LeBron James has more than his share of detractors (call them haters, if you wish). With them has come some a different level of scrutiny — I can’t remember a star player who had his legacy defined and redefined so many times during his playing career. With Michael Jordan we waited until he retired (all three times). We didn’t try to define Magic Johnson’s legacy at age 28. Same with Allen Iverson or so many others. It felt like with those guys we sat back and tried to enjoy greatness as we saw it rather than pick it apart and define it over and over as we went along.
With LeBron it seems the national temperature on him changes game to game almost.
But in the biggest game of the 2013 season — Game 7 of the NBA Finals — he came up huge. All series long the Spurs had packed the paint on him, tried to lure him into shooting jump shots, shooting threes, and when he missed them he looked passive. They did that again in Game 7 and the Spurs strategy worked — LeBron was just 3-of-3 shooting in the paint. But he has spent a lot of time working on and improving his jump shot and it showed in Game 7 — he was 5-of-10 from three, 4-of-10 from the midrange. The shots fell and that let him drive and kick out to other shooters at times.
The result was a monster 37 point, 12 rebound game with strong defense at the other end. Basketball’s best player stepped up on the biggest stage and you can see that in the video above.