One of the incessant narratives that we have been sold when it comes to NBA great LeBron James is how he makes his teammates better. This is widely accepted as fact but I have started to question that over the past several years. The good brother 2RAW4SPORTS on YouTube explained this concisely in this video:
Although they were part of championship teams with Lebron James, did playing with him make guys such as Kevin Love and Chris Bosh better basketball players? I submit to the opposite was the case because with both Love and Bosh the aspects that their games that made them into elite, All-Star players had to be muted completely and they had to completely reform their games to fit into the LeSystem. Jae Crowder spent 1/2 a season in Cleveland looking terrible, gets traded to Utah and somehow looks once again like the competent, productive player seen previously. Derrick Rose was questioning whether he still wanted to play basketball , while he was in Cleveland, he gets away to Minnesota, and has a resurgent year, including a 50-point performance. Take a look at several of the former young core of the Los Angeles Lakers,- Brandon Ingram has become an All-Star, Lonzo Ball was coming into his own, and was one of the driving forces to the Chicago Bulls ascending to the top of the Eastern COnfernce before injuries have put his career into question. Josh Hart has become an integral, contributing piece on the New York Knicks. Jordan Clarkson has become a Sixth Man of the Year. Ivica Zubac is a productive player and the starting center for the Los Angeles Clippers. This supposed LebRon James luster certainly did not work on Russell Westbrook , who after spending the better part of a year and a half being the whipping boy for every thing that ailed the Los Angeles Lakers, got away and magically reverted to more of the player seen for the majority of his Hall of Fame career.
Winning demands sacrifice , however when it comes to playing in the LeSysytem, the sacrifice is a one-way street. It is the other players who are forced to make adjustments, many times to their own detriment, while for Lebron,in terms of play style, it will be business as usual. Credit for wins will be attributed to James, but loses, will be laid at the feet of teammates, be it passive aggressively, when he said he was averaging a triple double in the 2018 Finals , or though his media sychophants who, for example, have spun the false narrative ( one that we debunk completely) that JR Smith lost the Cleveland Cavaliers Game 1 of the 2017 NBA Finals.
There certainly may have been some players that have benefitted from sharing the court with LeBron, however this notion, which has to be sold on nearly a daily basis, that he “makes everyone better” is demonstrably false. Many other outlets may not have the stones to call this fact out, but we have no such qualms.
