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Friday, June 10, 2011

LeBron better than Jordan? Hardly. Here's why King James will never be as great as "Air Jordan."

As the Dallas Mavericks put the finishing touches on last night's 112-103, taking a 3-2 lead in the best of seven series of the 2011 NBA Finals, a few things stood out to me.  First and foremost is that Dallas will not go away, and if they can keep up their hot shooting, there is a good possibility they can take at least one of the final two games in Miami, thus becoming NBA champions.  Then there was the play of Miami without Dwayne Wade, a team that at times looked worse than last year's LeBron James led Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Boston Celtics. 

The story of the night, however, is that LeBron James is no Michael Jordan.  In fact, LeBron is not even in Michael's area code when it comes to basketball, and, despite what happens in the future, King James will never be as good as the one they dubbed "Air Jordan."

All pregame talk centered on whether LeBron would be able to bounce back from what was the worst playoff perfomance in his career. To his credit, he did notch his first triple double of the series.  Yet he couldn't help lift his team to the victory, and now he and his Miami teammates head home on the brink of elimination.

Lebron apologists will point to the fact that Miami was without D-Wade for a majority of the game.  During Michael's prime, however, had Scottie Pippen been hurt Michael would not have made excuses, he would have found a way to win without Scottie.

In addition, Michael Jordan may have also been unofficially known as "Mr. Clutch",  because when it came to the fourth quarter, and the game was on the line, Michael took over.  LeBron's recent struggles in the fourth quarter of playoff games are well documented, with one fan even posting this on twitter:

" RT : If u ask for a dollar, he'll only give u 75 cents; he never gives you the fourth quarter."

There are other reasons, though, that James will never be in the same stratosphere as Jordan, even if the Heat end up winning this series(and possibly another four or five titles).  The first is that LeBron complains way too much.  It's become pretty pathetic, actually, to the point you almost expect him to cry 'foul' every time he misses a shot.  At least it seemed that way last Sunday while I was watching  game four at a friend's house.

Jordan never made excuses, he just won ball games.  And, if he ever talked any trash, he was always able to back it up.  Lebron hasn't even won one championship yet, and he's already looking ahead to the day when he has more titles than Michael.

And what if Lebron does bounce back and leads the Heat to the championship?  Or five? Or six? Or seven?  The answer is he'll still never be as good as Jordan, primarily because he thought it was too tough to win in Cleveland. So he decided to "take his talents to South Beach."   Why couldn't he persuade Wade and Bosh to join him in Cleveland? Oh, yeah, that's right, LeBron is much more marketable in Miami than he would have ever been in Cleveland.



Think Michael Jordan gave a rat's a-- about his marketability while he was on his way to winning six NBA Championships with the Bulls?

I rest my case.





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