Not to start trouble, but LeBron James is a better impressionist painter than Renoir. His revolutionary architecture rivals Frank Lloyd Wright's. His first book, still unpublished, will be more well-crafted and daring than Philip Roth's, and his foray into food will be tastier than Joël Robuchon's. James already sings with the elegance of Ella Fitzgerald, plays a meaner guitar than Buddy Guy, dances like Baryshnikov, exudes more empathy than Oprah and makes a more stylish smartphone than Steve Jobs. He could probably coach Ohio State to a few consecutive wins over Michigan.
What, do you not agree? Is any of this in dispute?
Earth is orbiting closer to a LeBron re-appreciation, willingly or not. His gaudy Heat have made the NBA Finals, which begin Tuesday night against the Dallas Mavericks at Miami's white-T-shirt space disco, and they did so largely because of James's brilliance. It isn't enough to exonerate James for recent missteps—he's still the man who turned his free agency into a egomaniacal spectacle; who left Cleveland in an aggrieved funk; who flew his Learjet to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun. But after a series of spectacular performances in these playoffs, the conversation about James is mercifully beginning to migrate in a new direction—away from the off-season psychodrama and onto actual basketball, which is much more entertaining and far less junior-high-school cafeteria.
James has been magnificent this spring, and he has been magnificent in areas where, not long ago, his magnificence was in question. Remember a short while ago when everyone decided LeBron wasn't a closer? In these 2011 playoffs, James has been devastating in the final crunch, at both ends of the court. Versus Chicago, he smothered MVP guard Derrick Rose like a protective parent—denying him the lane, denying him his shot, denying him a school-night sleepover. When James took the ball on offense, he alternated, in an almost trance-like rhythm, between 3-point daggers and locomotive drives to the basket. He was unstoppable, and only a joyless crank could deny the obvious: This was as Michael Jordan as it got without the genuine 23 himself.
Then Scottie Pippen said it out loud. The morning after the Heat closed out Chicago in five games, the Basketball Hall of Famer gave a radio interview on ESPN in which he said that while his former Bulls cubicle mate was "probably the greatest scorer to ever play the game," it was possible that James "may be the greatest player to ever play the game."
Wha-wha-wha-whaaaat?
You could practically hear the movie-trailer record needle scatch and see the Bulls mascot cover its eyes with its hoofs. Forget that this was the hyperbole country of talk radio; forget that Pippen used the equivocal "may;" forget that a Bulls Kremlinologist would argue that Pippen was actually needling his canonized teammate ("greatest scorer" has the whiff of faint praise) more than he was lionizing a newcomer. Pippen had made a Lennon-esque "more popular than Jesus" faux pas, and now everyone would have to spend the next 24 hours tearing it apart. Round and round it went—LeBron doesn't have a single championship! LeBron had to engineer a move south! Tell him to phone Springfield, Mass., when he gets six rings!—until James himself stepped forward and said that while he was humbled by Pippen's remarks, he wasn't "going to sit here and say I'm better than Jordan or if I'm not better than Jordan. It's not about that."
Great. It was bad enough that James is performing in the clutch—now he's going to be gracious and self-aware, too?
The James vs. Jordan freak-out proved two things. One, it underlined how weirdly obsessed and overserious NBA fans are about the league's all-time pecking order—witness the recent howling when Dallas's coach dared suggest that Dirk Nowitzki belonged in the greatest-ever Top 10, as if there was the possibility the Martian All-Stars might arrive and our planet would get hammered in the low post because it opted for Nowitzki over Hakeem Olajuwon.
But it also shows how the universe is not yet ready to stop its LeBron tantrum and re-embrace a player it loved until last July. Pippen's Jordan comparison provided a fresh outrage, even if James wasn't the one doing the comparing. When it comes to LeBron, everything gets distorted. (Could you imagine the public meltdown if James had tattooed the NBA's Larry O'Brien trophy to his arm, as Mavericks guard Jason Terry did earlier this season?)
It's fun to tweak James and the Heat. They can be ridiculous. That cheesy laser-tastic celebration Miami threw upon signing James and Chris Bosh to join Dwyane Wade looked like a cruise-ship matinee gone amok. James's mighty Game 5 flop to a phantom Derrick Rose foul should get him a role in Almodovar's next movie and a contract with FC Barcelona. After Chicago's season ended, an irresistible piece of snickering commentary came from the young Bulls center Joakim Noah, who ruefully remarked: "Miami is a hell of a team. They are Hollywood as hell, but they're still very good."
Listening courtside, the TNT analysts Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley chuckled like someone had whispered a crack in the back of algebra class. "I love him, that's awesome," Barkley said of Noah.
Keep laugh, laugh, laughing. Joakim Noah is done for the year. Dallas has a better shot—the Mavericks are a veteran team desperate to win a title; Nowitzki is playing with the focus of Harrison Ford chasing a one-armed criminal—but they'll have to do it against the best basketball player in the world (post-Jordan, 2011 edition). LeBron James is on the verge of doing exactly what he wanted to do. The joke's on him, until it's on all of us.
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