LeBron James, thirst is everything

Like boxing and tennis, basketball is at its best when comprised of attacks and counterattacks. Unless one develops a peculiar affection for the offensive neuroses of Floyd Mayweather or Andy Murray, who, like a team coached by Jeff Van Gundy or Pat Riley, simply wear and grate on everyone, the game is about shot-making. This year’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics has been no different. While no particular game has been a classic per se, each game has contained memorable sequences and events, and the series as a whole has been at one with the swinging of a pendulum.

Boston won the first two games in the series, to which Cleveland responded by winning the next two games. The two teams then traded wins in Games 5 and 6. Headed into Game 7, the home team has yet to surrender the advantage. Such is the way of this series, played out in jabs and ground strokes. Such is the way between the Celtics and LeBron James, if not always playing for Cleveland, since about 2008 A.D.

The year after LeBron James carried one of the least talented rosters to ever grace an NBA Finals, Danny Ainge armed Paul Pierce with Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett and took over the Eastern Conference, leaving LeBron to pursue a reprieve from inferior supporting cast on the white sands of South Beach. Teamed with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, he then took to eroding what Ainge had taken little time to build in no time at all, as Ray Allen fled Boston for Miami and both Pierce and Garnett were shipped to Brooklyn. This is all well-known. This is all recent history, even if it predates the NBA careers of Boston’s current youth movement and Brad Stevens’ clipboard architecture.

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The irony of a LeBron James team facing elimination against Boston’s current roster is that such a roster would never have been built if Danny Ainge weren’t always tearing down and building in response to LeBron James’ waxing and now waning window of dominance.

Punch. Counter punch. Counter to the counter punch. These franchises are so involved with one another they traded All-star guards just last summer. Blow for blow, they cannot help but shape each other.

A rescued Kevin Love. A bevy of draft picks. Years and games gone by. A now disgruntled Kyrie Irving. A broken Isaiah Thomas. The tragedy of Gordon Hayward. A midseason cataclysm in Cleveland. A still fragile Kryie Irving. A warp speed coming of age. An aging hero on the brink. The end of an era. The start of something. The earth may not be flat, but time is mostly a flat circle. With just over two minutes to go in the fourth quarter of Game 6, LeBron James dribbles the ball with Jayson Tatum guarding him and the weight of the world is almost what it was in 2008.

LeBron is weary from carrying his own muscular frame and lengthy legacy. He has been wrestling ghosts since he was a teenager. He no longer wears a headband. He is too old for fashion trends. His hairline has thinned. His beard is thicker. He has progressed in a decade’s time from Thor to Thanos, not so much reading up on the Marvel Universe, but living all its peaks and valleys. He is no longer just a challenger or hero. He is also an old man and, to some, a villain. He possibly remembers more basketball than Tatum has played. Tatum is rail thin and full of promise. One of the ghosts LeBron has already busted (Kobe Bryant) whispers in his ear. He has never been here before, but he will likely be here forever. He is a rookie and, if all goes according to Ainge’s plan, the once and future king. He is doing more at his age than someone his age should. He is living, in this moment, the video game scenarios of his childhood.

LeBron steps back and to his left, like a bishop in retreat. He drills the 3, his fourth on the night. Tatum responds with a bucket of his own. He is pesky, relentless in his youth. LeBron steps back again. Before this three possession sequence began, the game was over and yet not. When this second step back 3 rains through the nylon, the game, for all intents and purposes, will be over. LeBron James will finish with 46 points in 46 minutes of an elimination game. He will be everything his now ancient tattoo across the shoulder blades promised he would be, but still it might not be enough.

He is within one game now of returning to the Finals for nine straight years, which would make for 10 trips in 12 seasons. He is 33. He is basketball old, but savior young. And, despite what Skip Bayless says about gulping water, thirst is everything.

When he wasn’t hitting one of his five 3-pointers on the night, he attacked the basket relentlessly, and even when his initial drives were thwarted or failed to land, his aggressiveness cleared space for others and himself. When Marcus Smart blocked an attempted dunk, Larry Nance, Jr. picked up the pieces. When a layup rattled off the rim, LeBron followed his own miss; the ball rolling round and round like a True Detective monologue. 46 points in 46 minutes, each basket a gesture in a game of charades, where he managed to mimic just about every NBA legend to ever play.

I forget who tweeted it, but the observation is so apt I’m not sure it matters. The comparisons, at this juncture in his career, are fairly universal. LeBron is a hybrid between Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal, both of which borrowed and stole and rendered unique the moves and actions of those who came before them. Yes, every assist is shades of Magic Johnson, and LeBron did dish out nine of them in Game 6, but his force and brutality at the basket echoes what Shaq did to opponents circa 2000 to 2002. It’s deflating and renders Al Horford small. Meanwhile, unlike Shaq, LeBron can’t park himself in the lane on defense and is also playing point guard and running isolation plays as if he were Michael Jordan waving off Ron Harper.

Watching LeBron during a game is exhausting. Personally, I sat at home chugging water just to witness all the roles this roster of vagabonds and failed franchise cornerstones requires him to play. He is Cleveland’s everything, and in the home games of this Eastern Conference Finals, being everything has also resulted in his teammates being better. George Hill and Kyle Korver look like themselves again.

LeBron James still has his critics. They want more from him, always, but that too is like Shaquille O’Neal, who always lacked something for those who viewed him as too big to praise. He didn’t block enough shots. He didn’t shoot free throws well. He lacked an array of elegant post moves (a la Kareem) or simply didn’t play with enough touch around the basket. Some of these complaints  held more truth than others, but the truest observation about Shaq was that for a time no one in the game of basketball could stop him. He was dominant, and rosters were torn apart and sewn together in his wake. And that’s what dominance does — it stands like some jagged cliff with the youthful generations beating against it.

Some will say LeBron lacks a killer instinct, and the suggestion is always some critic wishing Michael Jordan were still in uniform to slay this other number twenty-three’s youthful onslaught. But LeBron isn’t young anymore. And he’s already accomplished too much to be so easily dismissed.

On the other hand, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier are all too young to kill. Win or lose in Game 7, the Celtics are most likely around for longer than LeBron has left in Cleveland or even elsewhere, and it is doubtful he could have outlasted a Boston team with either a healthy Hayward or Irving in the rotation. Hell, these young pawns just might eliminate their mark before he turns ghost and whispering check mate might not require any more help than Horford and Smart have to offer.

All that considered, maybe a killer instinct isn’t what LeBron needs so much as an impulse to live. Play to see another day. Play to see what happens. Maybe discover by necessity some hidden skill or virtue; an innate ability to rely on turnaround jumpers in the post or to bank in runners where once upon a time he would have dunked the ball. When you’ve come this far already, what’s one more game? What’s one more city or uniform but a chance to evolve— to counter the ways in which the game tries to escape your grasp?

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One could spend the remaining games of LeBron’s career critiquing all the ways in which he isn’t some other player or one could simply acknowledge — maybe even celebrate —  all the ways in which he expends himself until there isn’t anything left.

Either way, he isn’t hunkering down. He’s already on the offensive, moving toward whatever will be and out of referents.