Going
Full
LeBron
Words by Kris Fenrich
Art by Austin Gilmore
As the current Warriors continue to pile up records at a historic pace and the trend of pro basketball moves towards ball movement, spacing, and pace, a number of fans and media stand with arms open welcoming the latest trend. Pure, selfless basketball with sharing and equality; it says something about us, about our values and preferences.
With Kobe shuffling into retirement, the days of the ball dominant wing going one-on-one seems to be receding from view along with back-to-the-basket post play and mid-range games. But being ball dominant isn’t an indicator of selfishness. Dribbling through your legs for five seconds and firing up a contested pull-up jumper doesn’t mean that you’re what’s wrong with the game.
As long as circumstances result in injuries and poorly-constructed rosters that lack depth or balance, we’ll have workloads, stress loads, scoring loads that skew towards the mentally resilient, the overly confident, the physically unique, and the frighteningly talented. And we’ll have the selfish me-first players as well. Sacrificing self for the greater good of the team is unequivocally beautiful with opportunities for harmony and cohesion – and that’s exactly what the 2015 Cavs were without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love last year; a collection of men willing to adapt and subjugate their roles in deference to the greater good of the team and the best player on the planet.
What made LeBron James’s 2015 Finals run so captivating was the feeling of possibility, even if it was a fleeting puff dream of chalk smoke, that certain individuals, if freed from the confines of the system, could tap into their potential and achieve the impossible. I hoped and hoped and wasn't disappointed. Even in defeat there was victory for the memory, for the experience. I wanted so badly for the Cavs to triumph not out of any loathing for teamwork or because I'm a Cavs fan, but to challenge the truisms of this great game.
Friedrich Nietzsche no doubt had basketball and Jerry West, Rick Barry, Allen Iverson, and LeBron in mind when he wrote, "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
*****
Remember when LeBron James told us back in 2010 that he could “win the scoring title … every single year?” He wasn’t lying, but despite his control freak tendencies, Bron’s never been a guy whose game is predicated or defined by scoring. How many other players could lead the league in scoring given an environment where the team needs, or better yet, demands that the player dominate offensively?
In the right setting, there could be 20-30 players capable of shouldering a load that manifests itself as a league leader, but only a handful of players are capable of shouldering that load in a way that’s beneficial to the team or a way that gives the team its best chance to win – and it’s not just about scoring, but
play-making, defending, producing as much as humanly possible, balance be damned. When the coach or team lifts all constraints off of an individual we’re left with the opportunity to realize raw, individual potential and skies without ceilings. And while so-called ball hogs or gunners are unloved and criticized by much of the basketball-loving world, there’s a beauty in the most John Henry of senses with a man forced into an environment where he and his mates are overmatched and forced to unequally distribute the burden away from the many to the one.
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