Ok so the statement to follow won't be a newsflash but it isnt exactly something that I was yelling through the playoffs.
Lebron is the truth.
Forget about being witness. Forget about the religious overtones that the message has. Lets remember, the guy is still only a kid. He is 22 years old. This is a pick up game in Akron for him. This is what every kid practices in their backyards. Kids can only dream of willing teams to victory like Lebron did.
Game 5 did more for the sport and that kid than anything else. It fortified the Lebron legacy. It put it in people's heads that he is the absolute beast that we thought he was. It laid more concrete on top of that assesment.
Its one more "but" that we can remove from his resume. We never could say that Lebron just willed his team to victory in a high stakes game. In Game 1 he passed on that opportunity. In Game 2, he took it and blew it. But in Game 5 something was different. Perhaps it was the water. Perhaps it was the air. It was that unending and unfair criticism that he got for being too unselfish and hten for being selfish. While the media's unusually contradictory assesments proved, we dont know what to measure Lebron against.
We all proved that we will not label him the next Michael because that would be a curse. We have seen many flash of the pan stars that have had our eyes fixated on their radiance until their light fizzled out.
Holy crap Lebron made me sit out a saturday nite with the fellas so I could sit home and watch the NBA playoffs. That hasnt happened since the Knicks made that improbable run in 1999.
For whatever the reason may be, we are now fully granting Lebron to Mike status. He hasnt won a single championship. He had one single game. He had that game where we will all talk about. Now for the rest of his career, any real discussion of when everyone knew he was great will begin with this game. This was HIS legend beginning for real. Although we know about him. Perhaps this will be known as one of those games where we all ask ourselves: WHERE WE WERE WHEN THE GAME WAS GOING ON. I was at the bar, enjoying a drink and watching a basketbal league be revitalized by king James.
He's the truth and i'm a witness.