Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the political fails of 2018. Other panel members are Sam Stein (The Daily Beast), Dana Milbank (The Washington Post), Jennifer Rubin (The Washington Post), and host, Chris Matthews.
Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell
Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the political fails of 2018. Other panel members are Sam Stein (The Daily Beast), Dana Milbank (The Washington Post), Jennifer Rubin (The Washington Post), and host, Chris Matthews.
Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the Progressive agenda that was delivered during the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans, LA and the latest developments regarding Trump vs. LeBron James. Other panel members include Bret Stephens (The New York Times), and host, Stephanie Ruhle.
Dr. Jason Johnson discusses President Trump’s criticism of LeBron James on Twitter, but lack of criticism while campaigning for a Republican candidate in LeBron’s home state of Ohio. Other panel members are Connie Schultz (Nationally Syndicated Columnist), David Jolly (Fmr. Congressman), and host, Joy Reid.
Originally posted at theRoot.com
It all started with a phone call.
“Hey, if I can get you a Cavs ticket for Friday, would you come?”
It was one of my former students, offering me a chance to sit in the Quicken Loans Arena’s executive suites, eat free chicken wings and hobnob with some high-rolling political-type folks. This just another reminder of why it’s always smart to write your students good recommendations: They remember you.
I’ve never been to an NBA Finals game; I’ve never been to any professional sports finals. No Super Bowl, no World Cup, nothing, unless I count going to Wimbledon almost 20 years ago in some cheap, nosebleed tickets to see Serena and Venus win the doubles. I mostly wanted to go to the finals to see LeBron James’ last game as a Cavalier, because I knew he was going to lose and then leave Cleveland. A few other thoughts.
I already know how some of you are going to respond: “Lots of fans love LeBron James, etc., etc.” Yes, they do. But let me tell you something: I lived in Cleveland off and on for almost 12 years, coinciding with LeBron’s first dribble to likely his last. I’ve listened to local sports radio from Akron-Canton Airport to Quicken Loans Arena; I’ve looked at the Facebook comments of many of my former (mostly white) college students from Ohio. There has always been a nasty strain of racialized hatred toward LeBron.
Some of this is encouraged by Dan “Calvin Candie” Gilbert, the team owner; some of it is just Northeast Ohio itself. He’s never been truly beloved in this city the way he should have been, even before “the Decision.” The moment he turned out to be a black man of insight and agency, there was a loud outcry, overwhelming all the decent fans out there. Still, for them, LeBron gave them a decade of meaningful basketball and a ring. For all the rest: Good luck finding something to do in the flats next November.
This is not my first time sitting in executive suites for an NBA game. Heck, I rented out a suite for my birthday a couple of years ago. But when you’re going to watch your beloved team get their asses handed to them, the least you want to do is sit comfortably. From here we could see all the bandwagon Golden State fans. We could see former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar and his porn-star daughter. Plus, when they choke like they did tonight, you can still eat the wings in the suite. They taste as salty as most Cavs fans are right now, but at least they’re free.
We all know the NFL is full of a bunch of horrible racist owners who are more than happy to acquiesce to Donald Trump’s equally racist demands on America’s most popular sport. For that reason, hating on the NFL has almost become its own sport because they seem to find some way every couple of weeks or so to remind black American sports consumers that they don’t mean shit. The only thing more annoying than the NFL’s Daily Stormer-like public relations campaign is the way that the NBA has been rebranding itself as the “woke” sports alternative.
Sure, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gives speeches, and yes, you get a couple of strong comments from coaches. None of that changes the fact that the NBA has the same business structure as the NFL—that is, exploiting black bodies while routinely denying black wealth from ownership. Y’all ain’t woke. You just have better PR. Now that the season is over, we don’t have to see any more spin.
This was not a great game by LeBron. He scored under 30 points and was lethargic on defense, and the team failed to score 100 points at home in a closeout game. But you know what? He’s still better than Kevin Durant, who just got the NBA Finals MVP by putting up a performance for the ages (unless you’re LeBron, in which case, KD’s MVP performance is called LeBron on every other Tuesday). The horrible hot takes after this game will keep me away from ESPN for weeks.
LeBron is still better than Kobe Bryant, and he never had the coaching, general manager or teammates of Michael Jordan. If Kobe had lost Game 1 of the 2010 NBA Finals because Ron Artest got a rebound and ran away from the basket, the Black Mamba would have committed murder on the court. This whole playoff season has been a reminder that LeBron is not only a basketball god but also has the patience of a fifth-grade youth-basketball coach teaching a bunch of Bad News Bears how to score, both on and off the court.
This finals game should be enough to remind any basketball fan just how great LeBron is. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ shot chart around the basket looked like pirate treasure map gone wrong. The only thing more useless around the basket in this game than Tristan Thompson would be a lid. And at least a lid would block shots. The only saving grace is that none of the next few weeks’ hot takes will last. In 10 years, all of the best sportswriters will be millennials, and none of them will remember anybody other than LeBron as the best player of all time and KD as the hired gun who traded off another team’s success.
When LeBron walked off the court with about 3 minutes and 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter, I almost felt kind of sad. I’ve lived around this area for years, and we all knew it was the end of an era. He was downstairs hugging the security guards and the ushers, so you know that means he ain’t coming back. The decent fans, even the angry white guys still sporting Dellavedova jerseys, stopped screaming just long enough to give him a final clap. He probably couldn’t hear it over the bricks that his team kept putting up, but I hope for at least half a second, for one of the few times when he was in the city, he actually felt that his work was appreciated.
I have no idea who’s going to win the NBA Finals. I don’t even know if part 3 of the Warriors-vs.-Cavaliers trilogy is going to be any good. For every Dark Knight, Bourne Identity or Iron Man trilogy, there’s an Austin Powers or Star Wars prequel trilogy.
What I do know is this: No matter how the finals play out, they have ended a 15-year debate—a debate that has caused angry text messages, endless hot takes on sports shows and countless argument-induced crooked lineups at the barbershop. Now, the Jordan-vs.-LeBron debate won’t be settled in this finals, no matter what LeBron does. But even before the first tipoff, the first Steph Curry 3-pointer, the first Draymond Green dick punch (or pic), the first Kyrie Irving crossover, we know, definitively, that LeBron James is better than Kobe Bryant.
Heading into these finals, everyone is talking about whether a victory by the Cleveland Cavaliers will make LeBron James the greatest NBA player of all time. Whether it would tie the King with his Airness, or at least make him 1A to Michael Jordan’s undisputed No. 1, you know who isn’t in the conversation anymore? Kobe Bryant. For years, the argument was this:
“How LeBron gonna be as good as Jordan when he ain’t even better than Kobe???” says the guy at the barbershop who refers to women as “females” and thinks the earth is flat.
This argument was understandable at one point. There was a two-year run, from June 2010 to February 2012, that launched Kobe-stans into the “Kobe as the Gandalf You Shall Not Pass” barrier to the true Jordan heir. Peak Kobe happened to cross over the Nadir of LeBron. In June 2010, Kobe beat the hated Boston Celtics in a seven-game throwback to the ’80s series and won finals MVP.
When asked about how it felt to win his fifth championship, Kobe told reporters, “I just got one more than Shaq,” catapulting him to second-best shooting guard of all time and a member of the Sports Petty Hall of Fame all in one comment. Black Mamba got No. 5 (rings). LeBron? A few weeks after Peak Kobe, he made his “Decision” to take his talents to South Beach, and kicked up a racial and cultural firestorm in Comic Sans (how dare that black guy control his own career?!).
Then LeBron wilted in the 2011 finals against the Dallas Mavericks despite the Miami Heat being favored and leading the series 2-1. A year later, in the waning seconds of the 2012 All-Star Game, Kobe Bryant was guarding LeBron and challenged the King to take the game-winning shot against him. LeBron passed to an open Deron Williams, who missed the shot.
LeBron was labeled “Nonclutch” and was derided by Kobe and even Carmelo Anthony after the game. The die was cast; LeBron was never going to be the greatest. In fact, during that time and his early years with the Heat, many argued that he was Scottie Pippen to D-Wade’s Jordan, and Kobe fans were ecstatic. However, a little something happened in the six years that followed.
Basically, since that fateful All-Star Game, LeBron has ripped off the greatest six consecutive years of any basketball player in the modern era. Six straight NBA Finals; two gold medals; three finals MVPs; bringing the Cavaliers back from being down 3-1 to the Golden State Warriors in the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history; a few really good seasons of Survivor’s Remorse; and that’s before facing Golden State for a record third-straight time this year.
The Warriors are so afraid of LeBron, they added Kevin Durant (the Real MVP of 2014), which is akin to bringing your brother-in-law, Marshawn Lynch, to the office flag football game. No matter how you spin it, LeBron has dominated the league for six years, with questionable help, against better competition than anyone has ever faced (LeBron’s teams have been Vegas gambling underdogs six out of eight times in the finals), and succeeded at a rate that no one, short of Jordan, and definitely not Kobe, has even come close to.
As LeBron’s greatness is cemented heading into these finals, Kobe fans have sort of degenerated into the NBA’s equivalent of Bernie Bros heading into the NBA Finals three-match. No matter what LeBron does, they think Kobe would win everything, all of the time.
Hall of Fame 1987 Celtics with Larry Bird at his best? Kobe’s 2001 Lakers would beat them. Michael Jordan’s 1991 Bulls team? Kobe woulda hit the game winner over Jordan in a five-game gentleman’s sweep. Ball at the half-yard line with 30 seconds to go in the Super Bowl? Kobe would’ve run it in for a touchdown. Down 15 percent to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Nov. 7, 2016? Kobe rallies the Philly suburbs and dunks into the White House.
However, the legend of Kobe can no longer match up to the reality of LeBron. That’s why, on every single sports show (you know the ones: where the black guy and the white guy yell at each other about sports – as opposed to Trump; that’s Fox News), LeBron haters are stumped. With Kobe fading in historic relevance a year after retiring, the Skip Baylesses and Rob Parkers of the world have to resurrect the ghost of Jordan because there are no more contemporary road blocks to justify not crowning LeBron. Tim Duncan? No impact beyond the court. Steph Curry? He’s not a two-way player. Kevin Durant? He joined the best team of all time just to chase a ring. Kobe was the last hope. And now he’s gone, too.
Over the next four to seven games, LeBron will do one of two things: add to his legend by beating the Golden State Warriors, arguably the best-assembled team in the history of the NBA Finals, or get crushed by that Frankenstein sports monster from Oakland, Calif., and still put some distance between himself and every other player of his era.
No matter what, LeBron James is a better overall player than anybody else who’s played the game not named Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Kobe Bryant, he of the five rings and stans, is no longer in the conversation.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.
Dr. Jason Johnson is a professor, political analyst and public speaker. Fresh, unflappable, objective, he is known for his ability to break down stories with wit and candor. Johnson is the author the book Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell, a tenured professor in the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and Politics Editor at TheRoot.com. Dr. Johnson has an extensive public speaking and media background ranging from … [Read More...] about About Jason Johnson