LeBron James Ends Best-Player Debate with
Dominant Playoff Run, 2012 NBA Finals
The following is an excerpt of an article from Bleacher Report
It's not just the fact that LeBron now has a ring to his name that
further validates his status as the best basketball player on the
planet, but rather how he came to earn that most precious of
mementos that puts James head and shoulders above his peers.
In leading the Heat through the Eastern Conference playoffs and
the NBA Finals, LeBron broke his own record for most
consecutive postseason performances of 25 points or more with 15,
including all five NBA Finals games. All told, he posted
breathtaking averages of 30.3 points on 50 percent shooting, 9.7
rebounds and 5.6 assists. He's the only player in league history to
have registered a line of 30-9-5 with 50 percent shooting or better
over the course of a postseason run...and he's now done it twice.
The only other player who's come close to matching him? Oscar
Robertson—who shot 47 percent while averaging 31.8 points, 13.0
rebounds and nine assists in 12 games for the Cincinnati Royals in
1963, when the Big O and company lost to the Boston Celtics in
the Eastern Division finals.
For those who claim (or rather, claimed) that LeBron isn't the best
in the business because he couldn't get it done on the biggest stage,
the statistical proof against their arguments is just as sensational, if
not more so.
After struggling to score more than 20 points per game in 10
previous finals tilts (in which his teams went 2-8), James came
back this year with 28.6 points, 10.2 rebounds and 7.4 assists in
ousting the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games. That was more
than enough to make him the NBA Finals MVP, and just the 10th
person in league history to hoist a Bill Russell and a Mo Podoloff
in the same campaign.
LeBron punctuated that brilliance with his second career finals
triple-double (26 points, 11 rebounds, 13 assists) in a 121-106
blowout in the clinching game to etch his name alongside those of
Magic, Wilt, Bird, Russell and Cousy—James' only postseason,
stat-stuffing, triple-double peers in the history of the game.
But forget about stats. Maybe you distrust them, right next to lies
and damned lies.
Cycle back through the tape of LeBron's 22 games, and you'll see a
superstar playing his heart out, night after night. You'll see the
most gifted player to ever grace the hardwood playing to his full
potential in a way that's almost difficult to appreciate because he
did it so consistently. You'll see a man playing and guarding every
possible position on the court, and doing so with apparent ease—
dominating in the post, shooting from the perimeter, crashing the
boards, running the break, picking off passes, blocking shots,
pestering world-class competitors and everything in between.
And, at times, while playing on a leg (not a heart) that seized up at
inopportune moments.
You'll see a player who gave so much...and then gave even more
when his team needed him to, when Chris Bosh went down with an
abdominal strain and Dwyane Wade's creaky knees made him look
more like "The Jog" than "The Flash" at times.
You'll also see him outplaying Kevin Durant, the 23-year-old
wunderkind who's often been touted as his closest competitor for
the "best baller" crown.
Keep in mind, the Durantula didn't play poorly, either. All he did
was score 30.6 points (on 54.8 percent shooting), rip down 6.0
rebounds and drop 2.2 dimes in his first ever trip to the finals.
As for Kobe Bryant, his overall resume may be more stacked, with
five rings and more points than you can shake a stick at, but that's
much more the product of seven more seasons spent in the NBA.
The Black Mamba may be a "greater" player in the annals of NBA
lore, but in the here and now, even he has to look up at LeBron
rather than the other way around.
Kobe has no other choice, really, not after his Los Angeles Lakers
were sent packing by OKC weeks ago.
Above all, LeBron has bested himself. The man who plays for
himself, his teammates and the love of the game, schooled the
once-snotty kid who let his friends orchestrate TV specials in his
honor and played with anger in a vain attempt to silence his critics.
Because, at long last, the most scrutinized player in NBA history
figured out that to overcome that stinging scrutiny—to put the
haters in their place—he must first ignore them entirely rather than
go out of his way to jam an already stocked furnace with more
fuel. He even learned to poke fun, in perhaps the most public way
possible, at those past transgressions that made him such a villain
in the court of public opinion.
In the process, LeBron put the most scrutinized and most hyped
team in NBA history on his back and helped it live up to the hype,
against worthy opponent after worthy opponent after worthy
opponent.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1231759-­‐lebron-­‐james-­‐ends-­‐best-­‐player-­‐
debate-­‐with-­‐dominant-­‐playoff-­‐run-­‐nba-­‐finals