By Andrew Krumme
”The sports world and the NBA especially are witnessing the rise of quite possibly one of the greatest athletes to ever grace any court, field or arena, that being the King.”
That was an excerpt from an article I wrote last January about the pure greatness that is LeBron James. Now, a year later, LeBron is still well on his way to becoming possibly the greatest professional athlete ever to play – period. King James finished up the 2004-2005 campaign by becoming the youngest player ever to average more than 25 PPG, seven RPG and seven APG, vaulting him into near-immortality with the likes of Oscar Robertson and Wilt Chamberlain. While his personal statistics were great, his team took a nose dive in the second half of the season and missed the playoffs. However, the Cavs reloaded in the off season and got James the help he needed, and they are now cruising toward Cleveland’s first postseason appearance in almost a decade.
In his third year, James has guided his team to the second-best record in the Eastern Conference this year behind a Detroit team that is playing such good basketball, it dismantled the defending champion Spurs in the double digits in San Antonio last Thursday.
On the same night after the Pistons win, there was another enticing match-up as LeBron and the Cavs took on former high school phenomenon Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. Bron and company could not quite pull out the victory in Los Angeles – number eight showed James who is still the top dog in the NBA. Kobe scored his team’s last six points of the night, while his counterpart LeBron James missed a potential game-winning shot as time expired. Thursday’s LeBron vs. Kobe match-up begs the question – if your team had one game to win, which of these two superstars would you rather have?
While LeBron would no doubt be every NBA general manager’s pick to start their team, Kobe proved in last week’s game against LeBron that he is still the guy you want in any crucial game to step up and lead his team to victory. Despite the controversy that has swirled around Bryant for the last several years, he has, especially this season, showed why he is the best player in the NBA. On a depleted Lakers roster with little to no real talent except Bryant and Lamar Odom, the former high school standout from Lower Merion High School, Kobe’s team is still on the way to the playoffs in a Western Conference that is stacked with talent.
Bryant is on pace to average a league-best 34 PPG, which would be the best single-season scoring average since Michael Jordan dropped 35 a game in the 1987-1988 season. Bryant’s Lakers may not have the record LeBron and company do, and Bryant does not have the supporting cast James now has in Cleveland. With Kobe still just 27 and another seven or eight prime years ahead, and with Phil Jackson back at the helm and a motivated Los Angeles front office, the Lakers will be back on top in no time, and it may be some time until Kobe gives up his crown to the apparent heir Prince James.
