I have not hidden that I despise LeBron (and yes, if he goes to Cleveland, I will root for him to do well but will never like him). But seriously, **** off for saying anything I've said is "butthurt" from liking the Cavs. I have complimented the hell out of LeBron for his playoff performance. You're the one claiming that it was one of the best of all time. Of all time. That's a damn high standard.
1. Stop posting his 4-quarter performance as if I haven't acknowledged his tremendous performance.
2. No. YOU are the one saying it's an insult, not me. When rating best playoff performances of all time... guess what, Peyton Manning doesn't fall anywhere on the list. Big Ben, Eli, Montana, Brady had a lot more underwhelming playoff runs that were capitalized by unbelievably clutch play when it counted.
3. You are an unbelievable homer if you want to suggest LeBron is anywhere near the kind of closer MJ was. MJ was the best closer of all time. By a wide margin.
4. I am not saying Kobe is a better closer than LeBron. Given how insanely good LeBron is... he passes on the last shot WAY more often than he should
5. No, you're grandstanding. You're ranking last year as one of the best playoff performances of all time. Let's call it what it was. It was a dominating performance, very mediocre late in games, against pretty substandard playoff competition. It was a great performance, but give me a break, it doesn't rank among the greatest of all time.
6. I have been more than objective in my post. You are such a homer that you are painting his performance as practically perfect and the stuff of legends. You place that ridiculously high standard then battle back when somebody says it was anything less than perfect. Who's being unreasonable here?
Quote:
Originally Posted by KC_Connection
Yes, one of the greatest postseason performances the sport has ever seen. See here ( http://www.basketball-reference.com/..._yearly_p.html) and here ( http://www.basketball-reference.com/..._yearly_p.html). Unless you think statistics are somehow biased in favor of LeBron, I don't see how somebody could come to a different conclusion.
First of all, I love how calling him Peyton Manning is supposed to be some kind of an insult. Peyton Manning is going down as one of the greatest QBs to ever play the game. If LeBron has a 2nd half of his career as dominant as Peyton Manning's 2nd half was/is, you're going to be very upset (unless of course LeBron rejoins your Cavs in two years which he very well could, at which point, you'll jump right back on his bandwagon like all of the other Cleveland whiners).
Second of all, unlike Peyton Manning, LeBron James is one of the greatest playoff performers of all time (3rd in WS/48 behind only MJ and Mikan: http://www.basketball-reference.com/..._career_p.html). LeBron has actually shown the ability to raise his game in the postseason unlike many of his peers (Kobe, Carter, McGrady, etc.), which is not something that Peyton Manning has ever been able to do in the playoffs. This ridiculous, baseless narrative that he can't perform in the playoffs because he couldn't lead garbage Cavs teams to titles over far superior teams like the Spurs and Celtics is just that...ridiculous and baseless. Now that he led a team to a championship it's that he didn't hit or take enough shots late in games that the Heat ended up winning? Games that they ended up winning largely to his dominant play both offensively and defensively? It's ****ing absurd.
So basically we're talking about the difference of three shots between LeBron and MJ and a total of 15-20 over both careers. In essence, if he hits a few of them this April, he'll be right there with the supposed greatest of all time at game winning shots. Yeah, trying to take any meaning from this kind of sample size is exactly the problem.
Taking more shots in such situations doesn't make either Kobe or LeBron better players. In fact, the willingness of elite players to defer to others for open, higher percentage shots often gives teams a better chance to win than to have somebody like Kobe or LeBron take a low-percentage, pressured jump shot. And win the Heat did (which makes the criticism here especially odd). It's like watching a star and a team dominate on their way to a championship and then being upset at the end about the way he/they did it because they didn't fit your own personal mold of what a star and a team should look like. It's such bunk. Of course, attempting to ascribe any meaning from a sample size as small as seven shots is again a major problem with this hypothesis.
If grandstanding is defending LeBron's incredible 2012 postseason from your utter bullshit and these hilarious comparisons to the far inferior Kobe Bryant, then sure, I'll do that. There's far more to success in basketball than taking (and in Kobe's case, often missing) late game shots. Really, even bothering to engage in this nonsense gives more credence to your bullshit theory about LeBron than it deserves.
Somebody that isn't a butthurt Cavs fan with the ability to objectively watch, understand, and respect the game of basketball and one of its greatest players without blind hatred and criticism, I'd say. |