When LeBron James first entered the NBA (and even in the bizarre media circus that followed him around the year prior), the players to whom he found himself compared were of hilariously lofty statures, as the boy wonder often prompted questions like, “Is he more Michael or Magic?” and “Will he be the first since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double?” What was even crazier was exactly how poorly any of these media/barroom-chatter-inspired labels fit on the ever-broadening shoulders of James, who quickly left fans wondering not just if he could one day be the league’s preeminent star, but rather if he could be the league’s greatest star ever (a conversation that has not so surprisingly risen up again in recent weeks).
LeBron did things too differently, made things look too easy at times and so much harder than they should have been at others; he was quite simply like nothing else any of us had ever seen prior to him, so the juxtapositions got even weirder (Charles Barkley, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Thor) as his game evolved into some unexpected, semi-confusing blend of vision, violence and omnipresence. He seemed bigger than the sport so early, even as the rest of the world had to be prodded into caring about professional basketball as the Spurs and the Pistons of the world (or more accurately, the Spurs and the Pistons) battled it out for titles that no one who wasn’t a diehard was watching. Because of this, his has never been a comfortable place in world of sports radio talk and Deadspin: he didn’t win enough, he passed too often, he cared too much about the wrong things and too little about the right ones, he wasn’t Kobe and sure as hell wasn’t Mike. It was only this last summer, in an event that somehow became bigger than this sport, at least to the mass populace, that LeBron finally looked comfortable (while looking altogether uncomfortable) as himself. Not as a savior nor a villain; no, LeBron James evolved into what he had always been ready to become: a celebrity. More specifically, a celebrity of the 21st century.
In the current world of celebrity, there is little room for plaudits when it comes to our stars. While there have to be the occasional foils (and yeah, the good guys are the foils), the Kevin Durants and Sandra Bullocks of the world don’t sell magazines. No, that is left for the black-hatted men of the world, and in yet another way, basketball has never quite seen one like LeBron James. Players, including the best players in the league, have been unlikable, arrogant and prone to Prince-Philip-esque bouts of foot-in-mouth syndrome before LeBron, but never before has there been such easy access to every foible, every blunder, as there is now. Remember when LeBron called that girl retarded? YouTube does. Can you believe LeBron ran into his coach like that? Well, of course he did; he’s done it before, and here’s the video to prove it. Scrutiny isn’t just there every time Bron makes a mistake; no, the critics eye him like the cute girl at the bar who seems like she’s pissed at her boyfriend, waiting for any sign to pounce. And for them, LeBron has put on a laser show of theatrics and idiocy, putting together a year of screw-ups unrivaled in its consistency and forehead-smackitude. From the clouds of dry ice surrounding his initial public photoshoot to “announce” the signings of himself and Bosh to his preening-cum-spiritual moment kneeling down on the hardwood after downing the Boston Celtics in five games, James has provided a new media age desperate for a chance to grab at his coattails with a flowing robe of personal denseness, begging us all to grab our share.
Of course, as a celebrity, he can not be all pariah because there is little dynamism in such a story; if we all agree we abhor him, why prattle on about it instead of just being done with the brat? Well, inherent in celebrity lies a great deal of hero worship, and James can engender that even better than he can the hate. Only through James’ greatness can we justify our unhealthy obsession with him; had we not expected more, a man who scored 8 points in a Finals game would generally be infinitely lesser of a story than that of a feverish giant emerging from his infirmity to help his team overcome a massive lead in the fourth quarter. In fact, as a social media, we have forgotten how to celebrate genius without immediately denigrating it somehow, throwing in a “of course they won, they cheated to come together” or a “the Mavs have to win because the Heat are full of CHOKERS!!!!” with any genuine praise, even when confronted with brilliance as often as we as fans of NBA basketball have been in these 2011 NBA Finals.
A strange detail I’ve found pretty laughable over the last year has been that I finally figured out the comparison for LeBron James that makes the most sense, and the person isn’t even a damn basketball player. Instead, only the concurrent brilliance, complete lack of self-awareness and general showmanship that Kanye West provides can rival the kind of vitriol that James inspires, that he almost seems to desire. When I see West bombastically spew drivel on network television, trying to make a statement and be universally appealing at once while simultaneously failing at both, a tone of complete acceptance and rejection of all-encompassing fame comes through clearly, the same tenor that pervaded a great deal of LeBron’s post-Decision interviews. It’s an awkwardness that leaves viewers feeling less than attracted to the “personality” we’ve all been following so closely. And it is all made right when the next sample kicks in, when the next fastbreak alley-oop is completed. We wanted this, and now that our celebrity is here, we take him and stab at him and claw and delight in his pain and his glory as we will.
This era’s been desperate for its own Jordan, and it has gotten it, in its own way. Jordan represented a new paradigm, a perfection and a sheen that mirrored the gloss that the NBA desperately wanted to project at all times. As the calendar has turned several times and David Stern’s empire now posts updates on Facebook 20 times a day, LeBron has given us what we all wanted: an easily-despised, easily-worshiped superstar, complete with a buffet of flaws and sublimity, available for all of us to probe, poke and prod 24/7. Hate him accordingly, but don’t forget to check TMZ for all of the juicy details later.
