Paper Longer Than Pippen's Arms, but Not Long Enough to Box with God

I've been surprised by how much I've been thinking about LeBron's Decision, but perhaps I shouldn't be, since in the wake of one of the boldest and most landscape-shifting moves in the history of professional sports, there's a lot to think about. Besides just the basketball itself, which I'll have a few things to say about at the end, LBJ's move has drawn the kinds of robust howls from the corners of conventionality that often get me thinking about the ways in which others see the world.

Many of things that I think about The Decision, I already wrote as a couple of comments over at Joey's place. Unfortunately, with the update at Straight Bangin', they seem to have been ethered.

Some recent quotations have, however, given me some impetus to re-articulate my views in slightly different ways.

In a July 17 article in the Arizona Republic, we learn that "NBA legends are rolling their eyes at LeBron." In the article we're given this discussion between Jordan and Barkley:

"Charles, what would you have done if Pip (Scottie Pippen) and I called you up and asked you to come join us in Chicago?" Jordan asked.

A look of disgust flashed on Barkley's face. Not in a million years, he scoffed, and his colorful language made Jordan smile with pleasure. 

It was nothing more than a humorous exchange between close friends on the driving range of the American Century Championship. Yet it spoke volumes of how the NBA's old guard views LeBron James and his ignoble departure to Miami. 

"Let me just tell you this," Barkley said. "Mike and I are in 100 percent agreement on this. If you're the two-time defending NBA MVP, you don't leave anywhere. They come to you. That's ridiculous. 

"I like LeBron. He's a great player. But I don't think in the history of sports you can find a two-time defending MVP leaving to go play with other people."

… 

To former NBA legends, the move has diminished James' profile. It's how the self-appointed "Chosen 1" has taken the easy way out, leaving his home to join another established star instead of leading a supporting cast up the mountain. In the process, he's breaking the protocol set by most great players. 

"It's disappointing from a competition standpoint," Barkley said. "You want to beat these guys. Sports are all about competition, and you want to beat the best. You want to beat Kobe (Bryant). You want to beat Dwyane Wade. You want to beat the Celtics, who beat you last year. That's what competition is about."

Shortly after that, MJ himself decided to weigh in on the topic:

"There's no way, with hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team,'" Jordan said after finishing tied for 22nd in the American Century Championship golf tournament in Stateline, Nev. "But that's ... things are different. I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."

Magic soon followed with similar thoughts:

"We didn't think about it 'cause that's not what we were about," Johnson said at Baruch College in New York, according to Bloomberg News. "From college, I was trying to figure out how to beat Larry Bird." 

… 

Johnson added on Tuesday: "It was never a question in our mind because nobody has ever done that."*

In just those few quoted remarks, I think those legends reveal more about their own limitations than they provide insight into or meaningful contrast with LeBron's actions. Indeed, they tell us a lot about what's wrong generally with the way The Decision is being characterized, particularly by an older generation of NBA players who come off looking worse for their efforts.

To begin, Barkley's statements reveal one of the many of the reasons that, in the end, he's a Hall of Fame loser. According to him, during his time as a player, a middle-school-gym-coach sense of pride was more important to him than clear thinking about what was necessary to win. Rather than survey the league, analyze what would be necessary to defeat the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, or Bulls, and put himself into a position not only to compete with MJ, but to actually defeat him, Barkley chose to sit on his hands and let team management try to build around him, trade him away, and then try to build around him again. Such passivity is a sure sign of loserdom and the utter absence of imagination. In another article, Sir Charles said that it's fine to chase rings later in one's career, which to me, only makes him look like more a fool in light of his passivity during his prime.

Thus, both Barkley and the author of the first article imply that LeBron will never achieve true greatness; LBJ has revealed himself to be too weak to be the GOAT. As the author puts it, in a now over-used pun, LBJ will never be a true king. The nature of a great king, however, is not to battle interminably against all opponents without ever considering one's own capacities or those of one's opponents. In a justly ridiculed statement, Donald Rumsfeld once (wrongly) told the nation that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you choose. Strategists have told us for millennia that, to the contrary, that when preparing for battle, one should assess the capacities of one's own army and improve them in light of your opponents'; scout and choose the terrain of battle if you can; learn your opponents' strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies; and strike appropriate alliances. Looking at the Cavs as constituted and as the team might realistically have been reconstituted in James's prime, he might well have concluded that it would be impossible, no matter how well he played, to defeat the Magic, Celtics, Lakers, Mavs, and other teams with multiple all-star caliber players. He might further have concluded that joining with Wade and Bosh was the path that would maximize his chances of a championship. Judged in that light, LBJ's decision to go to Miami could more readily be described as the result of a clear-eyed assessment of the best teams in the league and necessities of defeating them. In other words, it looks like the action of a man who, in other circumstances, would be respected for making smart choices and taking control of his own destiny.

Which brings is to the issue of courage and cowardice implied in all of those three legends' comments and nearly every media critique. To them, it was the coward's way out to team up with Wade and Bosh. I think exactly the opposite is true. James risked nothing by staying in Cleveland. He could have been this generation's KG, futilely battling for a decade and winning nothing; if he'd done that, the same three legends and all of the media critics would have used his loyalty to excuse the failure. He could have left to team management the decisions about whom he would play with or where he would play. But he didn't. He made his own choices, right or wrong. In doing so, LeBron risked everything--the love of his home state, his public profile, his legacy--to embark on a completely uncharted path in the NBA and perhaps in all of professional sports. There's no existing narrative to explain this move. There's no model to follow. There's no cover to hide beneath. This is something entirely new. A new story. A new power dynamic. A new model. Creating/doing something new is one of humanity's bravest acts. It's fraught with the potential for failure and ridicule. It has historically turned potential heros into nobodies. But it's also how we advance, how we progress. And LeBron was the only one with the guts to chart this course.

Whereas Barkley, in his comments reveals himself to be a coward and inadvertently explains why he's a loser, MJ and Magic (and Barkley too, to a lesser degree) demonstrate an alarming lack of awareness about their own legacies. Each's comments suggest that they never played with anyone of the quality of Wade and Bosh, which is simply preposterous. TrueHoop has a good post about the quality of players on Magic's teams, compared to LBJ's. Basketball-Reference has explained how good MJ's team was without him in 1994, and he had an equally good group in 1995-98. Do I really need to mention how many great players Bill Russell ran with?

So, it's simply not the case that MJ and Magic were playing with five guys from the Y. They arrived on teams with good players, and good players were brought to them. Any complaints about The Decision based on playing with potential competitors sounds merely like a gripe about process and not a legitimate objection to result.

If James playing with Wade and Bosh is the same result as MJ with Pippen and Rodman, does The Decision really imperil LeBron's legacy in the way that Barkley et al. imply? First, let's consider that the Triptych may win nothing, but that it might also win five champships (to make up a number). Many have posited that Wade will be the leader of this team and thus the one to receive the credit for those Larry O'Briens. Perhaps those people missed LBJ being the best player in the L for the last 2-3 years. If they didn't, do they actually expect that to change with the scenery? Wade might have some glorious moments in those future Heat runs, but LeBron will always be the best player on the court and the one driving those teams. So if those hypothetical championships include a couple more regular season MVPs for James and several finals MVPs, how can he not be in contention for GOAT status? Someone still has to explain convincingly how it is that LBJ becomes Pippen in this situation. LeBron might not be MJ, but neither is he Pip; he's something entirely new, so applying the Bulls narrative to the Heat is simply inapt,absent more compelling proof.

Oh, I forgot, it's because LeBron gave up alpha status when he went to someone else's team. It's quite bizarre to me that no one wants to consider the more reasonable conclusion that Wade gave up his team when he begged James to come to Miami. That he ceded his leadership role when he acknowledged that he needed someone better than himself to put the Heat back on the championship path. Or that the three will, as part of this new model, craft a heretofore unimagined example of athletic leadership that will not automatically preclude James from achieving GOAT status. Again, the criticisms are trapped in old narratives that The Decision simply destroyed.

And it's the destruction of old models that brings into relief one of the aspects of this that few want to discuss: power. LeBron has it, and it seems that the bulk of the sports commentariat is repulsed by the idea that he actually used it. If you listen to the comments from Oscar Robertson and Clyde Frazier about The Decision--two guys who fought for free agency and knows what it mean--you'll hear about now-repudiated ideas of competitiveness, but you'll also hear recognition that James understands what they accomplished. MJ and Magic used free agency to push the envelope of compensation and to make demands behind the scenes. But neither of them could imagine using its power to completely reshape the landscape of a team--and perhaps even the league--around themselves. Which is unfortunate, because they should recognize that LBJ is actually paying them the deepest kind of respect by advancing the power of players. You could talk about this in terms of labor-management power balance, or the ways in which the raw exercise of power by corporate executives both repulses and attracts Americans, but you can't deny that James orchestrated over several years a situation in which he maximized the power of his own free agency, and that he then exercised that power in a way that, in other contexts, might be perceived as crude, but that would be respected. I suggest that readers consider what it means that they have a problem with the accumulation and exercise of power by a young, wealth, black man.

LeBron's exercise of power can be seen in another way, as well: as I write this, news is breaking that Chris Paul wants out of New Orleans because he wants to follow LeBron's example and play with another superstar. LBJ shifted the landscape this summer and made other player see new possibilities. Some may reject those possibilities but others will embrace it. Opening up new options for others similarly situated is power.

I don't want to end without writing a few words about the spectacle of The Decision. Even those who have made some of my same points nevertheless seem to think it a prerequisite that they say that the ESPN spectacle was simply gross. I think that's a cop out. All marketing is gross. But again, James did something new. His people negotiated a deal with ESPN to turn the announcement into a money-making opportunity. In other words, LBJ took care of his people. He also began a partnership with ESPN, which may pay dividends in the future, but also probably helped blunt some of the criticism that might otherwise have flowed from the network. And similar to free agency, LeBron advanced what those before him had started. Even if the special itself wasn't the most compelling program in history, it ensured that LeBron would be one of the most discussed issues of the summer. Kevin Durant may be satisfied with a simple tweet that he extended his contract, but he obviously doesn't have larger ambitions than basketball. LeBron does. Using the media to further them doesn't make him any different from any other corporate executive. Which certainly doesn't make him the person that many would like him to be, but does bear out what LeBron has always said about himself and his desires.

And so finally let's talk about basketball. I became a fan of the game watching MJ's Bulls. I hadn't been a fan of any professional sport for probably 10 years before that. In 1991, I really saw what they were doing, and it was beautiful. Since 1998, I don't know that I've seen the game played so gorgeously at both ends. The 1995 Suns were amazing, the We Believe Warriors were spectacular. But the Bulls were simply beautiful. The possibility of what LBJ, Wade, and Bosh can do on the court has me as excited as I've been about the game in nearly 20 years. The possibility of the quality of the basketball gets mentioned in other analyses, but it doesn't get the attention it's due. In the end, it's the only thing that matters.

* I give Magic some credit for at least acknowledging that what LBJ pulled off was something entirely new. Something that he, Barkley, and MJ simply didn't … couldn't … imagine--not something that they considered and rejected. Depending on how you look at it, that's recognition either of the limitations of their imaginations or of the limits of their power. Of course, they expanded the power of NBA free agents, and in light of that, they should, like Oscar Robinson and Clyde Frazier, be celebrating.