The NBA After LeBron James: Who’s Playing?
LeBron James has always been a dominant presence on the basketball court, but even more dominant is his role in the media. More than anything, he’s somebody to believe in, a figure of perseverance and strength capable of overcoming serious odds. His resumé is great whether you like him or not, and provides ironclad evidence of his abilities from an early age. LeBron made it to the finals as an untested 4th year player for a Cavaliers franchise that was an unknown commodity. He won the finals as the primary threat on a superteam in Miami. He even came back home to Cleveland and did the impossible, beating one of the greatest teams in league history to finally bring his city the championship. Along the way he helped usher in the age of positionless basketball as a 6’8’’ forward that also served as a primary ball-handler in many offensive systems. He’s a Swiss Army Knife on the court and in the press, filling every PR role possible in the process: extremely hyped draft prospect, lone star franchise player, game-breaking heel, and hometown hero. Now, he’s filling a completely new role for the first time in his career: aging great.
In 2018, LeBron James started his season as a Los Angeles Laker as the reigning king of the NBA, the man who could take even the worst rosters to the finals on his own. This was reflected by the media coverage surrounding him, which seemed to take it for granted that he would still be a force in the league. ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith notably presaged LeBron’s Lakers to be a lock for the Western Conference Finals, which probably doomed them from the start. To Smith’s credit, they looked pretty good out of the gate, with a confident LeBron leading his team to the 4th seed out West by late fall. Things were going according to plan; the veterans were playing well enough, Lonzo Ball and Kyle Kuzma were demonstrating a great on-court chemistry, and the man at the center of it all was performing like we’re used to.
We all know what happened next. Because the downward spiral of this year’s Lakers has been so thoroughly documented with so many angles represented in the media’s coverage of the team, I’ll just present a tight and abridged version. LeBron’s Christmas Day groin injury threw the team into a state of confusion because of his ball-dominance. His attempts to orchestrate a trade for Anthony Davis as a result of the Lakers’ subsequent losing streak hurt the team’s chemistry down the line. Add this to some questionable trade deadline moves, a strained relationship between the veteran players and coach Luke Walton, LeBron’s defensive issues and more, and you have a recipe for a team that isn’t making the playoffs. If you clicked on this article, you probably knew this stuff already. I’m not here to discuss why the Lakers’ season has been problematic. For the purposes of this article, I’m talking about what the problem was with the media during the agonizing months in which the Lakers began a long journey that ended with them officially not making the playoffs.
To make a long story short, the media latched on to the Lakers and refused to let go, gorging itself on the steady stream of gossip that flowed from the team’s locker room and post-game statistics like blood from a wound. Along with a few other high-drama storylines, such as the Warriors’ locker room issues and free agency rumors surrounding Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, the Lakers’ woes fueled morning talk shows day in and day out. Every facet of the team was examined, from the front office’s signing decisions to Lonzo Ball’s free-throw shooting.
This relentless media coverage exposes just how unprepared sports media is to cover a league without LeBron. For much of the season, the underlying assumption to all of the Lakers-related coverage was that the dysfunction wouldn’t last. Even LeBron’s doubters probably thought the team would at least make the playoffs. As a result, there was no contingency plan for a postseason without LeBron. There was no contingency plan for an NBA Finals series without LeBron. Probably even more relevant is that there still is no contingency plan for a league without LeBron. From a marketing perspective, spending so much time covering the failing Lakers must have seemed like a necessary evil. Yes, the team’s not doing great, but hey, people like LeBron, and if they hate him, we’re still probably getting their attention. But all of the time spent promoting stories about minor Lakers complications could have been spent promoting somebody not tangentially related to LeBron’s success or failure.
In part, this is because the only thing more important than having someone to root for at time is having someone to root against. LeBron fills both roles at the most public level of basketball discourse. Depending on who you ask, he’s either the greatest to ever play the game or the biggest hype job in all of sports. The fact that some of the country’s most prominent sports morning shows have one commentator who likes LeBron and one who doesn’t is telling. Most great players reach a level of immunity once their credentials check out, and their past achievements hold a high level of weight even when discussing their games several years removed. LeBron doesn’t get this level of comfort at all; his every achievement is scrutinized and picked at until every possible talking point surrounding the man has been exhausted.
“He’s capable of making it to the playoffs all by himself!”
“No, he needs at least a reliable second option to actually win.”
“ He’s clutch when it matters!”
“Oh, really? What about the 2011 Finals?”
“He’s the greatest leader in all of basketball!”
“Is he, or does he destroy franchises before leaving for good?”
All of these lines will surface if you dig through any avenue of basketball conversation on the Internet for long enough. It gets even worse when you try to compare him to Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, with two mind-numbingly dedicated factions perfectly unified in their fascination with one LeBron James.
The question that I’m trying to get at is how you could possibly hope to recreate this with another player? Like it or not, LeBron isn’t going to be here forever. He’s 34 years old, more injury-prone than ever and seemingly tired of having to grind it out for the whole regular season. One of these years, we’re going to blink and he’s going to be retiring, taking all of the LeBron talking points out of the popular discourse and into the basement of nostalgic, cyclical forum and barbershop-based discussion. Where does that leave us? Is there any star big enough to be liked and hated in equal measure? Even if there is, how does the media get the debates rolling convincingly? The league is full of highlight machines of all shapes and sizes, dynamic and unique players who are worth watching on a daily basis. You could argue that this was always the case, even in the mythologized past. But there’s a difference between someone who can make a crazy game-winning shot and someone who makes that same shot with a 15-year narrative waiting to assimilate that moment into the conversation. Right now, it looks like the NBA is in a state of disarray trying to find the next great, polarizing basketball player.
So, who could it be? If sports talk shows are to be believed, Giannis Antetokounmpo is in the conversation. However, rather than put forward the narrative that he is the face of the league, they’re debating if it’s possible at all given Giannis’s public refusal to compromise his Greek-Nigerian heritage and become more Americanized. Joel Embiid likely falls into the same position. These guys are 24 and 25 respectively, and are already two of the best players of the league, but for one reason or another just aren’t being anointed. Go a few years above that, and you’re looking at established players like James Harden and Stephen Curry, who already have their fans, accolades, and endorsements. The ship has sailed on them becoming the face of the league on LeBron’s level, though Curry did rank number 9 on ESPN’s Fame 100 and arguably changed the way basketball is played at least as much as LeBron has.
We’re basically left considering the pool of rookies and college draft prospects, but the only one who’s really getting any semblance of the hype is Zion Williamson, the Duke freshman projected to be the number one overall pick in this year’s draft. So far, Zion has received the requisite level of hype that it could take to propel him to superstardom; he’s 6’7’’ and 285 pounds, yet flies through the air with a momentum that is at once graceful and devastating. He got his first taste of being a morning show fixture when his shoe basically came apart under the strain of his weight and strength in a game on February 20th, causing him to fall awkwardly and sprain his knee. Nike, the manufacturer of the shoe, lost over a billion dollars in stock market revenue in the wake of the incident. Meanwhile, sports media was in a frenzy over whether or not he should sit for the rest of the season to avoid any injuries that could decrease his draft value. The question of what team he’ll go to has reached a fever pitch, and who knows? He could be on his way to LeBron’s mythical ascension if he merely meets the insane expectations we have placed on him, let alone if he exceeds them.
Of course, it’s possible that there will never be another player that we adore, despise, and scrutinize quite like LeBron James. Social media has made it so that no one event truly feels massive anymore. Besides a few final frontiers like Presidential elections, the era of the event is over. It’s no coincidence that across entertainment, the most popular and monolithic acts have been at the top for years, stubbornly remaining entrenched at the top. Whether it’s actors, rappers, or just classic famous-for-being-famous celebrities, it feels like we’re stuck in 2011. Nobody is “up next.” They’re already here, just being ignored by algorithms that keep them out of reach of the people that marketing companies have concluded aren’t worth spending the advertising money on anyway. We’ve reached the era of the customizable feed, and the luxury of being able to ignore what you want has also resulted in nothing being un-ignorable anymore. Even though there will be a “Zion Cam” following Williamson’s every move during this year’s NCAA tournament, a sense of must-see ubiquity will likely not accompany his dynamic plays. The world of sports and entertainment is fragmented, cracked into a million pieces and impossible to predict. Not even LeBron James can hold it all together anymore.
