Lebron James is the best and most valuable player in basketball by a sizable margin. He was the real MVP last year. That said, I was a little surprised to see how thoroughly Bron-bron dominated the MVP voting considering some of the dumb arguments that have been made against him, i.e. Kobe’s really the MVP because Lebron tore up inferior Eastern Conference competition, etc.
I happened to be listening to Sporting News radio the other day when Peter Brown (a consistent dunce) was arguing that Lebron was something of a fraud because he had shot poorly from the perimeter in the playoffs.
It’s not necessary to fully parse the absurdity of that, but let’s just point out that the thing Kobe does best is score, and Lebron scores more and shoots less. That was true last year, and it was true this year. Again: scores more, shoots less.
Lebron is also a clearly better rebounder and a better passer. He’s also - subjectively but clearly, it says here - a better teammate and better at the make-your-teammates-better thing.
Understand, Kobe is a great, great basketball player. A warrior. If you need a basket and you just want to give a guy the ball and get out of his way, Kobe may be as good as anyone ever except Jordan. That’s essentially what happened, remember, at the end of the the Olympic gold-medal game last summer.
But Kobe, now and forever, I believe, has a little bit of that Allen Iverson thing: there’s a small part of him at his absolute essence, his core, that doesn’t fully understand team. Iverson’s ten times worse in this regard, but still.
Lebron is also now at least as good as Kobe defensively. That used to be element that made it a real argument, but no longer.
This isn’t a definitive MVP barometer, but take Kobe off the Lakers and they’re still a playoff team. Take Lebron off the Cavs and they’re the Knicks. The Cavs are utterly built around Lebron in the way the Bulls used to be built around Jordan, but Lebron doesnt have a sidekick anything like Pippen, and his team won 66 games.
Lebron is the best combination of power, skill and athleticism ever. I know I’m rambling, but my sense is too many people don’t get what they’re seeing in this kid- one of the five best players ever already, and he’s just getting started.
