What If LeBron James Loses In These NBA Finals?

With the NBA Finals still just under one week away, perhaps now is a good time to sit back and take stock of the season LeBron James has had so far. From a tremendous homecoming to a stuttering start to the regular season, not to mention the sabbatical to Miami midway through the campaign to get himself right, it’s been a season that has had it all. These playoffs however, are where James has truly come alive, just as some expected.

If anything, this postseason has only reaffirmed something we’ve known all along, LeBron is the best basketball player in the world. Fighting through the first three series without Kevin Love and with Kyrie Irving out injured for extended periods is a throwback to his do-it-all performances when he won his first title in 2012. He’s been beyond great, and he’s the driving factor in this team getting to the Finals in his first season back.

In some ways, that’s a success in and of itself. Remember, James was quick to dampen expectations on his return home. He’d made the mistake before of claiming the Miami Heat would win multiple championships, before realizing how hard that would be to achieve.

James didn’t guarantee anything with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and in some ways you feel he almost expected it might take a couple of seasons to make it back to the Finals to even have a shot at ending the hurt Cleveland sports fans have had to endure.

Yet here they are again, one series against the Golden State Warriors away from being crowned champions of the world. In terms of achievements in James’ career, this has to rank right up there, right? In my mind, the addition of one player changed the entire culture of a franchise from lottery bound on a yearly basis, to the best team in the Eastern Conference (not throughout the season of course, but in these playoffs they have been no question).

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So with all of this positivity surrounding the team right now, there’s just one thing that’s bugging me as the final series of the 2015 playoffs nears. What if James loses in the finals, again? Now, before exploring this possibility further, I need to mention that I am not talking about the Cavaliers as a team here. As long as James is on the roster they are no doubt contenders, and a loss at the final hurdle does not slam their title window shut.

But for James personally, a loss would put him 2-4 all-time in finals appearances. Honestly, this is a somewhat ugly number when stacked next to all of the great things that he has achieved on a basketball court. It drives me crazy as well, because it is yet more ammunition for those who feel that James has been overhyped since day one and pales in comparison to Michael Jordan, or even Kobe Bryant.

What’s worse, I think James and the Cavaliers will fall short against the Warriors, and I said as much six weeks ago when I correctly predicted this finals match up. If (and in my opinion when) this happens, James will once more face questions that he chokes when the lights shine brightest. Just like previous years however, that criticism will be unfair, given that it was he who put his team in the position to succeed in the first place.

The sometimes vicious opposition to James is something I have never understood, and in some ways I’m almost sick of defending his ability to people. It’s as if people don’t realize what they’re witnessing on the court and take it for granted. But with James now 30 years old, the end of his illustrious career is certainly closer than the beginning.

His greatness is comparable to that of Lionel Messi in soccer. Whether you’re a fan of the team he plays for, FC Barcelona, or not, his exceptional ability is universally accepted and celebrated all the time. James absolutely deserves to be treated in the same way, yet this has rarely been the case. He’s healed a lot of wounds by returning to Cleveland, but the love for him is far from universal.

That’s why to me there’s so much riding on this finals series, arguably more so than any in the past. He has his titles and he still has plenty of time to get Cleveland over the top as well. But that record, 2-4, well it just doesn’t really befit an all-time great does it? I’m not in the business of comparing him to Kobe or Jordan as he’s a vastly different player to those two.

He is more in the Oscar Robertson or Magic Johnson mold, and although Johnson also lost four NBA finals, he did win five of them. Heading to five straight finals as James has now achieved, as well as that first finals loss in 2007 to the San Antonio Spurs, is nothing short of remarkable.

But if this is to be his last finals appearance, although I feel he has at most two left in him, and he loses this one, will his record at the big game forever have a footnote attached pointing out that he fell short over 50% of the time?

It may, and even I would have to admit that would be justified in some ways. He’s already one of the best to ever do it, but falling short so many times in the finals will surely be held against him in any argument in which the best player of all time is brought up.

But look, after the season he’s just put together and all that he’s achieved across this five-year span, he has firmly placed himself in the conversation for best players of all-time now. Even Bill Laimbeer has already weighed in saying James may already be better than ‘His Airness’ and he’s not even finished playing yet. So that’s where he’s at right now.

Still though, the possibility of going 2-4 hurts his legacy in my opinion, and this is coming from a guy who has always admired his game, because he’s been the best basketball player in the world for close to a decade now. That dominance isn’t quite over yet either, it’s just that come the end of this series, it may come with the added column mentioning his persistent shortcomings when the stakes were highest.

Next: NBA: 50 Greatest Players Of All Time

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