It’s May 2016, the time of year in the United States when professional basketball becomes a focal point for millions of people in America and around the world. It is the time when basketball “heroes” take center stage and basketball fans pray that their particular hero can lead their favorite team to the promised land, a National Basketball Association Championship.
LeBron “King James” James is often considered the greatest basketball hero in history.
Why? I don’t know.
It can’t be because James has won more championships. There are more than a few 2016 basketball players that have more championship rings than LeBron. Most of the teammates on the San Antonio Spurs team have won more championships than the star of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Miami Heat star Dwayne Wade has won more rings and perhaps other players.
LeBron James is the basketball hero of corporate America. He allegedly has a billion dollar shoe contract, he has movie deals and does a slew of television commercials.
And, no doubt, LeBron James is a very talented basketball player but to say he is the best that ever played is stretching it a bit too far!
His hero status is blown out of proportion by America’s false sports prophets. Just because TV sports idiots claim the Cavaliers will win every game or every title just because LeBron steps on the basketball court it almost never seems to happen. James has won zero championships as a player in Cleveland but he did win two rings as a member of the Miami Heat with the help, and possibly leadership, of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and others.
Yes, LeBron James is a big, fast, heavy basketball bull in an NBA china shop! He can bowl over smaller, lighter, slower and less talented basketball players at will.
But basketball is not bowling, or golf, or tennis, or boxing, or track, or wrestling. No one player can win a basketball championship because basketball is a team sport.
I don’t have to tell you there are many NBA “teams” better than James’ Cleveland Cavaliers!
One 2016 NBA team, the Golden State (Oakland, California) Warriors won more games in the 2016 regular season than any team in NBA history.
I have no idea who will win the championship this year but I do know that historically there have been heroes in basketball and in life that lose on a regular basis.
The only recent hero that won on a regular basis was a horse, American Pharaoh.
When LeBron left the Miami Heat to return to Cleveland, the Cavalier’s owner pretty much told LeBron he could do what he wanted to as long as his team could bring that no championship city a winning basketball team.
Sports clowns won’t tell you but the owner opened up his checkbook and told LeBron to assemble a team that could win a championship regardless of what those players would cost and Cleveland ended up with the highest paid group of players and a team that far exceeded the NBA salary cap. The coach hired by the owner was fired even though the team had a winning record so James could have a coach that suited him and Cleveland residents and fans thought a championship would be handed to them on a silver platter!
Well, the Biblical Pharaoh assembled the best team of soldiers all the gold and silver in those days could buy. Pharaoh’s team won military contest, after contest after contest.
But when they tried to defeat the team of Israelites led by Moses and favored by God, Pharaoh’s high paid army drowned in the Red Sea!
Don’t worry about the heroes. In basketball and in life, team work makes the dream work!
If you put a basketball team together that cares about each other, trusts each other, works together and fights together, I’ll take that team to win any day against a team with only one hero with an ego!
Where there is basketball unity, there is basketball strength! (Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net. And, if you want to,“Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook.)
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.