Never doubt King James.
Lebron James is the most scrutinized athlete in sports. If you give yourself the nickname ‘King James’ then you are going to be scrutinized. If you are a ridiculously talented athlete who is going to be compared to the games best then you will be scrutinized. If you abandon your home town to join with two fellow superstars in a quest to finally win a NBA championship and broadcast your decision to the entire world then you are going to be scrutinized. He does deserve to be observed. He’s paid enough. What he doesn’t deserve is the constant criticism for failure. The Cleveland Cavaliers surrounded him with decent but not great players when he was there and they didn’t have enough to beat teams like the Spurs, Lakers and Celtics back then who had more than one superstar on their rosters. He then signs for the Heat to join with two superstars in Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. There is the mightiest of backlashes. Look if Lebron James wants to play with these guys and they all want to accept lower deals to win then why shouldn’t they be allowed to? Dwight Howard and Chris Paul are considering turning down max deals to team together with smaller deals in order to win. In other sports such as football (soccer) there is no restriction on salary or anything like that. Look at Real Madrid or Chelsea or Manchester City who throw money at some of the greatest players in the world to team together to win. These guys are athletes. They are not going to play forever they have a 10-15 year if their lucky career. Some guys play for money and don’t care about winning but people like Lebron wants to win! Ray Allen proved that when he turned down a better deal with the Celtics to join with the Heat and look how well that paid off! People get off his back. When the Heat were losing they blamed him as he wasn’t shooting well. Yet he was still getting triple doubles. If the rest of his team don’t step up then what can he do? He’s just one guy. He can’t do everything.
His decision to join the Heat was the right one. Three seasons and he has three final appearences, two titles, two finals MVPs and two MVP awards. Amazing stats. This guy can do everything and on thursday night he proved that. The Spurs were great against him defensively stopping him from getting into the pain so he trusted his jumper and look what happened! This guy is amazing. He can do everything on the court and the media should lay off him and just sit back and admire how great he plays the game. In a lot of ways he’s brought on the scrutiny that comes his way himself with some poor decisions aka The Decision. Thursday night he was amazing and he now has his second ring. If Wade can stay fit next year whose going to bet against the Heat doing it again next year?
This finals series was incredible. These are the two best teams in the NBA. Two sets of big threes and some of the best role players in the league. San Antonio will be gutted to lose especially after they seemingly had game 6 and the title in the bag late in the fourth and they will look back and think what might have been. I was gutted for Tim Duncan missing the chance to tie late on as his reaction showed how angry he was with himself. What I loved was the show os sportsmanship at the end by Wade and James. The fact the second they won they both went straight to Duncan to show their respect for him was amazing to watch and a lot of other sports and athletes should watch that ending to see what true class looks like. Gregg Popovich as well comes across as a very angry man but again he was extremely humble in defeat and I have a lot of respect for a great man and coach.
At the end of the day the Heat just had that little bit more and the fact they had homecourt for games 6 and 7 was crucial. It was truly an amazing series with so many twists and turns. But when it was all said and done it was King James who was left holding two trophies and planning what finger he was going to put his second ring onto. If I was him I know which one it would be.
Long live the King.
CMG5 