LeBron James has always been touted as the guy who makes super teams – but not when he is on the Cavaliers.
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With Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love on the team, one can look at the roster and say LeBron James had a stacked team. But when you look at the numbers and the reality of it, it was far from it. Kyrie was great and influential in the championship-winning team, but he was injured a lot. Kevin Love was no second coming of Chris Bosh like everyone hoped.
In fact, “2018 LeBron” was the best version of any player to ever play the sport. Not the 3-peat-winning Michael Jordan, not the Shaq-Kobe duo, but Cavs James. That season he could not miss if the lights went out and he was blindfolded at the same time. He played as a man possessed, but there was not enough left in him to repeat the 2016 heroics.
He played a total of 104 games that year, the most he’s ever played in one season. His regular season stats were as per his lofty standards, but the playoff run was something else. Leading the team across the entire board, he was begging for a supporting cast as Steph Curry has right now. A quick comparison shows how each of the star players’ teammates has alleviated the pressure on the team’s main man.
Steph Curry has been leading the Warriors in scoring, but don’t take anything away from Andrew Wiggins or Jordan Poole
If you consider PPG, the statistics look even direr. The top 3 Warriors apart from Steph average a healthy chunk of points, while the Cavs end looks like a bunch of bench players with limited minutes. That is not the support you expect when playing against a team that won 3 of the last 4 championships up until then.
This year’s Warriors team may have faltered along the way, but has always had one guy step up when the others fell. 2018 Bron did not have that leniency – it was either go hard or go home, every game. To see that the #2-4 scorers combined on the 2018 Cavs were .2 PPG lesser than Bron alone (34 PPG) says a lot.
The Cavaliers and The GSW matchups were getting boring by the year – everyone knew what the result was going to be, bar that one year that shocked the entire world. You cannot have one guy leading the whole roster in all the major stats and expect to win a championship. That is not how any of this works.
LeBron James will look to add to his team this off-season, but will he get that one ring to tie Kobe Bryant for five?
LeBron James in the Lakers may have been called lazy and a guy who does not put in the effort a superstar needs to put in. But considering his age, and everything he’s done in his Cavaliers stints, can you blame him? Bar his 5 years in Miami and the last couple of seasons in LA, Bron has had to play in his “playoff mode” from the get-go.
With Anthony Davis admitting on camera that he has not shot a ball in 2 months, it looks like Bron’s dream of equaling Kobe Bryant‘s 5 rings is nothing but a pipe dream. His second in command is streaming GTA V, while a 37-year-old is prepping for his 20th season.
