With the emergence of Stephen Curry as the league’s beloved hero and the hole left by the absence of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James has assumed the role of the player NBA fans love to hate.
Kobe Bryant is gone. No more game-winners to rip your heart out. No more arrogant comments to teammates, opponents and media to stoke the flames of your hatred.
No more Black Mamba.
While Los Angeles Lakers fans are dealing with the emptiness left behind by the departure of their decades-long superstar, fans of other franchises are feeling a different kind of emptiness: one left by the loss of arguably the greatest villain the league has ever known.
Every sport requires someone to root against and no one was as universally hated as Bryant was during his 20-year career as he produced countless remarkable moments at the expense of the other 29 teams in the league. The hatred was so real that the number of Kobe haters are equal, if not greater than, the amount of people in his actual fan base.
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Now that Bryant is officially a former NBA player, he has left a void that it seems no current player can fill. There is no villain to jeer or boo or despise.
Or maybe that player does exist … and you’ve been quietly hating him all along.
Hardwood Houdini
You hate that LeBron James cries for foul calls. You hate that he subtweets his teammates and unfollows his own team on Twitter. You hate that he has so much power that he can supposedly get his coach fired midseason despite having the best record in the Eastern Conference and being less than a year removed from an NBA Finals appearance.
But most of all, you hate him because he’s so, so good.
Since he infamously took his talents to South Beach and joined the Miami Heat, LeBron James has become a dominant force unlike any we’ve ever witnessed with his combination of strength, athleticism and unrivaled basketball IQ. In doing so, James has cultivated a following of detractors and naysayers that almost rivals that of Bryant.
James initially embraced the role of the bad guy in the first year of the Big Three’s reign but eventually acknowledged his extreme discomfort with being vilified and proceeded to win two consecutive titles in 2012 and 2013, silencing all of his critics for the time being.
But make no mistake — the hatred never went away.
Fans who had to suffer through James’ tenure as the undisputed best player in the world have resurfaced and are basking in the glory of the newly crowned world’s greatest, Golden State Warriors star guard Stephen Curry.
Now, the one they call King James finds himself in a position he’s never been in before — in the shadow of another revolutionary superstar with a more likable persona than his own.
What makes it all the more interesting is that it’s the same position Kobe found himself in upon James’ arrival as a bonafide superstar.
Bryant was in the midst of his own reign of dominance when a young James emerged into the perennial MVP candidate he would become. Naturally, the visceral scoring machine and obsessive competitor that was the Black Mamba became the perfect antagonist to the hometown hero, multi-talented player and consummate teammate that was LeBron James.
His fun-loving personality made him more lovable and more accessible than Bryant.
But now, a player has come along that is even more likable and accessible than LeBron himself.
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Chef Curry has literally taken the most fundamental skill in basketball and turned into a lethal, revolutionary weapon. While it would be equally as hard to become Curry as it would to emulate LeBron, perfecting skills as basic as shooting and ballhandling are more achievable than growing into a 6-foot-8, 250-pound forward with point guard speed and ridiculous athleticism.
In addition, Curry’s lighthearted nature, wholesome family background and everyman stature have made him a more endearing option in contrast to a LeBron that has become more hardened and serious in nature as the task of repaying the debt of his departure by bringing a championship to the city of Cleveland has begun to way more and more heavily on his shoulders.
Since Golden State’s fun-loving, record-breaking band of brothers is just too much of a feel-good story to root against, the James gang naturally is cast in the role of the villain because LeBron — like Kobe before him — is just fun to root against.
The title of the Chosen One, the somewhat unearned Jordan comparisons and the ever-looming threat of a second exodus from Cleveland enabled by James himself make him easy to villify and despise. Add in his ridiculous God-given gifts and his consistent statistical dominance and you have the next perfect NBA villain.
So fear not, NBA fans — for with every great hero that rises to the spotlight comes a villain with equal power standing in his way.
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And, from the looks of it, it seems King James is still able and more than willing to play the role in the years to come.