LeBron James has been favored to win the Finals 2 out of 6 times
- Thread starter OfTheCross
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If you lose 3 straight Finals, yes your legacy will be tarnished.
It's always " Wow Lebron is so great and look how well his team is playing, he finally has a squad" until the Finals... then it's "Look at his teammates, his opponent was too good..."
Why is that?
It's always " Wow Lebron is so great and look how well his team is playing, he finally has a squad" until the Finals... then it's "Look at his teammates, his opponent was too good..."
Why is that?
LeBron's 2-4 Finals record is one of his greatest achievements
Does Michael Jordan's legacy need help? Apparently so, if we look how eager folks are to shred LeBron James for playing on the losing side in four NBA Finals.
James has been nothing short of incredible in these playoffs, reaching the NBA Finals yet again after dispatching the Toronto Raptors.
Consider this fact: James just put up a 34.5 player efficiency rating in the conference finals while no one else surpassed the 26.0 mark over the same period. Not Steph. Not Klay. Not KD. Not Russ.
Furthermore, James is dunking twice as often as he did last postseason. And the Cavs' offense has been virtually unstoppable, scoring a sizzling 116.2 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs.
However, over the next couple of weeks, there's a good chance you'll see some version of the following Finals note plastered in big-fonted memes:
James is just 2-4 for his career in the NBA Finals. What a bum! More like Le-Fraud, am I right?!
Enoooooough. Blaming James for his 2-4 Finals record is relying on the silliest stat around, and the latest desperate attempt to protect Jordan's sacred legacy.
Why is 2-4 so misleading?
Let's count the reasons.
1. Six straight Finals is basically unheard of
Seeing James at the Finals has gotten so common that it's hard to imagine the championship round without him. James has played his way into the Finals for a sixth straight season, something that hasn't been done by a player since Bill Russell pulled off the feat in 1966.
For James, it's even more remarkable once you consider that Russell's Boston Celtics needed to win only one series to reach the Finals from 1961 to 1965; James and others in this modern era needed to win three just to get there.
Getting to the Finals six straight times is an amazing accomplishment for James and his teams, even if he didn't win the title every time. The 2-4 stat is a clever sleight of hand. It turns a success into a failure, no different than walking up to a college graduate and tearing up the diploma because it didn't have summa cum laude written on it.
By citing James' "losing" record of 2-4, the implication is that we'd somehow prefer James to lose earlier in the playoffs and thereby not tarnish his precious Finals record.
Another common barb thrown at James' record is that he's always gotten an easy road to the Finals. One pretty big reason for that: Of the nine 60-win teams from the East since James entered the league, James has been on three of them. Also, the last two 60-win East teams James faced in the playoffs? He beat both.
Last season, the Cavs swept the 60-win Hawks and his Heat in 2011 needed just five games to send the 62-win Bulls -- led by MVP Derrick Rose -- packing. (And let's not forget that in 2006 a 21-year-old James took a Cavs squad that started Flip Murray and Larry Hughes to a Game 7 against the 64-18 Pistons.)
The stat you don't often hear is that James has reached the Finals in seven of his 11 postseasons, which is astounding to think about. At just 31 years old, James has already reached the championship round more times than Oscar Robertson, Moses Malone, George Gervin, Alex English, Bob Lanier, Dan Issel, Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Dominique Wilkins, Steve Nash and Yao Ming ... combined. Yes, combined.
If you want to know how hard it is to get to the Finals even once, just ask those Hall of Famers.
2. Michael Jordan "failed" earlier
Critics of James will point to 2-4 as both an indictment on his career and a nod of praise to Michael Jordan and his sterling 6-0 record. By slighting James, it props up Jordan's legacy as the G. O. A. T. (Greatest of All-Time).
But a fact that's rarely brought up is that James has missed the Finals just four times in his postseason career. By comparison, Jordan reached the Finals in just six of his 13 postseasons. Framing it another way, James is 7-4 in getting to the championship round while Jordan was 6-7.
What a loser that Jordan guy was! Missed the Finals more times than he made it!
(Sidenote: It's true that James didn't make the playoffs in the first two seasons in the NBA. If we really want to blame a teenager for not going deep into the NBA playoffs, we can, while noting that Jordan didn't even arrive in the NBA until age 21. James still has reached the Finals more often already -- seven in 13 overall seasons -- than Jordan did his entire 15-season career.)
Of course, citing Jordan's 6-7 finals-appearance record is incredibly unfair to Jordan, just like 2-4 is to James. But it points to the contradiction at hand. Would we rather James lose in the Eastern Conference finals or the first round instead of competing for the title? No, we should credit James for getting so far so many times.
After all, James has never lost in the first round of the playoffs either (something Jordan suffered three times). And James has never been swept in the first round either (something Jordan endured twice).
Looking at the Finals, Jordan didn't ever have to face a 65-win team, while James has faced two in the last two seasons alone. Furthermore, Jordan enjoyed homecourt advantage in five of his six appearances, a luxury that James has only had in two of his six Finals trips, underscoring that James has overachieved in getting to the Finals with subpar rosters.
Looking at the whole picture, James has a career record of 127-65 (.661) in the playoffs, while Jordan was 119-60 (.665). Quite the difference, huh?
And yet, people scream and shout that James is a championship bust.
3. Championship-or-bust mentality is lunacy
Yes, winning the championship is the ultimate team goal. But it is not the only goal and it certainly isn't the most important individual achievement. Winning the MVP, for instance, is far more reflective of a player's accomplishments than touting a championship-or-bust stat that is so dependent on supporting cast, coaching and plain ol' good luck.
By the way, while we're talking about individual achievements, have you seen who leads the all-time leaderboard for win shares in the postseason?
That would be James, who just passed MJ last week. James has accumulated 40.1 playoff win shares while Jordan generated 39.8 with his play, according to Basketball-Reference.com's all-in-one metric.
Playoff win shares
Win Shares
LeBron James 40.1
Michael Jordan 39.8
Tim Duncan 37.8
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 35.6
Magic Johnson 32.6
Source: Basketball-Reference.com
The 2-4 discussion is inherently problematic because James is not 2-4, his teams were. If we graded individual careers solely based on the number of rings on fingers than Jordan is no better than Robert Horry (seven championships), Frank Ramsey (seven championships) or Tom "Satch" Sanders (eight championships).
Going by the ringzzz logic, Beno Udrih has a better NBA résumé than Jerry West, the guy who is quite literally the logo of the league. Citing titles as an individual litmus test is a logical fallacy that ESPN's Pablo S. Torre calls thetyranny of "Big Playoff."
This is all not to say James is better than Jordan. That is not a discussion we're having today, not when James is 31 years old and likely just a little past the halfway point in his career.
But hoisting up the 2-4 record as some sort of indictment on James' legacy is just as foolish as it is ignorant. And it'll be more foolish if he goes to 2-5 after facing a legendary 73-9 Warriors squad.
To me, Jordan is the greatest player of all time. That doesn't mean we have to tear James and everyone else down. Especially not for their achievements.
Fade Runner 2049
Veteran
Excuses
Ron Mexico
Superstar
They should at least wait until the series is over.Excuses right before tip off
Long Live The Mamba
I make sh*t shake up in broad day
The plea coppin already startin?
Jordan's teams make it to the ecf without him, that shows how stacked his teams were, Brons teams don't even make it to the playoffs when he leaves
The_Unchosen_One
Superstar
Already with the excuses
nikkas coppin please already muthafukkas ain't even tipped off yet stop it slime