It is interesting how music will historically define a youth generation and how that music at the time will be considered “devil’s music” or taboo for children to listen. What’s strange are how these musical representations only manifests themselves in roughly thirty year intervals: the jazz age for the Roaring Twenties until Classic Rock stole the show in the late fifties and finally my own hip hop symphony that started in the late eighties and still thriving today.
I’ve only recently become invested in the rap generation but solidified my relationship with this scarlet after Public Enemy’s Chuck D came to Florida State and talked at my school (a class about hip hop’s history and literature may have helped too). He relayed many of hip hop’s threatening problems—record companies run my 55+ white executives, the reliance on misogyny, and the “don’t hate the player, hate the game” narrative that releases execs and rappers from any culpability—but Chuck emphasized that why these problems remained in the game was because there was no more rap collectives, no more teams that could rely upon each other when challenged in a public sphere. In today’s game, there are only stars.
This entire NBA Finals has been touted by sportswriters (myself included) as a true team versus three superstars but this narrative never really manifested itself, until last night. By his own standards, Dirk Nowitzki did not have a great game nor did LeBron James. Everyone has been calling for the rest of the Dallas team to step up because Dirk’s lone star show will not work against the three stars of Miami. Dirk even called out his own teammate Jason Terry for being unclutch in the past games. So when the series looked lost as a decrepit Dirk sat on the bench, towel overhead, wheezing to catch his breath, it was the team of Dallas that responded. Deshawn Stevenson had a surprising 11 points off the bench. Tyson Chandler channeled his inner Moses Malone, finally realizing the lack of bigs on Miami and crashed the boards for 16 rebounds with an astounding nine of those being on the offensive end. Jason Terry backed up his smack talk by sparking the Dallas comeback with 8 points when Dirk was on the bench. When the Dallas lead star was down, his collective team rallied around him when he needed him most.
On the other end, the Miami Heat lost because of the play of one LeBron James. I’m not going to blast James with various Le- derogatory nicknames and this game may hurt his eventual legacy but that’s only because LeBron has enormous expectations from a crowd that doesn’t want him to live up to them. Stop the derivative comparisons between Jordan, or Magic, or Pippen because truthfully he’s none of those guys. He’s so unique in his talents and skillsets that he deserves to be defined by his own name, LeBron (shocker!). How I judge how much of a star an individual star is in the NBA, is to listen to how both the media and his fellow players will address him. If a player is repeatedly called by his first name, he is a transcendent star (or has a terrible last name like Olajuwon although Hakeem is still a superstar), but if this player is simply a star, they are called by their last (except in Bird’s case who has an awesome last name). How often is LeBron referred to as James, or Kobe referred to as Bryant while their respective teammates are stuck with their last names Bosh and Gasol.
I don’t think we’ll ever get away from hypercriticizing LeBron, mostly because we will always crave more from him. Our appetites will never be satisfied with his legendary Detroit performance or his defensive dominance over Derrick Rose because as soon as he touches that greatness, we start the inevitable comparisons. LeBron will only be appreciated after he leaves the game, sort of how Vincent Van Gogh’s art was only considered masterpieces after his death (In this case LeBron’s death is figurative, not real.).
Although the LeBron legacy questions are unfair, any criticism for James’ performance in last night’s game are completely founded. He looked more exhausted than Dirk at moments. He was content to stand in the corner on timeout, even when he had the shit talking Jason Terry guarding him. However, when a team is based on three players plus whatever role player decides to show up for scoring purposes, a true team will eventually catch up to them. A lot of analysts have said that the beauty of the Miami Heat, is that when one star falls the other two will pick him up. They never had to say this about LeBron, he’s been so consistent for too long. Also, whenever analysts make this point, the Heat star player in question usually has at least a double digit game, LeBron only had 8 points. He scored only one true field goal with his other points including free throws and a dunk. Maybe Jason Terry words are true and maybe there’s some personal matter in his life, but LeBron wasn’t LeBron last night, he was simply James.
The only difference about last night was that Nowitzki had a team pushing him to become Dirk, James only had other stars too ready to capture their own spotlight.
