LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and chasing ghosts
By Seerat Sohi
LeBron James is untouchable, finally, inconceivably, inevitably, for the first time in his NBA career. In returning home and ending Cleveland’s championship drought, he accomplished what he set out to do since his rookie season, shaking one final monkey off his overburdened shoulders, and fixing what would have been the most infamous broken promise of his career.
The quest for self-improvement has never ended with him — the goalpost is ever-moving — but for the first time in his 13-year career, the question truly arose: how much more can LeBron James truly strive? And then, of course, as per Lee Jenkins’ profile in Sports Illustrated, he announced he’s “chasing the ghost” of Michael Jordan.
The beauty of Jordan’s career, though, is that near everything went off without a hitch. The three-peat, the 6-0 Finals record, the endless clips of game-winning plays, the storybook game-winning Shot’s that bookended a career littered with them. LeBron’s career, on the other hand, is the opposite: a question of whether extraordinary beauty can distract us from blemishes; if enough strings of unmatched dominance can eventually outweigh those occasional, mystifying lulls, most obvious against the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 Finals but present even during Cleveland’s first two games against the Golden State Warriors in these past Finals. He even hinted toward this flaw on the Open Run podcast, talking openly about how the photographic memory that allows him to pinpoint dimes can also result in paralysis by analysis in crucial moments. Minus a few… hiccups, LeBron has always been remarkably self-aware about his legacy. He sounded, more than at any time before, like a man who knows where he stands.
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So LeBron has to know he can’t touch Michael in the traditional sense. No matter how many more rings he wins, he can’t undo the past losses, the missed opportunities that his detractors will inevitably point to. He can’t undo the “4” in his 3-4 Finals record. He can only hope to hit .500, and hopefully ascend from there. He’ll have to do it his own way, and he has an opportunity few before him have ever had. LeBron’s durability, combined with advancements in sports science, already have him pegged as the healthiest star of all time. So his climb up the all-time stats ladder doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. Legions of young fans will click on Basketball-Reference for the one day and see LeBron’s name plastered on top. Perhaps more importantly, in a manner that’s more reminiscent of Shaq than it is of MJ, LeBron has the potential to mean something important to three generations of NBA fans. Immortality has never been so tangible.
For all the fawning over Jordan’s fierce competitive streak, his work ethic and singular drive toward dominance, his epic command of each game, the dirty little secret of MJ’s legacy is that it’s as equally sustained by marketing genius as it as by basketball genius. From the Crying MJ meme to the popularity of Jordan Brand, owning an NBA team might actually be his lowest-profile gig. Jordan wasn’t merely an athlete. In a burgeoning celebrity culture where relevance was becoming hard currency, he leveraged his athleticism to build a self-sustaining empire. And in that regard, LeBron is uniquely suited to catch him, to remain not only relevant but important twenty years from now. He’s already well on his way.
The NBA Finals were the perfect backdrop. The most haunted city in North American sports, a ghost town that’s been bleeding entire industries, and LeBron, the hometown hero trying desperately to carry them through a decades-long identity crisis, going up against Stephen Curry’s 73-win Golden State Warriors, the product of an analytics-driven 3-point revolution that’s turned the game upside down, next to the tech-capital of the world. On and off the court, it was Middle America vs. Silicon Valley. LeBron didn’t only end a 52-year old championship drought; he defeated the embodiment of his city’s existential threat.
Over the past few years, LeBron’s effort and activism in the local community have ramped up. Last year, he pledged to send up to 2,300 kids to the University of Akron, tuition-free for four years. Just this week, his foundation partnered with Signet Jewelers to get 3,000 volunteers to mentor students in Akron. He’s producing two TV shows centered in Cleveland, the first a reality TV show about young entrepreneurs being mentored by local business owners, as well as There Goes The Neighborhood, an NBC sitcom centered around gentrification. LeBron is pumping life into the Northeast Ohio area through a multitude of avenues — sports, pop culture, business, community activism. Has an athlete ever been so associated with a particular city? When he said owning an NBA team is a “dream” of his, did any other franchise come to mind?
Every legendary career is powered by a story. If Michael’s was about perfection, LeBron’s is about redemption. Even Lee Atwater couldn’t have scripted it better. Although I’m willing to bet Nike, with whom LeBron penned a lifetime contract, will. You can already see it developing: Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Middle America.
If LeBron does usurp Jordan, which will always be a matter of debate, it’ll likely be through the avenue of mythology, not merit. Feel free to grimace and shake your fist, you’ve probably earned it, but keep in mind this is all part and parcel of a career arc that’s been defined primarily by the redefinition of what it means to be a superstar. From dishing the ball in the final moments of a game to the way he’s hunting for omnipresence, the book on LeBron is that he’s always been writing a new book.