Here we are for the third time, watching as LeBron James (and to a lesser degree, the team around him) stands on the last leg of a championship hunt that has consumed and defined both his career and the NBA's predominant narrative for a handful of years now.
His relentless questâ€"carried out by any means necessaryâ€"has led him down a path that earned him an unprecedented amount of criticism for perceived lack of character and heart. Of course, these are traits considered unbecoming of a player with his talent and aspirations, and his reputation has taken its lumps accordingly.
Now, the question remains...in a world where winning championships is seen as LeBron's only shot at restoring his image, how many exactly would be required to undo the damage to his tattered rep?
Heat fans and LeBron apologists alike tend to share the opinion that the bare minimumâ€"i.e. one ringâ€"should be enough to vindicate LeBron for all the abuse he's taken and justify the formation of his own personal super-team. To these observers, the only thing that matters is breaking the proverbial egg, not how many times he accomplishes it.
At this point in the journey, it's less about gaining respect by winning a certain number of rings, and more about avoiding the label of "ringless" at all costs. As long as the latter happens, LeBron's fans will consider his name to be cleared, and the last laugh to be his. Context will go out the window.
Of course, there will be an even larger segment of the public that will hasten to point out that the expectations on a team as loaded as this should far surpass a single championship.
One title might have been fine in Cleveland, where he was fighting the good fight without the benefit of ridiculous odds in his favor. But on a Heat team specifically built to brutally overpower all obstacles for several years, a single visit to the mountaintop would feel like quite the underachievement in retrospect. It would be kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters beating the Generals by one at the buzzer: victory is won, but nowhere near as dominant as it should be, and damningly so.
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And then, there's the hard-line crowd that maintains that for LeBron to redeem himself, he needs to deliver on the promise he madeâ€"or perhaps rather the trash he talkedâ€"as he sat in front of his new fans with Wade and Bosh.
The thinking goes, if someone comes out predicting eight titles (whether fully serious or just getting carried away in the moment) and can only deliver one or two, then they have grossly underachieved. If a player speaks so boldly, he should be held to his word; for those who find it unfair to expect LBJ to win eight rings, there's an old proverb about writing cheques with one's mouth.
Between this and the fact that LeBron has both the greatest athletic gifts ever to go with the most star-laden team in recent memory, there is no room for excuses regardless of the steadily decreasing odds of fully backing up his original predictions.
If you aim for the clouds and reach them, that's an accomplishment. If you aim to leave the earth's orbit and only reach the clouds, that's a failure.
Finally, there is sizable segment of the viewing public that does not base its criticism of LeBron on championships at all, but rather on the perceived lack of certain qualities, suggested by his decision to dodge adversity by over-stacking a team in his favor. These people will generally concede that a championship is all but guaranteed under these circumstances, which would potentially leave them less than impressed once he actually seals the deal.
Winning any number of titles would do little to nothing to change the image they have of LeBron as an entitled prima donna who wants no part of a level playing field. Since these people view his damaged reputation as having very little, if anything, to do with his mere lack of jewelry, it follows logically that winning one is not the cure-all he wishes it were.
How many rings would be enough to undo LeBrons bad rep?
How many rings would be enough to undo LeBrons bad rep?
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Just one. Context is meaningless.
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Two to five... expect much, but be realistic.
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He said eight... show us eight.
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Its not about rings.
So between all these schools of thought, which holds true depends on how you judge the value of a championship, how much stock you place in the non-statistical indices of what we call "greatness" and what a player can get away with doing and saying.
If we concede that a single championship is enough to rehabilitate LeBron's image, then the underlying suggestion is that players can bloviate as big and bad as they want without being held accountable.
A player could theoretically come out promising to sweep the playoffs for the rest of their career, carry himself accordingly with an inordinate amount of swagger, win one ring in 10 years and be excused from the obligation to back up his lofty claims. It's like an unspoken license to neither put up nor shut up and come out golden on the back end anyway.
Meanwhile, the more moderate of all positions on this matter seems to be the "more than one, not quite eight" camp.
On one hand, "one measly ring" is now a rational thing to say when you have a team which, by absolutely all accounts, should be more than equal to the task of multiple championships. On the other hand, there's a simple understanding that only someone out of touch with reality would even conceive of winning eight championships. Not even after the most massive asset acquisition since the Soviets joined the Allies.
Conversely, there is nothing wrong with holding a person to their wordâ€"remember who exactly came up with eight championshipsâ€"and withholding praise for anything less is simply being fair. Miami fans disagree. Perhaps they might want to blame their superstar for opening his mouth a little too wide to begin with.
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Is it fair, considering all the chest-thumping they did, to expect eight titles from this team? Certainly. They said it. Is it realistic? No.
LeBron's mouth was obviously just running with his unabashed jubilation at being released from the prison that was not having success fall in his lap. And yet, just because it's preposterous, should playersâ€"heck, should peopleâ€" just be let off the hook when they bluster like Olympian gods?
LeBron probably won't be able to win this demographic over with a declining D-Wade and no substitutes on the horizon.
At the end of the spectrum, there are those who subscribe to the theory that no amount of titles can change LeBron's negative image, thereby insinuating that there are far more important factors in determining a player's stature than simple rings.
The used and reused examples are effort, heart, mental toughness and willingness to face a challenge head-on. Once upon a time, a championship was more than enough proof of these qualities, but let's not forget that this is no normal situation. Here you have an abnormally loaded team, with abnormally lofty aspirations, playing with abnormal odds in their favor regardless of intangibles.Â
Considering, in the eyes of many, LeBron's lacking in the aforementioned intangiblesâ€"to which many feel he publicly confessed on July 8, 2010â€"speaks far more loudly about his mettle (or lack thereof) as a champion than any amount of hardware ever could.
Basically, people are either waiting for A) one ring to symbolically wipe their memories clean, B) several rings to remotely match the magnitude of Pat Riley's "experiment," C) eight of them to justify suffering the "king's" insultingly bold predictions or D) hell to freeze over, before their opinion on LeBron James can start recovering.Â
What camp are you in?
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