by Bob Gurnett
With the game tied, LeBron deferred to Kyrie again. He trusted the young point guard to make the right decision, and he did. Kyrie went right at Steph Curry. He dribbled, crossed over, and then stepped back. He shot a long three, letting it fly over the head of the league MVP. Swish. Kyrie drained it with 10 seconds left. Steph Curry rushed back to try and answer, but his shot clanked it off the rim. The game was over. Cavs 93, Warriors 89.
LeBron and his teammates had done it. They had ended a 50+ year championship drought for the city of Cleveland. With all LeBron’s firsts and records and awards, none compared to this. The one goal he set when he entered the NBA was finally checked off. He had done something that no athlete in any sport had done in over 50 years. The native son had given the people of Cleveland a championship. He wasn’t just the G.O.A.T., he was a hometown hero.
9
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
A G.O.A.T. is a once-in a lifetime player. It makes sense then that a G.O.A.T. would fill the record books and win lots of awards. LeBron definitely does both of these things. He could fill a museum with his awards and a library with the books about his play. Since he was a high school student, LeBron James has been smashing records and leaving his mark on the sport of basketball. Here are just some of the awards he has won.
• • •
14 Time NBA All Star
Two Time All Star Game Most Valuable Player
14 Time All NBA
6 Time All-Defensive Team
Three Time NBA Champion
Three Time Finals MVP
Four Time NBA Most Valuable Player
2004 Rookie of the Year
2008 Scoring Champion
38 Time Eastern Conference Player of the Month
61 Time Eastern Conference Player of the Week
These are just the trophies and awards given out by the NBA. He won even more in the Olympics and high school.
2 Time Olympic Gold Medalist (2008, 2012)
1 Time Olympic Bronze Medalist (2004)
2012 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year
He collected quite a few trophies before he ever went pro. Here is his collection from before he even turned 18.
2003 National Champion
Three Time State Champion
Two Time Gatorade Player of the Year Trophy
2003 Naismith Prep Player of the Year
Two Time USA Today Player of the Year
Three Time Mr. Basketball
When you win as much as LeBron does, the media takes notice. Here are awards given to him by the press:
26 Times on the cover of Sports Illustrated
Two Time Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year
17 Time ESPY Recipient
2 Time AP Athlete of the Year
10
RECORDS AND STATS
LeBron James is the only player who has been able to play his style of basketball. The stats don’t lie. He has broken records and been the first to do things people thought impossible. His career stats are so uniquely his, many fans will call getting 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists, a “LeBron.” But LeBron’s stats are more than just his averages. A statistician keeps track of a player’s points, rebounds and assists, but they know so much more. They can use those numbers to show how good a player is at defense or offense. They can use numbers to tell you how many wins a player added to his team. They can show you how much better he is than the average player at his position. Statistician should be short for Stat Magician.
For his career, it is easy to see that LeBron has averaged 27.2 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 7.2 assists, which are astounding numbers. He’s the first and only player to do it for his career! In fact, he seems to get better as he gets old, since in the 2016-2017 season, he was the only player ever to average at 25 points, 8 assists, 8 rebounds on 54% shooting.
As you might expect, a G.O.A.T. will have great stats in the five main categories. Here is where LeBron falls all time, as of the 2017–2018 season, and he still has a bunch more time left in the NBA.
REGULAR SEASON
POINTS: 31,425 career points (5th place)
ASSISTS: 8,208 career assists (11th place, 1st place for Forwards)
PLAYOFFS
POINTS: 6,911 career playoff points (1st all time, nearly 1,000 more than Michael Jordan, who has 5,987 in his career)
But what are those stats in the end? What is a PER, or Player Efficiency Rating, or WS, Win Share? What do those numbers mean? Why do they exist at all?
Stats like PER, WS, and VORP all sound like nicknames for Martians, but they are actually what are called advanced metrics, used to tell how much better a player makes his team. Sometimes the five basic stats (points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks) don’t tell the whole story, so statisticians use lots and lots of math to fill in the rest.
PLAYER EFFICIENCY RATING, OR PER
The main five stats really only tell you about the good things players do. How many points someone has can be better or worse, depending on how many shots they missed to make those points. And an assist is less helpful if you also turned the ball over just as many times. The PER takes into account all the good things a player does, like score points, snatch rebounds, or get nasty blocks, and averages it out with all the bad things a player does, like miss a shot, not get back on defense, or turn the ball over. These numbers are then averaged out. If you added all the leagues’ PERs together and averaged them, they would be 15. 15 is a totally normal NBA player. Not special, but not bad either. The higher the PER is than 15, the better a player is. Most All-Stars have PERs higher than 22. Most MVPs have a 26 or higher.
So how does LeBron stack up? LeBron has the second highest career PER in history. LeBron has an average PER of 27.68, just a few decimal points away from Michael Jordan at 27.91. This means throughout LeBron’s career, not only does he do a lot of good things for his team, he limits his mistakes.
WIN SHARE, OR WS
Win share is what it sounds like. It is how many wins a player is directly responsible for. If a team wins 50 games in a season, the star of the team will usually be responsible for about 5 to 10 of those. This stat can of course be negative, but really excellent players will have high win shares. The math is very complicated, but is a lot like PER. Statisticians add up the good things, subtract the bad things, and then figure out how many of the season’s wins a player is responsible for. This has the advantage of also telling not just who scores a lot of points, but who wins a lot of games. If you combine the Win Share of every player on a team, it will always add up to how many total wins the team had. So, if a team doesn’t win very many games, the players will have a lower Win Share. LeBron James is the master of this stat. Right now he sits at 5th all time, but has a lot of games left in his career. He’s only 60 WS behind Hall of Famer, Kareem Abdul Jabbar (219.36 to 273.41), and LeBron gets between 10 and 20 WS a season. For example, during the 2016–2017 season, his WS was 12.9 but he’s had seasons as high as 20.3.
VALUE OVER REPLACEMENT PLAYER, OR VORP
This one is silly to say, VORP. Go ahead, say it out loud. But this is one of the most useful stats. It is not fair to compare assist numbers of a center and a point guard since their jobs are different. So this stat compares a player to an average player at the same position. This can be negative, meaning the player is worse than average, but for great players like LeBron, the VORP can be sky high. LeBron James holds the highest VORP of all time, meaning that he is the most valuable player at his position compared to an average player in the same position.
Now you know some advanced stats, so when you see a PER, WS, or VORP next to a basketball player’s name, you will know what they mean. You’ll also know that LeBron is the King of those stats.
11
RIVALRIES
Every great athlete has rivals. They come with the territory. Everyone wants to beat the best. How could anyone be the G.O.A.T. without winning against other great players? Some rivalries only last a few games, but some last
entire careers. Here are a few of LeBron’s best rivalries to date. Let’s see how things went for the players brave or crazy enough to try and take LeBron’s crown.
LeBron and Carmelo Anthony
LeBron James vs. Carmelo Anthony
Carmelo is LeBron’s oldest rival. They played each other in high school! In their first matchup, when they were just kids, Carmelo’s team won the game with LeBron scoring 36 and Anthony scoring 34. They both came into the league the same year, play the same position, and were each other’s main competition for Rookie of the Year. It is hard to believe, but LeBron wasn’t a unanimous pick. He actually barely beat out Carmelo, who also had a very good rookie year. After that rookie season, it was all LeBron. James has 14 All Stars, 14 All NBA teams, and a slew of other awards to Carmelo’s 10 All Stars and 6 All NBA teams. LeBron also owns him in regular season head to head games 19 to 13. The only time the two met in the playoffs, LeBron’s team beat Anthony’s 4 games to 1. Carmelo was an early rival for Lebron but it became clear very early that LeBron was the better player.
LeBron James vs. Tim Duncan
Some might say LeBron’s rivalry isn’t with future Hall of Famer Tim Duncan specifically, but with his entire team, the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs are title contenders every year, so LeBron isn’t the only player they have caused heartache. The Spurs have beaten LeBron in the Finals twice, including his first trip to the Finals in 2006–2007. Both times Tim Duncan, led the Spurs to victory. LeBron got his revenge with his second championship in Miami, but how do these two match up? Well, it is hard to say. In the regular season, LeBron fills up the box score more effectively than Tim, leading him in all categories except rebounds and blocks. But the stat that puts LeBron ahead the most is the head-to-head record. In the regular season, LeBron and Tim are tied, 10–10, but in the postseason, Duncan holds an 11–5 advantage. LeBron has better numbers, but Tim won more of their games. Plain and simple, the Spurs always had a better supporting cast and it shows in this rivalry. LeBron played the better individual game, but Tim had the better teammates. Not all rivalries go the King’s way, and there is a great argument for Tim Duncan as G.O.A.T.
LeBron James vs. DeShawn Stevensen
Some rivals like Duncan are evenly matched and push the player to the brink, while others are so one sided, it does not seem fair. DeShawn Stevenson was the first player to really go out of his way to pester a young LeBron. LeBron’s first two appearances in the playoffs were against Stevenson, who did everything he could to get under the young prodigy’s skin. Poor Stevenson didn’t know that his behavior would just make LeBron play even harder. LeBron made easy work of Stevenson, who was matched up to defend LeBron, scoring big on him in the playoffs while holding Stevenson to an average of 33% shooting. LeBron tightened his defense and exploded offensively whenever he played the Wizards. His playoff record against DeShawn is 10–6, winning both series where Stevenson was a starter and LeBron’s primary defender. This rivalry defined Stevenson’s career, but it is likely that LeBron barely ever thinks about it now.
LeBron vs. Paul Pierce
Paul Pierce versus LeBron James was the matchup to watch from 2008 to 2014. The two gladiators would battle it out in the playoffs several times during that stretch. LeBron has long rejected the idea of rivals, despite having so many, but when asked by NBA TV, he said, “I think the closest thing I have to one is Paul Pierce.” At the height of their rivalry, games were not the Celtics versus the Cavaliers, but simply Paul versus LeBron.
In 2008, the Celtics-Cavaliers series went to game 7. The winner would go to the NBA Finals. The two NBA superstars butted heads the entire game. LeBron tried to will his team to a win with 45 points in that game, but Pierce shot back with 41 of his own. He sent the Celtics to the Finals and eventually won the championship.
LeBron went home knowing it was not the last he’d see of Paul Pierce. Two years later, they met again in the now famous Eastern Conference Semifinals. Pierce focused all his energy on defending LeBron and didn’t even try offensively since, according to him, he was too tired from defending LeBron. He held LeBron to 34% shooting, the Cavaliers lost, and it was the loss that triggered LeBron to leave for Miami. Some might say that fans have Paul Pierce to thank for the Miami Big Three team. The very next season, Paul ran into a newly energized LeBron with a better supporting cast and the Heat beated the Celtics 4 games to 1. The very next year, Pierce was the one looking for redemption when he hit several huge shots to take the series lead in game 5. Game 6 was win or go home, but LeBron scored 45 points and 15 rebounds to send them to game 7. The rest is history as the team rolled to their second Finals and first NBA Championship.
LeBron, on the Heat, shooting against Paul Pierce
It is hard to think of another player who has stood in LeBron’s way more than Paul Pierce. LeBron eventually persevered and holds a 17 to 13 edge in playoff games against Paul, but it took a while. When asked what playing Paul Pierce meant to him, LeBron said Paul put pressure on him to improve. That’s what a good rival does: makes you strive to be better.
LeBron vs. Kevin Durant
This rivalry is just getting started. LeBron and Durant are close friends who often work out together in the off season, but that does not mean they don’t play each other hard in the regular season. Since they have spent their entire careers in opposite conferences, during the playoffs, they only face off in the NBA Finals. Their regular season stats are incredible though. Both players go above and beyond when facing each other. Durant came into the league a few years after LeBron and has spent much of his career trying to shake comparisons to the King. Durant has said in interviews, he hopes to someday get out of LeBron’s shadow. So far, Durant has not been able to do that. LeBron has dominated him in the regular season matchup, 14 games to 6. On the other hand, they have met in the NBA Finals three times. The first time, Durant was with the Thunder and LeBron and the Heat managed them easily. In 2016, Durant was sick of not getting to the Finals and left the team that drafted him to join a team to win a championship. Sound familiar? LeBron did the same thing!
Durant’s first season with the Warriors matched him in the Finals against LeBron and the Cavaliers, the 3rd matchup in a row between the powerhouse teams. Durant got his revenge when he repeated this feat the very next year. Durant holds the NBA Finals edge over LeBron with two wins to one. We have to look to the future to see what will become of this rivalry, as it is just now heating up.
LeBron vs. Stephen Curry
LeBron’s rivalry with Stephen Curry is intense and ongoing. LeBron’s 31.7–10.2–8.3 averages against Steph are way higher than his actual career averages. Much of this has to do with the two meeting in the Finals over and over. The NBA Finals bring out a competitive spirit in both players. They’ve met in the finals four times in a row! Steph has won three and LeBron has won one. Even though Steph’s walked away with the trophy, LeBron clearly was the best player on the court. His averages were some of the best the game had ever seen. This included his dominating defensive performance against Steph Curry where he blocked shot after shot in the 2016 Finals. 2016 is also when LeBron won his first Finals in a Cleveland Cavaliers uniform.
Steph Curry has won more games against LeBron, but has rarely outplayed him. If you look at head to head stats, LeBron has outscored Curry in 25 of their 34 games played. He had more rebounds in 29 of 34 and more assists in 24 of 34. LeBron has dominated nearly every head to head matchup between the two players. Yet, Curry has more wins because he has had the better supporting cast, including Defensive Player of the Year Draymond Green, and future Hall of Famer (and LeBron rival), Kevin Durant.
NBA fans hope this rivalry continues. The games they play against each other are electric, like the 2017–2018 All-Star Game. LeBron won, hitting the go-ahead layup in a thrilling finish. LeBron didn’t get to relish that win for long since Curry defeated him in the 2017–2018 NBA Finals. Now that LeBron is with the Lakers, Curry and he share a division. This means even more regular
season matchups and an almost certainty that they will see each other in the playoffs again. Only time will tell if LeBron edges out Curry in the most important stat: wins.
12
WHO ELSE?
So is LeBron the G.O.A.T.? He certainly has the resume. He isn’t the only one that people think could be the G.O.A.T. though. Lots of NBA players have won championships. Many have outstanding records. Here are a few who could also be considered the greatest of all time.
BILL RUSSELL (1956–1969)
Bill Russell last played in the NBA almost 50 years ago. His imprint on the game is still felt today though. He won the NBA title eight times in a row! He was in the league for 13 years and won 11 championships in that time. Russell holds the record for the most championship titles of any player in any American sports league. He averaged more than 22 rebounds a game and was the centerpiece of one of the winningest teams in history. However, the league was very different in the ’50s and ’60s. For one, for most of the NBA players, basketball was a part time gig and they had other jobs. The game was not on TV every night, because TV was a brand new invention! His rebounds are high, some critics say, because less talented shooters missed more shots. More missed shots mean more rebounds. In fact, if you look at the PER stat talked about in the last chapter, Bill Russell’s PER was only 18.8, much lower than LeBron’s. But 11 titles in 13 years is a great feat regardless of the era.
