In the immortal words of Omar Little from "The Wire": "You come at the king, you best not miss."
There have been a lot of shots aimed at the king lately, King James that is. People have been wondering aloud if the best basketball player on the planet is no longer able to play at the elite level that we've become accustom to over the past decade. Things came to a head on Friday when ESPN scribe Brian Windhorst posted an article that quoted a handful of anonymous NBA scouts stating pretty plainly that LeBron James's athleticism was in decline.
"The LeBron who could dunk on any player at any time is probably gone," one scout told Windhorst, though he followed that up by saying James has never been a better all around basketball player than he is right now.
Some of the criticism has merit. LeBron's field goal percentage is the lowest it's been since the 2008-2009 season. He seems to be unable to finish an inordinate amount of and ones, and has looked downright pedestrian at times attempting to finish at the rim.
But don't think for a minute LeBron doesn't hear the outside noise. Amongst all the talk, he returned from sitting out one game with a sore knee to drop 41 points on the New Orleans Pelicans last night, including the above dunk which reminded everyone that, yeah, he'll still throw down something nasty and ruin your entire evening. Here's what he told ESPN after the game.
You can look at it in a bad way or a good way. I've expanded the rest of my game. I'm still out there making plays. My athleticism, obviously I'm not the 18-year-old kid that I was before. But I can still do the things I need to do to be successful.
People get older. LeBron may not be as explosive as he was earlier in his career, but at this point, playing alongside young stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, does it really even matter? He can still come out and drop 40 plus points when he needs to, and despite the loss to the Pelicans, the Cavs appear to be clicking better than ever.
[Via ESPN]
