If not for Draymond Green’s suspension, the NBA finals probably wouldn’t have reached a Game 6. That they have enables us to re-engage in that longstanding discussion: What exactly should we make of LeBron James?
He’s the greatest player since Jordan. He’s among the five greatest ever. He has lifted if not dragged seven teams to the NBA finals. No team without LeBron has won the Eastern Conference since 2010. It would be wrong to say we the people don’t have appreciation/admiration for James: How could we not? But do we like him?
Sometimes we pull against the game’s best player — “Nobody roots for Goliath,” Wilt Chamberlain famously averred — because it’s human nature to prefer the underdog. It’s also undeniable that Golden State is cuddly in a way no great team has ever been. By way of contrast, the happy Warriors were bound to make King James seem something of a grump (especially when he’s losing).
But the King himself has given his subjects reason to chatter. Green was suspended after getting entangled with LeBron when Game 4 was all but decided. He knocked Green to the floor and stepped over him, which in sporting circles is a sign of utter disrespect. Green is no shrinking violet — there’s your understatement of the 21st century — and he responded by hitting James in the crotch. He also called him a non-regal name.
After more than a day of review and debate, the NBA assessed Green with a Flagrant 1 foul. Owing to the accrual of such violations, Green was suspended for Game 5, which could have been the clincher. It wasn’t. LeBron had one of his best nights. And now we wonder: Did he bait Green into a suspension? (James said he wasn’t aware that Green was near a ban, which nobody believes.)
In matters of decorum, it’s hard to mount a vigorous defense of Green. He’s the leading trash-talker in a league where such discourse is standard operating procedure. He should have been suspended for Game 5 of the Western Conference finals for kicking Steven Adams in the groin. Had he been, the Cavs might well be facing the Thunder. Green was given a pass once but not twice — your karma police at work.
This skirmish, however, was less about Green than James. Having initiated it, he sought to drape himself in kingly garb. The Warriors’ Klay Thompson suggested that the NBA was “a man’s league.” LeBron responded by saying he was taking “the high road.” Stephen Curry’s celebrity wife, Ayesha, tweeted: “High road. Invisible bridge to step over said person when open floor is available left to right.” Warriors sub Marreese Speights tweeted an emoji of a baby bottle.
In the age of Twitter and suchlike, it was inevitable that the greatest player since Jordan would be nitpicked in ways MJ never was. But James has invited scrutiny with his cryptic tweets and odd appearances — why in midseason did he fly to Miami to work out with Dwyane Wade, who plays for the Heat? — and especially “The Decision.” We watched that self-produced hour of wretched TV and thought, “What a jerk.”
Thing was, LeBron never had really been a jerk. In the main, he has handled his celebrity well. Somehow, though, the world’s best player has fallen just short of being revered.
Great as he is, he’s not above petulance. His refusal to shoot in a stupefying Game 5 against Boston in 2010 is one of the oddest performances ever, and even as he was playing he seemed to distance himself from the Heat’s upset loss to Dallas in the 2011 finals. You could sense a similar resignation setting in near the end of this Game 4 — until the moment when he stepped over Green.
Intended or not, the upshot was a suspension that extended a lopsided series. If the Cavs steal this thing, we’ll crown LeBron the King of Gamesmanship. Just not the King of Hearts.
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