If LeBron James is so great, why does he have to change teams and stack the deck with superstars

Going to the Finals in the East is relatively easy. But beating the best of the west in the Finals isn't. He did it three times.

That's what my post said. He might not have reached the finals as many times if he was in the west. But he would still be the LeBron he is as a player. He would still have won a few championships if he had enough talents around him.

 

This, if LeBron was "The Boy from Boulder" and the Nuggets got the #1 pick, are you sure those late 2000s-early 2010s nuggets teams, especially the '09 Nuggets, don't get out of the west when you replace Melo with LeBron?

 

Two of those times he built a super team, and the first coming at the hands of a young thunder team that just lost their virginity.

 

Are you saying that the "young thunder team that just lost their virginity" was good enough to come out of the tough western conference playoffs but not good enough to beat LeBron's team? That's exactly my point. Whoever they beat in the Finals wasn't chopped liver, like so many people who try to discredit those championships by using the "leastern" conference excuse. No matter how easy the east was, they still had to beat the best out of the west.

I never understand the "easy path" argument, whether it's for discrediting LeBron or the GSW in recent years. If it was easy, that just means that they were so much better than all the teams they beat. You know what. This is exactly how people discredit the Rockets' championships: no MJ. We all know that's BS argument.

Yes, he formed a super team in Miami. I said that I hated it. GSW is also a super team. Morey is trying to assemble a super team to beat the Warriors. So if any of the super teams win, their superstars get no credit?

Again, I am no fan of LeBron. I think he is a diva and probably has a hand in the mess he is in right now in Cleveland. I am not even sure if I want him on the Rockets. (And yes, I am rooting for them to lose to the Pacers!) But to say that his championships are no great achievement is just blind hate.

TBH, I used to see LeBron like many of you do. But the way he won his last championship two years ago impressed the heck out of me.

 

Lebron just told anyone questioning his greatness to sthu

 

McGrady played in the Eastern conference for two teams

 

Any ****ing questions?

 

All these Lebron haters can suck Kobe and Jordan's dick.

Every superstar wants to stack decks and make a superstar team, its just like in real life if you are a genius businessman will you build a company by hiring the best minds you can find or will you take some bums you see off the street for "challenge"?

In Jordan and Kobe's cases, the only reason they didn't leave is because mgt surrounded them with great players already, Jordan played with Pippen and Rodman that's a 3 star team vs other teams who only had 1-2 stars. Kobe played with Shaq, and he was threatening to leave when Gasol arrived. There was even a phoned rant of him throwing the lakers under the bus for not trading Andrew Bynum for Jermaine O' Neal.

If Lebron had been drafted by a great org like the Celtics or Spurs he would never have left in the first place. Look at the team he is surrounded now and how much effort he has to expend just to beat the Pacers. And this is his 16th year already, Kobe retired by his 16th year Lebron is still the best player in the game.

 

Tracy McGrady switched teams lots of times
And lebron is better than him easily

 

This explains the crap threads

 

You don't have to take their opinion as fact, it's just that. You make your own judgement on who is the best player. Some people don't believe Jordan is the GOAT.

 

Precisely, also in the modern era KG started the Big 3, first in Minny than in Boston while everyone else tried to pair up a perimeter player with a big.

Lebron just followed the trend like others will.

 

It's 2018 and there are still LeBron doubters. Crazy.

 

Give Lebron a Shaq in his prime and he gets 5-6 rings easily. To me you just cannot compare Lebron to Kobe nor MJ. Same with Hakeem. He might not make some people’s top 5 or top 10, but if you just look at centres, his era and then his skillset there’s nobody who can challenge him.

 

Some of us like players who win. Some call Westbrook and Melo superstars, but I struggle calling low IQ ball players superstars. Im not going to call LeBron a low IQ player, however he is not on the same level as some of the all time great players. LeBron treats the game as if its streetball, picking and choosing who he gets to play with. If life was this simple, then we would not need coaches.

 

I do not quite agree with that. Lebron has been loyal to a small market in the US, and the first time he realized he can't win a championship by himself and Ilkausgas, he joined his friend Wade at South Beach, a significantly bigger market team.

I can't imagine superstars joining him in Cleveland earlier on, they got Kyrie by tanking. I do not think Love is a superstar.

If it was Kobe, he would have moaned and yelled to get out if he had no Shaq.

The Decision itself was not appropriate because his reps and him made it into a TV circus. They should have kept it low key.

What's more, Lebron does not really need a big time coach, I do think Spoelstra and Lue learned more from Lebron than vice versa.

 

Can’t fault a player for switching teams now, especially with Management as bad as Cleveland had.

In my opinion Lebron is the greatest Player of all time. He would be exactly what you want in a basketball player if you could build a robot. He has the height, speed, and IQ to do it all. He can guard and play all 5 positions and he’s a combination of Magic’s passing with Jordan’s scoring.

His biggest problem was he was to good too early. If he sucked in the beginning like Kobe and Durant he might have got more help in the draft and a young player to build with.

You can’t fault a player for being in a bad situation. Those Cleveland teams were garbage and when he left they went from 65 wins to 20??? That has never happened in history of the league, where one player made that big of a difference. Then he left a so called Super Team in Miami and they missed the playoffs...

When Jordan retired, bulls made the eastern conference finals and won over fifty games. How much of an impact did he really have? Jordan is the first of the kind, a generational brand that changed basketball which is why he is put on a pedestal. Nike ESPN built him up like he was untouchable. It’s all perception.

Kobe is an inefficient chucker that without Shaq and Gasol could barely make the playoffs and quit on his team worse than T-Mac did in the playoffs.

The rings argument doesn’t make any sense. Cuz Shaq really won 3 for Kobe and I could argue Gasol was the better player on the other two rings. Before the trade, Gasol had Memphis as a 5 seed and Kobe only got the lakers to an 8 seed. And if it is about rings Russel is the best player and not even questioned.

The Media flocks to alpha personalities like Jordan, Kobe, and now Westbrook. And pushes a narrative that these are great players cuz they have no fear, shoot and miss tons of game winners instead of making right play. But the one time they make it, everyone remembers cuz it’s played over and over again.

 

Incorrect he played for 5 teams in east:

Toronto
Orlando
NY
Detroit
Atlanta

 

How is he taking shortcuts? No player in the GOAT convo ever won a title on a team that wasn't stacked.

 

So in other words, he beat 3 teams that were better than any team the 80's Laker's beat in the West on their way to 9 Finals? How do you feel about them? Does Magic get huge asterisks too?