LeBron homers keep talking how LeBron led a bad team to finals. In reality, Cavs won 50 games and was 2nd seed in the east, they beat 41 win Wizards, 41 wins Nets, and upset 53 wins Pistons on the way to finals. Only Pistons are a worthy competition, the other 2 teams wouldn't even make playoff in the west. The Pistons-Cavaliers had some questionable calls, in October 2007, Detroit Pistons power forward Rasheed Wallace commented on the loss, stating that the Cavaliers didn't beat the Pistons, but rather that the Pistons lost because they fell prey to the NBA wanting the Cavaliers in the finals. Wallace stated that the NBA was becoming "fake", like World Wrestling Entertainment. Cavaliers got swept in the finals by Spurs. LeBron's line .356/7/6.8/22.0 In the west, 51 wins Jazz upset 52 wins Rockets, then advanced over surprising 42 wins Warriors, before losing 1-4 to Spurs. I don't see what Cavaliers achieved over Jazz that year. Jazz had the better record in the tougher west. They upset an opponent with similar caliber. They both lost to Spurs, only Jazz didn't get swept. In fact, had Cavaliers been a west team, they'd be 6th seed and going against Spurs in the first round. A finalist in the east would suddenly becomes no-playoff-win Grizzles in the west. And to advance to finals, they'd need to beat 58 wins Spurs, 62 wins Suns and 67 wins Mavericks (assuming Warriors would be No.9 seed and Lakers couldn't beat Mavericks). Now how many LeBron fans actually believe they could do it? In short, for the career, LeBron achieved what Williams and Boozers did. Only Jazz beat 50+ wins team twice while Cavs only had 1. Now if LeBron leading Cavs to finals would be one of the greatest performance of all time, Williams and Boozer had to double that.
I don't know how a finals team can be overrated. At some point you play a really good team and any gimmicks are eventually neutralize. It's a huge accomplishment. You got to the most important game in basketball.
I wouldn't consider Jazz beating us as an upset as we never matched up with them well at all and we were only separated from them by 1 game. And the 8th seed Warriors were surprising because they beat the Mavs, yes but they swept them in the regular season too, match ups. Any other team would have beaten the Warriors in the first round.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d1Px-jPm_TU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d1Px-jPm_TU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Rasheed got so mad at the refs giving Lebron calls that he just stopped contesting those dunks. Hey ref, if you call the game fairly I'd have gotten postered instead of just standing here like a p***y.
Not at all, ring is the only thing counts in this league. LeBron is still young, and he has great stats. I give him that. But let's not mention him as one of the greatest of all time because he led a bad team to finals. Because there'd been more than 100 players that had led a team to beat a 53 wins team.
2008-09 Los Angeles Lakers, Who did they beat that would worthy of mentioning along with a list of the best teams of the decade? . . . Utah Jazz (please) Houston Rockets (injured T-Mac, Mutombo, and Yao, but still take the Lakers to 7 games) Denver Nuggets (c'mon, we would've beaten them) Orlando Magic (..........) You guys had mighty impressive title run last year. By that same logic, I could say that you guys wouldn't have gotten past semi-finals with last year's rosters if they played in any NBA season from 1981 - 2006.
i dont really like the lakers...BUT im assuming you didnt watch the nba last year at all based on this ridiculous post.
Lebron had a bad team against the West, overrated. But he actually had a good team cuz they won 50 games. Makes a lot of sense.
OK, why don't you define an objective standard. What's worthy mentioning? Lakers, at the very least, beat 2 50+ wins team, one 60+ wins team to NBA championship. And didn't the same squad beat the defending champion Spurs just one season ago. 2 teams defined the decade, Lakers and Spurs, now if beating a defending Spurs ain't worth mentioning, then what's worth mentioning?
It's called lack of competition. NBA don't seed the entire league by record, west and east are seeded individually. You can be the tallest in a bunch of midgets and still a midget.
I know Lebron is a good player. But one thing that really annoys me is that whenever ESPN or gametime show the highlights of all the Nba game played, they would show the Cavs highlight, then show every single shot Lebron made, and then they would break it down play by play on how great the Cavs offense are and how great of a defensive team they are. But when the Cavs lose, they just don't really mentioned it much and move on as quickly as possible. Another thing that really frustrates me is that yesterday when the Rockets lose to Magic. They showed the Magic making shots and the only clip they show of the Rockets is all the missed shots we chunk up. It is almost they were laughing at the Rockets. I know we lost that game but it seem to me like they wanted everyone to see that we got our ass woped and that we couldn't hit a shot. But when we beat the Cavs that one time, they didn't mentioned anything on how great we were or how the Cavs sucked. They tried to hurried through the highlights, said that the Rockets were lucky and that the Cavs were having a terrible bad night and they just moved on to the next game. But if the Rockets would lose to the Cavs that night, I bet they be showing play by play and how the Cavs executed against the Rockets and how bad of a team we are and how great the Cavs are. This is horrible. The Nba isn't like it used to be. Now its all about who wants who to win. Sometimes I do feel like the Nba wants the Cavs to win so they can brag about it for years and years. The Rockets won 22 games in a row and they never mentioned it again. But if the Cavs would of win 8 games, you will hear about that for the whole entire season. I am a Rockets fan and sometimes I see how much the media dislike us and favor for us to lose, it boils me. I cannot stand hearing how great of a team the Cavs are. They lost to the Magic last year in the playoffs and the Nba said that the Magic were lucky. The Nba said that we were lucky to beat the Cavs a few weeks ago. The Nba said we were lucky to beat the Mavs because Dirk was out. Well guess what, the Mavs were good enough without Dirk and they still beat the Cavs last week. The funny thing about that is I didn't even know that the Mavs won. I have to look it up and see the score for myself because the Nba channel or Espn did not even mention that the Mavs beat Cleveland without Dirk.
I hear you bro. We all know the Cavs are a straight up horrible team if they replaced Lebron with anyone else. Everyones just riding Lebron because thats the thing to do. Sometimes I forget whether its a basketball league or a popularity contest.
Last year's lakers were the luckiest and weakest wc for a last 30 years. The best 3 teams (celtics, spurs, and Rockets) are injured plauged. This never happened before.
Yeah, I don't understand why OP is making light of the Lebron's path to the Finals (being somewhat easy), when in actuality the Lakers had a very similar path to the championship. He says that every team the Lakers played won at least 50 games, but I know 2/3rds of the Western teams were in fact injured. Utah was very lucky to make the playoffs in the first place, probably shouldn't have been there because of all of the issues going on with Boozer and the lethargic play. The Rockets didn't even have even have a center for 4 games in the series against the Lakers (no Mutombo, then no Yao). Also no T-Mac, yet Houston is able to take them the distance. The Nuggets are a good team, but championship caliber, I highly doubt it. The Magic were lucky, not to play Boston at full strength, I believe if KG was healthy, they would've soundly beat the Magic. Also, his argument is somewhat of double fallacy, he claims that last year's Lakers only played the teams that were on the schedule and that they didn't have any control over who they played, yet Cavs somehow did and had a cakewalk to Finals. When in actuality, as they were in the playoffs, the Pistons team that lost the Cavs (and the Spurs that eventually beat the Cavs) probably were better than the Nuggets, the Rockets (w/o Yao), and Jazz. The 07 Cavs had much tougher teams to beat near the end than the Lakers did through entire playoffs. There was no way the Magic last year on par with Pistons or Spurs from previous seasons.
Well said. I don't think the league+media was any less biased years ago. Its been pretty much the same stuff from Jordan, Bird/Magic, and back. Its that now they CAN be more objective, because with expanded coverage they have ABILITY to. But they simply dont, they use all the extra coverage to follow the stars even more instead of spreading it around. Might as well send up a dedicated sports stars satellite to follow them exclusively. Of course in reverse...if it was Mavs vs Cavs and Lebron was out, and they get a quick camera shot of Lebron sitting on the bench in street clothes it'd be "Can you get off his jock and stop showing his every move?" Thats part of the popularity contest, and why you cant have it. If one person gets attention, the others that dont get it will feel snubbed.
