It occurred to me a little while ago, as I watched the Heat close out one of my favorite non-Celtics teams in the league, the Spurs, that I no longer hate LeBron, or resent his successes.
This is something that's been going on gradually ever since LeBron eviscerated the Celtics in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals last year. My dislike of LeBron was such that it took a while. It was a gradual process. But now, I think, it's complete.
Please don't get me wrong -- I will never be able to root for the Heat. I will never be happy to see them succeed. The way the Miami Thrice was put together goes against everything I like about team building and management. That's why this series was such an enticing opportunity. The team that represents the "right way" to build a team and conduct yourself as a star in the NBA, the Spurs, were up against the anti-thesis of that. I wanted the Spurs to win very badly.
But I think what has caused my feelings about LeBron to change over the past year or so is tied to the basic nature of my original dislike for LeBron. He didn't seem to know what adversity was.
Here's this guy, who has every physical gift from God that any person could hope to have if they wanted to be good at basketball. He's just a freak of nature, plain and simple. He never went to college, probably never met a coach who he didn't view as just an adviser, another voice in his ear who he could choose to listen to, or not. LeBron's ego is bigger than the moon, and he doesn't make any attempt to hide it. He's also a guy that other players love to play with, and he puts up ridiculous numbers without ever being selfish. But what was so infuriating about LeBron is that the guy was just so [dang] good, but he didn't seem to appreciate it, or have really worked all that hard for it. The fact that at times the league did everything they could to make him a success only exacerbated that whole image.
That's why I always found myself wanting him to fail. I wanted him to have to struggle. I wanted him to get knocked down a peg. I wanted him to take those ridiculous pre-game ceremonies and the dancing on the sidelines during blow-outs and shove them. I wanted him to continually lose to teams that were built to win as TEAMS, not built to win by putting the ball in LeBron's hand and letting him make stuff happen.
What changed? LeBron went through adversity. He lost to the Spurs in 2007, the Celtics in 2008, the Magic in 2009, and the Celtics again in 2010. He responded to that adversity by jumping ship from his hometown Cavs to Miami. That only made him easier to hate. Instead of facing up to adversity, he chose to run away from it and get some more talented teammates. But he faced more adversity in 2011, when his team fumbled away a 2-1 lead in the Finals and he was lambasted as a fraud and a choker because of his lackluster performance on the biggest stage.
LeBron came back the next season and just played some of the greatest basketball anybody ever has. Sure, he has some great teammates, but the majority of the Heat roster is still a bunch of role players who get to look a lot better than they are because LeBron makes it easy. LeBron faced some more adversity, falling behind 3-2 to the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals because Paul Pierce hit a three pointer in his face. It was a magical moment for Celtics fans. Pierce, the guy who fell in the draft only to prove that he was a superstar, and who once got stabbed nine times and yet didn't miss a beat, the guy who carried undermanned, flawed teams deeper into the playoffs than he had any right to, the guy who earned a Finals MVP and made the 2008 Celtics his own team despite the fact that he wasn't the best player on his own team. Pierce, in many respects the anti-LeBron.
What did LeBron do? He came out in that Game 6 and had the best game of his life. He stepped up to the challenge and proved why he's an all-time great. He didn't just live off his talent and the favorable refereeing. He went to another level, and nobody could match him.
LeBron was not perfect in these playoffs, and he had some bad games in these Finals. The Spurs are a great team, and their execution at times was seemingly unstoppable. They did a great job gameplanning for LeBron and made him seem invisible for long stretches.
Despite that, LeBron responded to the adversity. He had back to back incredible performances in Games 6 and 7, which were elimination games. He hit big shots, including one of the biggest shots of his career -- that one quite calmly -- to put the Heat up 4 with less than a minute left in Game 7.
LeBron has earned our respect, and our praise, if not our fandom. We may never truly like him, or be happy to see him win. But the hating should be done. The guy that was given every advantage and every opportunity to succeed throughout his youth and young adulthood has finally faced adversity, and by the way he handled it he proved he's among the best to ever play the game of basketball.
Hats off to LeBron.
