There is arguably nobody better than a confident LeBron James on any part of a basketball court, maybe except the free throw line, but that’s it.
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The 6’9 point-forward can call his inner Magic Johnson on the offense and Wilt Chamberlain on the defense whenever he wants and on whomever he wants.
The player’s name, size, his team never bothered the King to do what he does the best – rule the basketball court. But over the years he has been receiving constant criticism from experts, former players, and fans likewise, for playing selective defense.
The man would give us that Andre Igoudola chases down block defense in the 2016 playoffs and then become a cone just the following regular season. Well, being so great for so long has given James the privilege to give himself some relief on one end of the court to prolong his NBA career which he wants to end while playing alongside his son in the next 2 to 3 years.
To play until 40 years of age while continuing to be one of the best players in the league at 37, the 18x All-Star always needed to be a lot smarter than everyone else, and there’s little argument for him to be the player with the greatest IQ in the game.
And because he is always the smartest guy on the court he gets the privilege to be smug sometimes.
Jonas Jerebko once received a disrespect like none other by the confidence LeBron James had in him to miss his shot
While Warriors-Cavaliers would be the greatest rivalry of the last decade, Cleveland always had a tough time coming off the Finals between 2015 and 2018 as they faced a young and aggressive Boston Celtics.
Although the latter never went past the Cavaliers they always had them on their toes especially in 2017 and 2018 when both of them reached the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
In 2017, the Cavaliers lost Game 3 with LeBron putting up his worst Playoffs performance of all-time scoring 11 points with 6 turnovers, and the series was at 2-1. Jonas Jerebko, a role-playing Swedish player for Boston at the time, talked too much after C’s win and later tried this in Game 4.
Maybe the man was just taking out his frustration from a couple of seasons back when LeBron did this to him in 2015.
Remember Ian Shumpert’s revelation on James remembering a player’s points shooting percentage? This wasn’t a great example of that because Jerebko was over 40 percent at shooting jumpers that season. This was just brutal disrespect.
