LEBRON "KING OF HYPE" JAMES

hey Rock4Ever sighting... "I don't know what's wrong with him" lmao.

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First, I wrote "arguably the best defender at his position in the league".

Who argued this? He was voted to the All-Defense 1st Team for two years in a row by the league's head coaches. He ended up 4th in DPOY voting this year, and 2nd in DPOY voting the year before. Oh, and Jeff Van Gundy (who knows something about defense) has been raving about his defensive abilities the last two years.

So, no, I didn't just make it up.

I don't think I need to rehash all the instances in which LeBron came through for his team in pressure situations in the playoffs the last several years. Something tells me it won't make a difference with you, so I'm not going to waste my time. LeBron just had a bad series. You want to say that defines who he's been his entire career. I'm sorry, but that's not how I judge players.

 

Alright. He averaged 40 points per game and 8 assists per game in the losses last year. Boston was a bad series for him. Orlando wasn't.

 

let's see... lebron averaged 26.8 pts, 7.2 assists, 9.3 rebounds,1.33 blocks, and 2.17 steals a game versus the Celtics... yeah, what a quitter/loser; deserving of boos, he owes the city of Cleveland an apology.
/facepalm

 

lol, paul pierce would beg to differ. he just spent a series being guarded by lebron and put up such spectacular numbers as 13.5 ppg on 34.5% shooting. that's the main thing people miss from both this and the orlando series. even moreso than the no-shows on offense by some people, they were lost primarily with huge defensive mismatches for cleveland.

howard torched big Z and the other big men last year (whereas if you have perkins or gasol, howard does relatively little), and whichever of hedo or rashard wasn't being guarded by lebron would have their way. this year, rondo tore mo williams a new one on the perimeter, ray allen ran mo williams ragged while draining 3's, shaq was killed in PnR's, and jamison pretty much watched garnett score at will (even sheed was scoring on jamison in the post!!). meanwhile, lebron's guy did jack crap. he was probably their best defensive option at the 1-4 positions, but unfortunately he can only be in one place at a time.

it's not enough that the teammates don't show up on offense (williams/jamison/shaq are 3 of the other 4 starters and all sucked at shooting), but then they get abused on D. you literally had 3 of your 4 starters play like crap on both offense and defense. of the main 6 or 7 role players, the only things i can think of that anyone did well were varejao on D and anthony parker going 11/21 on 3's. that's it. literally trash by every player on both ends of the court outside of that. this certainly wasn't a masterpiece of a series by lebron, and game 5 was perplexing and disturbing, but if 27/9/7 with a 55.5 TS% and shutting down the other team's 1st or 2nd best offensive player aren't enough, then you don't have enough help. or if 38/8/8 with a 59.1 TS% against the #1 defensive team in the league and a game-winning 3 at the buzzer aren't enough (orlando last year), then you aren't getting enough help.

history seems pretty certain on this point, if you don't have role players stepping up under pressure, you don't win championships. you have can have the best player in the league, you can play awesome defense, or you can have a great offense, but i can't think of any championship team that just had big fat zero's for role players in the playoffs. whether they're good at offense or defense (the 2003 spurs didn't have much offensive playmaking from role players but they had bowen playing the best perimeter defense of the past decade and drob was still a shotblocker and very good defender), the role players have to do something. and they simply haven't the last 2 losing series for cleveland, that's pretty much a fact. lebron would have probably needed another 38/8/8 series to beat the celtics and even if they did win, who knows what he would need to beat an even better than last year orlando team. even MJ, in a faster-paced league, never did better than 35/7/6 for a finals run. just because lebron needs someone, anyone, to not suck doesn't mean he isn't the best in the game. it just means that basketball is still a team game and it's been fairly well proven you need a team to win a title.

 

You apparently think adding a at the end of all your responses helps make your point, but it really doesn't add anything except make it obvious that you are responding from emotion rather than objectivity.

You say LeBron has never been a good one-on-one defender. Jeff Van Gundy disagrees. David Thorpe disagrees. Paul Pierce disagrees. SynergySports says otherwise (96th percentile in isolation defense).

Before you said that I made up the idea that he's arguably the best defender at his position, and I was just seeing what I want to see. I cited evidence of other people -- head coaches, national/local media, defensive guru Jeff Van Gundy -- saying otherwise. Of course, none of that means anything to you.

But now its your turn. Point to one person other than yourself who's opinion I should take seriously that thinks LeBron "has never been a good defender."

 

PP 13 points on 35% shooting in Conf semi-finals.

 

I said "Paul Pierce disagrees" because he was primarily defended by James in the series and his output was 13.5 ppg on 34.5% shooting from the field, one of his worst playoff series individually in his career. Over the last 3 seasons in 10 regular season matchups he's shot only 39% in games played against LeBron, compared to 46% against the league as a whole. I guess I should have been explicit and said "I expect Paul Pierce would disagree [with the idea that LeBron is not a good 1-on-1 defender] as well." He has not, to my knowledge, made public comments on LeBron's defensive abilities.

Before I said he's arguably the best wing defender at his position, and I stand by that. He is, at the very least, a good defender. Refer to the DPOY voting the last few years and All-Defense Teams by head coaches. That in itself justifies me saying he's arguably the best defender at his position -- unless you want to maintain that the opinions of the league's head coaches and all the national/local sports writers should be discarded. You can also consider the commentary from experts such as JVG and David Thorpe, and consult the data/clips provided at SynergySports. Try to put aside your personal dislike for his personality and the media hype machine that surrounds him (I'm not a fan of his personality or the hype either), and consider his abilities in an objective fashion.

 

rock4ever, just stop while you're ahead.

 

Man are you crazy, are you seriously saying Lebron choked vs Orlando last year? He did every thing that one player could do against orlando.

Geez im like a huge lebron james fan but i dont think kobe sucks and i dont hate kobe. Kobe fans are so irritating its like you cant say a guys good without them jumping in with kobe this kobe that.

Normal fan: Man Lebrons haircut is pretty cool.

Kobe fan: Kobe's haircut is way better plus kobe has 4 rings!!!! Kobe is better than MJ Kobe has 4 rings and couldve gotten them all without shaq, how many rings does Lebrick have? KOBE KOBE KOBE KOBE.

And im not even over exaggerating either, just look at this forum.

 

When was he ever ahead?

 

LOL! Could not agree more. So defensive about the rapist.

 

And does he have a head. Wouldn't having a head also require having a brain? I rest my case. Headless, he is. And clueless.