And Clyde the Glide takes my side. (That’s Frazier… with apologies to Drexler.)
I caught a lot of flak for pooh-poohing LeBron James’s so-called greatness after he made that fateful decision to take his talents to Miami. But, as I argued in “LeBron Abandons Cleveland for Miami” (July 13, 2010),” winning championship rings by forming a superteam is one thing. But it’s no substitute for creating the kind of legacy true greats like Dr. J and Michael built by lifting one franchise from the ground up.
The point is simple: LeBron didn’t build a champion — he joined one.
The Heat had already won a title in 2006 with Dwyane Wade leading the charge. So of course they won again. Any top-tier player could’ve ridden that wave to a ring… or two.
But LeBron learned soon enough that even back-to-back championships couldn’t wash away the bitter taste of abandonment. That’s why he returned to Cleveland — not for legacy, but for redemption.
And sure enough, it was there, not in Miami, where he finally inched closer to being like Mike — the modern-day benchmark of NBA greatness. I even hailed him for leading the Cavaliers to their first championship in “NBA Finals: LeBron Delivers on His Promise to Cleveland, Finally” (June 20, 2016).
But by then, the die was cast on LeBron’s legacy.
So ask yourself: who deserves to be called great?
-
The player who stays with his struggling team until he leads it to a championship?
or -
The player who abandons his team to join a ready-made champion — and only comes back later to do what he should’ve done in the first place?
I mean, can you imagine Boston’s Larry Bird taking his talents to Los Angeles for a guaranteed shot at a ring? If Bird had done that, Benedict Arnold would’ve had to slide over in Boston’s betrayal hall of fame.
Which brings me to Kevin Durant.
He was the reigning MVP of the reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors. But that was only because he abandoned the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016 to join them. The Warriors had just won a title in 2015, and were a game away from another in 2016.
So of course they won again in 2017 and 2018. Durant didn’t elevate a team; he just made a great one unstoppable.
This is why Durant is more like LeBron, and can never be like Mike. Donald Trump created a new norm in politics: pursue personal glory at all costs — the welfare of the country be damned. Arguably, LeBron did the same in sports: pursue championship rings at all costs — loyalty to any team be damned.
The excerpt above makes clear how I feel about this if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them route to NBA championships. But I suspect the real reason I caught so much flak for daring to pooh-pooh LeBron’s greatness is that I lacked “standing.” After all, I’m not a player. I’m not even one of the fawning analysts paid to prop him up.
That’s why I was so gratified last week when no less a figure than NBA Hall of Famer and analyst Walt “Clyde” Frazier publicly pooh-poohed KD’s greatness. Not least because he echoed, almost verbatim, what I said about LeBron eight years earlier:
Durant, as great a player as he is, I would still hold back because man, he joined a team that really didn’t need him. … [F]or him doing that I still don’t give him the full credit that he probably would’ve deserved if he stayed with OKC and won a title with that team.
(NBC Sports, August 30, 2018)
You might think iPINIONS couldn’t have said it better… but I did — years earlier. The only question now is whether Clyde would revise his opinion if KD fully emulated LeBron by returning to OKC and finally delivering the championship he once promised.
But we all know how that story ends. If the struggle resumed, he’d likely abandon ship again to chase greener pastures, just like LeBron, who has now taken his talents to Los Angeles.
Incidentally, Clyde stayed with his struggling New York Knicks until he led them to their only two NBA championships — in 1970 and 1973. Unfortunately, the team thanked him by trading him out to pasture in, of all places, Cleveland.
In any event, after aping LeBron by selling his basketball soul for a championship ring (or two), the die is cast on Durant’s greatness, too. So just as there should be an asterisk next to LeBron’s name on the scroll of NBA legends, there should be one next to Durant’s as well.
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LeBron wins for Miami…
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