LeBron James, to me, is a two-time lottery winner.
The first victory came in the form of genetics. Not sure any athlete in our time has been so physically blessed.
The size, the speed, the coordination, the power — not to mention a computer-chip brain that can analyze every potential scenario on the basketball court in a nanosecond. It’s a combination of God-given gifts we may never see again in our lifetimes.
But the second one-in-a-million — maybe one-in-a-billion-like achievement for James is this: He was the most-hyped athlete of a generation — maybe of any generation — and he somehow surpassed it without a significant fall from grace. That’s Powerball-esque, and in my opinion, James’ true legacy.
On Tuesday night James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer by knocking down a 15-foot fadeaway toward the end of the third quarter at home vs. the Thunder. The Lakers forward now stands at 38,390 points while in the midst of his 20th professional season.
Throw in four championships, four Finals MVPs, four regular-season MVPs, and zero substantial controversies — and you have an athlete who stood alone well before he passed Kareem. The folks that labeled him The Chosen One? Well, they chose right.
You won’t see many James vs. Michael Jordan comparisons in this space, because that’s one of the most played-out debates in my industry. That’s not a dig at the folks engaging in that argument — it’s fun, and that’s what sports are supposed to be about.
What I will say, though, is that even if Jordan was more popular and iconic than James, he never faced a fraction of the scrutiny. To be dubbed the future Greatest of All Time while still in high school and then hit your stride in the social-media age? That’s something MJ never had to encounter.
I have vivid memories of James’ worldwide debut on ESPN in 2002, when he and his St. Vincent-St. Mary High School teammates took on top-ranked Oak Hill Academy. James squashed the spotlight as if it was a distant flicker, dropping 31 points while serving up a host of no-look passes and running Oak Hill out of the arena via a 20-point victory.
It was a prelude to a career in which no amount of success or surveillance really seemed to deter him. Not that there weren’t a couple of hiccups.
The most notable misstep of James’ career came in the summer of 2010, when he announced on live television that he was leaving the championship-less Cavs and “taking (his) talents to South Beach” to join the Heat. “The Decision” was billed as an attempt to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of America — and he did draw $2 million worth of donations to that charity — but it came off as an egocentric knife-twisting that caused Cavs fans to burn his jersey and greet him with blistering hostility whenever he returned to his first home arena.
And then there was June 2011, when James conspicuously disappeared from the fourth quarter in just about every Finals game vs. the Mavs, as the Heat blew a 2-1 series lead that left James without a title eight seasons into his career.
He’d gone from the chosen one to the villain who couldn’t win. But the latter label faded as quickly as a South Beach spray tan.
James won the league and Finals MVP the following season en route to his first title. He repeated each feat the following season. He then returned to Cleveland and brought the Cavs their first championship in what may have been sports’ greatest redemption story. Then, he won a title with the Lakers in 2020 while becoming the first player to capture a Finals MVP award for three franchises.
What’s nuts about all this is that it came with no scandals or legal trouble. Compare James with someone such as Tiger Woods, who was also anointed as a teenager before becoming the most notorious philanderer in sports history. Can you blame Tiger? Of course you can blame him — but straying from the straight and narrow seems borderline inevitable when you’ve been that famous and successful your entire life.
Just hasn’t happened with James.
I’m not going to pretend I haven’t rolled my eyes at some comments James has made over the years. I’m of the opinion that athletes should “use their platform” only if they are fully informed on a subject, and I don’t think James always has been. But I’m not going to begrudge him for his words. His actions have earned him the title of legitimate role model.
So here we are 38,390 points into a career that has shown no signs of slowing down. The man is averaging 30.3 points this season at 38 years old.
James lived up to every ounce of hype he was hit with, and on Tuesday surpassed it. All that’s left to do now is enjoy him.