The Internet has been throbbing with intrigue after the Chris Broussard Q & A with LeBron James for ESPN the Magazine dropped this morning. There is a lot to take in, so we’re giving you the 5 biggest things to glean from LeBron’s eye-opening gaze back on his first up-and-down decade in the NBA.
What a doozy of an interview. Broussard writes mellifluous exposition to preface the question-and-answer portion, reminding readers that maybe the religiously outspoken NBA analyst should stick to these sorts of interviews rather than his often-late breaking news updates (leave that to Woj). Broussard’s excellent introduction aside, LeBron opens up like we haven’t really seen since he got over the Larry O’Brien hurdle and captured the last two NBA championships, while also winning the last two regular season MVP awards (and four of the last five) as well as two NBA Finals MVP’s and two gold medals. Also, just a reminder, he’s not yet 30, humbling even the most most precocious among us.
There was a lot to ingest after getting through the whole interview, but here are 5 takeaways from the piece [in no particular order]:
1. LeBron is going to the post even more next season.
We’ve long known that at 6-8, 250 pounds, James had the capability to go HAM in the paint with few capable of thwarting his advances in the restricted area. Except, in the past, LeBron didn’t really feel comfortable doing so. He’s comfortable now, which should make every opponent dizzy. After working with Hakeem the summer after his 2011 Finals loss to the Mavericks, we saw a few instances of this during the Heat’s run to the title in 2012. But it came in brief moments, vestiges of a Bruce Banner unwilling to go Hulk. That might be changing.
“I think [posting up] is a dynamic that helps our team more than anything. We don’t have too many conventional post-up guys. Obviously, CB [Chris Bosh] can get down there, but he’s more of a spot-up, catch-and-shoot, pick-and-flair guy. D-Wade does a little bit down there as well. But it brought a new dynamic for our team when I started to change the pie chart of my game — less perimeter and now adding a little bit more in the post.
[…]
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like [posting up]; it was just something I wasn’t comfortable with. I would say I’m comfortable with it now. And for me, anything that adds value to our team and the guys around me, my teammates, I’m all for it. If it took me playing without the ball and cutting more or slashing more without the ball, if it took me playing point guard, if it took me playing center, if it’s going to help our team, I’m for it. And I felt like in order for our team to be more dynamic, I needed to be in the low post. It just creates so many matchup problems. Teams can’t play me one-on-one down there, so when a double-team comes, with me being as tall as I am and with my basketball IQ, I’m able to find guys uncovered. So it’s a dynamic for our team that not many teams have.
[…]
“I worked on a lot of post moves without dribbling, creating space and also getting to one countermove. If you take away one thing, being able to counter off of it, I also have a counter to a counter. If you take away the counter, I’m able to exploit that as well. So it’s going to be pretty fun down there for me this year.”
‘Bron’s so freakin’ massive, and so skilled with the ball, we might look back on his first eight years somewhere down the line and wonder what would have happened if he’d gotten used to being in the post before coming to Miami. What would have happened if he’d grown accustomed to playing off-the-ball earlier? It’s not that LeBron turned a page these last couple years, it’s that he’s written an entirely new book, fulfilling all the desperate hype we’ve saddled him with since he was a teenager.
Click the next page to see what else we can learn from LeBron’s big interview…
2. LeBron has struggled with his confidence, and he’s self-aware enough to realize that sentiment is going to make some fans laugh.
James struggled in the first three games against the Spurs in June. Popovich’s well-oiled machines dared him to shoot, and — even though he had practiced his jumper thousands of times in the offseason — it took some adjusting before ‘Bron had the confidence to take what the Spurs were giving him.
It’s remarkable how self-aware LeBron has become in such a short period of time. It’s not that winning a title has eased the pressure (in fact, it might have augmented it a bit), just that he hasn’t allowed it to consume him. He’s focused on the task at hand, and by revealing those things he’s struggled with — like Popovich’s defense daring him to shoot long 2-pointers and 3-pointers on the biggest stage — he almost seems to have gained some measure of peace with the pressure.
The Spurs dared you to shoot.
“The Spurs dared me to shoot, and it worked for the first few games, and it became a mental challenge for me. I started rethinking. I was thinking too much. But once I got past that, I just started thinking to myself, Man, you’ve worked on your shot too much to now go back in reverse. Just go out and do it. Just go out and shoot the same shots you shoot in practice, the same shots you shoot in workouts, and just believe in them.”So you were having doubts about your J?
“Yeah, yeah, it was more mental than anything, the first couple games. Game 1 was okay. Game 2, I struggled. Game 3, I struggled from the perimeter. It wasn’t even my jump shot. It was more of how they were playing me, and I was trying to drive into the teeth of their defense when they were playing off me instead of just shooting the jump shot — taking what was there. I went into the film room after Game 3, and I was like, Man, just go out and play. Do what you do best and just feed off the game and let it do what it do.”
You won’t read Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan admitting to doubts in their game, but LeBron has finally realized he isn’t those guys, even though we’ll continue to compare him with those giants of the game as he stampedes the opposition like he has the last two seasons. But he’s no longer beholden to those comparisons, and almost seems to revel in them now because he knows they’re largely superficial to the task at hand.
People would say, How does the best player in the world have doubts?
“Well, when you do something at a high level for so long and when it doesn’t happen, you start to … it’s not even questioning yourself. You just have doubts, like, Am I making the right play? Should I take this shot, or should I drive? I think we all have doubts.”
We might all have doubts, but LeBron is the first truly transcendent athlete that seems willing to admit as much while still playing at the highest of levels. We couldn’t be happier about this. It makes us mere mortals feel like we can do anything as long as we overcome those doubts. Because if LeBron James has doubts, then it’s OK that we do too.
Find out what else LeBron taught us in his big interview…
3. LeBron still watches tape of Michael Jordan…and Allen Iverson.
MJ is the GOAT, and LBJ understands this better than most, but he’s not stressing the comparisons like he might have in the past. He’s just focused on winning now; the accolades or acclaim that come as a result, will just come, he doesn’t need to think about them at the same time. The moment you start holding yourself up to the greatest in the game’s history is the moment you forget about the next opponent. James seems to have grasped this paradox better than most of the media who drizzle articles onto our dashboards any time a MJ-‘Bron comparison can be forced into our purview.
I mean, when you say you want to be the greatest of all time, Jordan is the one everyone thinks is the greatest.
“Yeah, that’s who everyone puts as the best. But you’re always going to have arguments, no matter what. People are going to like Jordan, people are going to like LeBron, people are going to like Kobe and so on. Magic [Johnson], [Larry] Bird … But I don’t really think about it too much and say, Okay, I want to catch MJ. I’m saying I want to be the greatest, and I think I have an opportunity to do it just because of my skill set and because I feel like I’ve got a lot of room to improve.“But I definitely look at MJ as the greatest. Without MJ, there’s no me. He gave me hope. He gave me inspiration as a kid. I still watch MJ tapes to this day. I was watching Come Fly With Me and Jordan’s Playground and His Airness on vacation earlier this summer. So I’m watching him all the time, trying to learn from him…”
[…]
How often do you watch tape of other guys?
“A lot. A lot. I watch Jordan more than anybody, for sure. But I’ll watch tapes of AI [Allen Iverson] too. I don’t take anything from AI. Well, I do — his will. They say he was six feet, but AI was like 5’10½”. Do we even want to say 160? 170? Do we even want to give him that much weight? And he played like a 6’8″ 2-guard. He was one of the greatest finishers we’ve ever seen. You could never question his heart. Ever. He gave it his all. AI was like my second favorite player growing up, after MJ.”
The Iverson quote is telling. LBJ knows how hard it is to excel in the NBA at Iverson’s size because James is way, way bigger than AI, and he feels the bumps just like anyone. It’s also interesting that the player some would consider the antithesis of James — a warrior like Iverson — would also happen to be one of James’ favorite boyhood players.
4. LeBron watches Discovery channel a lot, and uses it to make perhaps the best comparison for those who say he lacks the requisite killer instinct of Mamba and MJ.
As LeBron was shirking from the moment in that 2011 Finals series against Dallas, or imploding under the pressure mid-way through the Cavs-Celtics series in 2010, a lot of people just assumed it was because he lacked the necessary mental toughness to go all the way. This sort of thinking isn’t new. We’ve always thought a cold-blooded personality quirk — which might be a foible in most professions — is necessary for the very best in professional sports. But an edge — whether it be MJ and Kobe’s pathological desire to maim opponents, or LeBron’s groupthink mantra — is still an edge, even if it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of what greatness entails.
When people think about the killer instinct, they always think of MJ and Kobe. Do people underestimate your killer instinct? People say you have it but not like those two. Do you think you have it like they do?
Ahh. I’ll just put it this way, man. There are different ways to hunt. I watch the Discovery Channel all the time, and you look at all these animals in the wild. And they all hunt a different way to feed their families. They all kill a different way. Lions do it strategically — two females will lead, and then everybody else will come in. Hyenas will just go for it. There are different ways to kill, and I don’t think people understand that. Everybody wants everybody to kill the same way. Everybody wants everybody to kill like MJ or kill like Kobe. Magic didn’t kill the way they killed. Does that mean he didn’t have a killer instinct? Kareem didn’t either. But does that mean Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] didn’t have a killer instinct? The same with Bird. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a killer instinct. Tim Duncan don’t kill like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, but I’ve played against Tim Duncan twice in the Finals and I know for sure he’s got a killer instinct. So there are different ways to kill. MJ had a killer instinct for sure. But if people really think that MJ didn’t talk to nobody and didn’t smile on the court, they’re crazy. They’re crazy. I’ve seen him. I was watching a clip the other day of him blocking Charles Barkley, and they’re laughing about the play — on the floor. Right now, if I block Kevin Durant on the floor, or I block Carmelo Anthony and we laugh about it? Ahh, I’m going to get killed [laughing]. I’m telling you. But there are different ways of killing.
“There are different ways of killing,” might be LeBron’s new epitaph.
Click the last page to find out how LeBron is just like all of us…
5. LeBron gets scared, too.
LeBron understands what made MJ so amazing, and he’s not trying to duplicate that; he experiences fear just like the rest of us, and that should strike fear into the other 29 teams next season.
You’re in a different era today. With social media and 24-hour sports-talk radio, every single game, even quarter, of yours is critiqued. That wasn’t the case back in the day when MJ played.
“I look at it like this: MJ wasn’t perfect. MJ had bad games. He had turnovers. He had games where he felt like he should’ve been better. But I think the greatest thing about MJ was that he never was afraid to fail. And I think that’s why he succeeded so much — because he was never afraid of what anybody ever said about him. Never afraid to miss the game-winning shot, never afraid to turn the ball over. Never afraid. And that’s what I love most about him besides, obviously, the flying through the air and the tongue-wagging and the game-winning jumpers and the shoes and the baggy shorts. I think his drive and never being afraid to fail is what made him, and he would be unbelievable still today because of that.Do you ever battle a fear of failure?
“That’s one of my biggest obstacles. I’m afraid of failure. I want to succeed so bad that I become afraid of failing.”How do you deal with it — how do you overcome it?
“Just win [laughs]. Keep winning and I don’t have to worry about it. Keep winning.”
“I want to succeed so bad that I become afraid of failing,” and “the greatest thing about MJ was that he never was afraid to fail,” are two of the most intelligent things we’ve ever heard a professional basketball player utter on the record.
LeBron is in the prime of his career, reaching an apogee of acclaim and efficiency that seemed unthinkable as early as the summer of 2011. But it’s where he’s at emotionally that’s so telling for his on-court success. He still has the MVP’s, and has added the championship rings, but it’s his interior psyche that’s truly made the difference. You can see it all over this opus of an interview.
Don’t blink because we could be watching the greatest player of his generation get even better next season.
What do you think?
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