Lonely in LA

There are so many factors to take into consideration when thinking of why today’s NBA stars don’t want to team up with possibly the greatest basketball player of all time, LeBron James. What’s crazy is, none of the reasons for the league leaving James on read is James’ fault. He’s just too great.

One of the reasons that stood out to me the most was that superstars cannot be superstars when teaming up with James. Take Chris Bosh and Kevin Love for example. Before joining the Cavs and the Heat, Love and Bosh were both extremely dominant back to the basket and face up post threats. They were ball dominant players, therefore, the offense ran through their post game. After teaming up with James, both Bosh and Love changed their game completely to help give the team their best chance of winning. James is a ball dominant player who can get 30 and 10 a night while making all of his teammates better. However, in order to produce, Love and Bosh has to perfect their outside spot up shooting, since that’s where the majority of their shots would come from because of James deadly penetrating kick outs. The two big men were still considered great players and pieces to each big three, but they became role players in the shadow of LeBron James after teaming up with him.

Speaking of big three’s, that is another point I’d like to make in this teaming up with James debacle. James also teamed up with two other ball dominant all star’s in Dwayne Wade and Kyrie Irving. People blame the decline of Love and Bosh’s career solely on James and I don’t think that’s right at all. If you watch basketball you’d understand that Wade and Irving also played a huge role in taking away from Love and Bosh’s  touches because of how they dribbled the skin off the rock to create shots for themselves.

LeBron doesn’t have a point guard on the team that demands all of those touches, and he’s also getting older. As James moves up in age, and his athleticism slowly declines, you can see him putting more emphasis in facilitating for his teammates and being able to knockdown jumpers consistently. An Anthony Davis pickup could be huge for the franchise and I believe they could compliment each other’s game very well with Davis’ outstanding rim protecting and all around offensive dominance. In fact, LeBron could possibly take the backseat to Davis in coming years if Davis’ game keeps evolving. Only time can tell.