jordan or Kobe, and those guys all played in different eras, which brings up an entirely different debate.
These NBA Finals have been amazing. Every game is coming down to the final seconds. Let's focus on that, instead of making irrelevant Kobe/LeBron legacy comparisons 10 years before LeBron's career is over.