James

"That day in Chicago, why did you stand up?"
"Because I didn't want to see you fail."
Glenn Close to Robert Redford in The Natural


I dislike basketball, especially professional basketball, almost in its entirety.  But I am oddly drawn to the recent playoffs for one reason, Lebron James.  Much of the reason I root for James is because he's from my hometown (almost, Akron is close enough) and because he single handedly reinvigorated sports in Cleveland at a time when C-town was (and still is) in perpetual decline.  But there's something else.  Game 6 aside, I am continually amazed that we are confronted with an obvious situation of someone being clearly the best at something in the entire world without its recognition and even a disdain that we haven't seen for another in sports since Barry Sanders.

The measuring stick that haunts them both is team success.  Odd, considering their peers consider them without peer across the board.  But we are relegated to the opinions of beer-gutted, balding pseudo-ESPN personalities who deem themselves final arbiters of greatness.  So in the way the we ignored Sanders perpetually making a 3-win team a playoff contender, we ignore James making first a 30-win team a finals contender, and now, the Heat perpetual championship contenders.  Maybe that's why, as with Sanders' comparisons to Jim Brown, that Lebron's performance is compared to Wilt, because nothing in between has been as good.