I guess we are back at it again, doing a thing we did during his original run with the Cleveland Cavaliers, a method which has made many a pundit solids amount of loot. Yup… the human species has reverted to form and decided that every reason the Cavs lost Game 1 of the NBA Finals was because of LeBron James.
Then again, only the idiotic — folks with the need to have their takes baked in an oven set to a bazillion degrees Fahrenheit, and those invested in their own criticisms of James — are actually doing such things.
After Game 1, (cue 1950s private eye jazz music), the mean streets of Twitter became filled with such people.
Skip Bayless used the brilliance of his haphazardly put-together time machine to blame LeBron for the loss and Kyrie Irving getting injured; NBA writers acted appalled that it took James a humorous amount of shots to score an absurd amount of points despite everyone pointing out that it has been that way for him during these entire playoffs; and James is not clutch narratives even came back from the dead like a horror movie villain.
All the sighs, ughs, and what in the actual {expletives), really. Those are the only rational responses to such junk-food thoughts.
First things first: Cleveland was the clear, unequivocal underdog going into this series. By nearly every metric, Golden State is measured to be one of the top-10 teams in the history of the NBA. Yet, because they haven’t won a title before, people refuse to acknowledge the Warriors as such.
It’s rather backward, merely waiting on hindsight and revisionist history, to declare them as one of the upper-echelon teams, but it is understandable. You want the proof that they deserve such high praise. However, even if we are to ignore every measurable which puts them as an all-time type team, it is not as though Cleveland is a world-beater.
Heck, the Cavs aren’t even the best version of themselves. They’re without Kevin Love and have been using a banged-up Kyrie Irving to help carry the offensive load, which James has been forced to put on his shoulders as though he is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that has no other employees.
There’s a season’s worth of evidence which suggests Cleveland has little chance in this series. However, many want to kill James instead of praising Golden State, or want to ignore the fact that the Warriors’ roster is superior in every way, or that, honestly, outside of LeBron James and (an “if” healthy) Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers are using a roster that would normally, maybe, barely make the NBA playoffs.
But, yeah… that’s James’s fault because he missed a jumper in regulation or something.
That brings us to those who have the weirdest, stupidest, and most annoying of takes:
That was such a great game … until LeBron’s team went cold overtime and Kyrie hurt (it appeared) his left knee again.
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) June 5, 2015
Guess what? While his take is incredibly stupid, it is actually the fans’ retweet or acknowledgment of said tweet that is the dumb thing here.
You see, Skip’s fuel is found in the retweets and/or acknowledgements of his absurdity. He is a carnival barker — one who needs his voice to be heard in order to matter. It doesn’t matter if it is by way of insightful thought or relying upon punching a bearded lady in the face, Bayless needs the masses to continue to give attention to his comments, and the masses continue to give him a reaction because no one gets it.
Skip is paid to garner a reaction. He is currently playing a character of himself that is notched up to insane levels. He’s more or less a WWE Superstar. This isn’t really him, but just like a WWE wrestler, like a John Cena, Skip doesn’t care if you like him or not, he merely wants a reaction — and all too many Americans keep giving it to him.
That’s unfortunate, because it lends credence to those less educated who want to continually bash LeBron James for reasons that are backed up with little data, or the types of reasons used in such a small vacuum they leave no room for the context to properly judge it all.
Here is the thing, and I promise it will work if we all want it to: If no one follows, RTs, or pays attention to Skip on Twitter, his tweeting days will quickly come to an end. If no one watches First Take, or any other program Bayless goes on, ESPN will take him off the air. I pinky promise you on those things. I also, honestly, have no idea why this is so hard for all you “people who hate Skip” to figure out. (I’m also assuming there’s a slew of you who pretend to hate him, but either enjoy him to the world’s end or enjoy bashing him as much as you do pretending you don’t watch him.)
Instead, everyone keeps talking about him, sharing his tweets, and other things. By even bashing him (which, yes, I am doing here, but I am more so bashing those who lend him credence in any form) on any given platform, we are increasing his scope and his ability to push the dumbest of dumb LeBron James talk — which some people who can’t think for themselves buy into.
But wait… there’s more!
We already talked about the abomination of a roster Cleveland has. J.R. Smith, Timofey Mozgov, Iman Shumpert, Matthew Dellavedova, and the like are all fun stories, but come on. Are we really going to continue to act like these guys are anywhere near the same level of talents as the running mates Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are afforded?
This is especially true on offense. Smith can get hot, but he is also as likely to have an abomination of a game (oh, I don’t know… see Game 1?); Mozgov, who had an excellent Game 1, is reliant on others’ creativity to score; Shumpert is not the worst thing in the history of mankind, yet his offense isn’t known to make basketball lovers blush while he’s trying to score; and Dellavedova is a guard who has a hard time creating his own shot, and is as limited an offensive guard as there is in these particular NBA Finals.
Yet, magically, we’re all “shocked” by LeBron James going all isolation heavy? Really? Are you truly, honestly, and utterly shocked that the best player on the planet is shooting a lot of shots because his running mates more closely resemble the “they’re in the league all-stars” than key members of an NBA Finals team?
I’m not a huge fan of iso-Bron, but it is understandable why it has become this way, especially when Irving is on the bench or — worse — if he’s out due to injury. What are his other options? No one else can create offense consistently enough. Are we all going to pretend that having J.R. Smith being given a larger, ball-in-hand offensive role will be better for the Cavs?
Golden State knows he has limited possibilities, so the Warriors defend in a way which prevents him from going to the rim. That gives James limited options, such as settling for jumpers, while assuming every other Cleveland player can do nothing with a basketball other than stare at it as if it was a high school sweetheart.
James is not beyond reproach. That’s not the point here. What’s at issue is the far-too-prevalent idea that James is costing Cleveland the title — it’s being hurled around casually like a softball during a company outing while ignoring all the context surrounding this series that is screaming in your face, “CLEVELAND IS NOT MEANT TO EVEN COMPETE WELL IN THIS SERIES!”
Really, instead of blaming LeBron James for whatever the hell it is people trying to blame him for, fans and commentators should actually be giving him insane amounts of credit for managing to keep Cleveland in Game 1 and — with a type of magic that only rivals landing on the moon using a cereal box as your rocket ship — giving the Cavaliers’ fan base the feeling of hope that they can pull off one of the greatest upsets in NBA Finals history.
And yes, despite James being the greatest player of this generation, and without having an NBA title behind Golden State to “prove” that they deserve such all-time praise, Cleveland beating Golden State would be like Glass Joe smashing the living hell out of Mike Tyson.
So, um, let’s all start to act like it, okay?
