Lebron James/Heat - most overrated of all time?

A little OT in light of the heavy dialogue surrounding offer day.

While lebron is a freak athlete and Miami has won 2 rings I can’t help but feel that both are probably the most overrated player/team of all time.

A team with 4 hall of famers that only wins 2 rings? Lebron only wins twice out of 5 Finals appearances. I could understand the Cle finals failures, but only 2 out of 4 with the type of roster Miami has? Truthfully Spurs were the better team last year notwithstanding a bonehead move by Pop in game 6.

Thoughts?

IMO, there is a big coaching mismatch in this series.

Agree, but is coaching worth 20-30 points every game. I don’t think this would’ve happened to a kobe/KD team.

I think LeBron is the best player in the game, but he isn’t capable of putting a team on his back and carrying it the way Jordan was. Wade is aging and not nearly the same guy he was, I don’t think Bosh is a Hall of Fame talent, and Allen is old - he’s a shooter right now, nothing else.

To beat a really good SA team (exceptionally well coached, too) they needed LeBron to be Jordan, and he just isn’t.

Overrated? I don’t know. Only if someone calls him the best ever. Magic, Bird, Kobe, Shaq have all lost multiple times in the NBA Finals.

Well put LA, but while all of those guys have lost multiple times in the finals, all of them have won more than they’ve lost, and in my book that says something. How can people possibly claim Lebron to be the best player of this generation, let alone the best player of all time, when he can’t lead his team to the pinnacle of team sports at least half the time during his prime? Give me Kobe any day, the guy is just simply built different than Lebron from a competitive standpoint.

Not many teams have made it to four straight finals. Not many teams have won 2 straight titles. They lost this final to another team that has at least 3 hall of famers also, a hall of fame coach, and has already won multiple championships. And you said the heat have four hall of famers: James, Wade, and Allen are locks, do we really think Bosh is a hall of famer?
I think the way they brought this team together put the onus on themselves to win more than two championships and has given people a reason to root against them.
I do think you can probably call them overrated because the expectations were so high and even with the success they have had those lofty expectations haven’t quite been met. But I think you do have to recognize how phenomenal his run has been and how amazing LeBron has been.

Lebron is at the backend of my top 10 all-time.

Those Miami Heat teams are at the bottom of championship squads.

I wouldn’t say overrated, though.

Make no mistake about it, 4 straight appearances in the Finals is amazing. However that’s a long way from “not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5”

I think the 2012 finals run against 23 year olds KD and Westbrook is the weakest in modern era, especially given a weak conference and an all-star team during a lockout year.

Matt, I hear you, but I’d also be surprised if LeBron doesn’t win a few more before he’s done, too.

Matt, I hear you, but I'd also be surprised if LeBron doesn't win a few more before he's done, too.

Actually, I would be surprised to see him win a few more to be honest. He will be 30 this year, and he probably has 2 more elite years left. His game is based on being more athletic than everyone else, much the same as Wade, and quite frankly when your game is based on athleticism (think LB, Wade) rather than skill (think Kobe, Duncan), your downfall tends to be much more rapid because the given player has nothing to fall back on to compensate for it.

I can’t see him winning another ring with the Heat unless he’s willing to take a signficiant paycut, because it’s all but sure Wade will opt in because no GM in their right mind would pay him 20 mill at this point (same with Bosh), so Miami’s financial flexibility is severely limited. The only realistic option I can see at this point which would give him an immediate chance to win another ring within these next 2 years is Houston - assuming they decline the option on Parsons, and find somebody to take on the horrible contracts of Asik and Lin (may be possible because they’re both in last year of contract). Lebron doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to play in a market like Houston though. Long term, Cleveland is probably his best option (with Kyrie and #1 pick), but as I said before, I think he has a 2 year window so I don’t think that’s a viable option for him from a basketball standpoint right now. Lakers have spending room, but adding him to that roster and assuming Kobe returns to full health will only make them a 5-6 seed in the West unless Lebron is willing to sign for say 13-15 million and the Lakers are able to sign Lance Stephenson. At that point they might be a 3-4 seed, but I still don’t think they can beat the Spurs. A more realistic option in the West might be Phoenix - adding Lebron to that roster would make them very dangerous, again though, don’t see Lebron playing in a market like Phoenix.

Make no mistake about it, 4 straight appearances in the Finals is amazing. However that's a long way from "not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5"

Matt, I think this is the crux of most folks argument. People in general just don’t like the fact that the players came together to build the “super” team.

The way I see it, and I am a Kobe fan, Lebron is the player of his generation. A 6 year age gap between the 2 in NBA terms might as well be a different generation for each.

That said, these finals were lost by the Heat because of many things not named Lebron:

  1. Age - The Heat are old and unlike the Spurs who infused youth and cut their older player’s minutes, the Heat played Lebron as much as possible. That’s on Spoelstra
  2. Whining - Wade spent the majority of every defensive possession complaining that he did not get a foul call every time he touched the ball. I get it, how could the 2006 Finals MVP get locked down by Danny Green? Welp, guess it’s not 2006 anymore.
  3. Gameplan - The second best player for the Heat (Bosh) is not put in positions to score. Everything he gets is off of secondary or tertiary action. He should have been getting the rock, NOT Wade.
  4. Coach Pop - not even going to elaborate on that.
Make no mistake about it, 4 straight appearances in the Finals is amazing. However that's a long way from "not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5"
  1. Gameplan - The second best player for the Heat (Bosh) is not put in positions to score. Everything he gets is off of secondary or tertiary action. He should have been getting the rock, NOT Wade.

True to an extent. Lebron is so on the ball, ball dominant and high usage that he turns great on the ball players into low usage, off the ball players. When Wade was in prime form, the big 3s havoc defense could generate enough TOs to offset this but not anymore.

I think LeBron is the best player in the game, but he isn't capable of putting a team on his back and carrying it the way Jordan was.

Jordan had Pippen who is also one of the top 20 best player of all time. Pippen did really well when Jordan retired at the time. Bulls went 55-27 the next year and 47-35 the year after it, losing at ECF both times. Without Pippen, MJ wouldn’t win 6 NBA titles. Before they had Pippen, MJ was like LBJ because he couldn’t get over the hump aka the Detroit Bad Boys.

I think LeBron is the best player in the game, but he isn't capable of putting a team on his back and carrying it the way Jordan was.

Jordan had Pippen who is also one of the top 20 best player of all time. Pippen did really well when Jordan retired at the time. Bulls went 55-27 the next year and 47-35 the year after it, losing at ECF both times. Without Pippen, MJ wouldn’t win 6 NBA titles. Before they had Pippen, MJ was like LBJ because he couldn’t get over the hump aka the Detroit Bad Boys.

As good as Pippen was, he was never as good as Wade.

Make no mistake about it, 4 straight appearances in the Finals is amazing. However that's a long way from "not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5"
  1. Gameplan - The second best player for the Heat (Bosh) is not put in positions to score. Everything he gets is off of secondary or tertiary action. He should have been getting the rock, NOT Wade.

True to an extent. Lebron is so on the ball, ball dominant and high usage that he turns great on the ball players into low usage, off the ball players. When Wade was in prime form, the big 3s havoc defense could generate enough TOs to offset this but not anymore.

To simplify this, and I never thought I would say this, LeBron is a ball hog. There were literally countless possessions spent where LeBron dribbled the air out of the ball for 4-7 dribbles before finally moving the ball. His teammates were never in a groove because they simply weren’t touching the ball enough on a consistent basis. Contrast that with the Spurs, who literally passed the ball 7-9 times on some possessions, and it’s easy to see what went right for SA and what went wrong for MIA.

From a team standpoint, it’s very simpl, SA is heavy on running offball motion, while MIA simply places everybody on the perimieter and allows LB or Wade to create and when the double comes kick it to the open man. MIA’s offense was in essence 1 man dribbling at the top of the key with everybody else watching television. On the other hand, SA ran a series of PnRs and pin downs to create open looks that exploited MIA’s decline in perimeter D once Diaw was inserted.

Nutshell - Miami really struggles to score the ball in the halfcourt, they are not a very good offensive team unless they are generating TOs at a high rate.

LeBron still has time, and is on the all-time lists, but right now he’s behind Magic, Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Shaq, and Duncan, at the least, maybe Kareem, since I started watching. The fewest rings and the most poor performances in big moments. And while there’s still time, Magic won his last ring in his 9th season, Bird in his 7th. LeBron just finished season 11, and health can go pretty quickly, and some guys are better at dealing with slight deterioration of athleticism. A great player, an all-timer, but not yet in the absolute top tier yet.

What really struck me about LB in this year’s Finals were his statistical averages - they were great on cursory glance. Reality is that he put up big numbers in garbage time for 2-3 of those games. For instance, in last night’s game his stats were great, but when the game was in doubt (2nd quarter) he scored 2 points total. Then he proceeded to go on a rampage when MIA was down 20-25 in the 3rd. I don’t care as much about the stats as I do the impact on the game. I’m with UMHoopsFan, you can have all the statistical accolades you want, if you don’t perform in the biggest of moments, what does it really mean?

I think LeBron is the best player in the game, but he isn't capable of putting a team on his back and carrying it the way Jordan was.

Jordan had Pippen who is also one of the top 20 best player of all time. Pippen did really well when Jordan retired at the time. Bulls went 55-27 the next year and 47-35 the year after it, losing at ECF both times. Without Pippen, MJ wouldn’t win 6 NBA titles. Before they had Pippen, MJ was like LBJ because he couldn’t get over the hump aka the Detroit Bad Boys.

As good as Pippen was, he was never as good as Wade.

lol, good joke. Pippen >> Wade.

The Spurs were undoubtedly the better team, but I was surprised how lopsided the series was in terms of point differential. I think a big difference this year was Miami’s bench play as opposed to the prior 2 Finals victories that they had. The Heat don’t rely on much when it comes to their bench players (which is a huge difference from the Spurs), but the most critical area where their bench makes an impact is making open 3s. That didn’t happen this year. During the past few years Miami had Mike Miller, Shane Battier, and Ray Allen all get hot at the right time and become 15-20 PPG threats at different times. This year, aside from Rashard Lewis, they didn’t have anyone. Getting 15-20 PPG from one bench player is a significant contribution that would’ve easily made the series more competitive. I was surprised how many open 3s Ray Allen was missing, meanwhile Ginobilli, Leonard, and Patty Mills are knocking down anything they put up.