Ultimately, they tried to make Luke Cage a firmly street level hero on a budget.. but that's a tall task when in modern times he's as strong or stronger than characters like Spider-Man and henceforth his abilities and protagonists should be a bit more cinematic than what was feasible for those early netflix shows.
Personality-wise, imo Luke probably is more Ray Lewis or Darryl Dawkins than what Mike Colter was trying to bring about.. even Rock's FF character of Hobbs reminds me more of what a Luke Cage persona would be. In Colter's defense tho, i thought he did ok but that the writing and story direction (especially in the 1st season) didn't do him any favors.