LOS ANGELES LeBron James has carved several more lines onto his Greatest Of All Time resume this season. He’s now the all-time scoring leader. He’s now fourth all-time in assists.
But it’s that fifth ring — seemingly impossible months ago — that years from now could serve as the most important argument from the 2022-23 NBA season that LeBron did indeed pass Michael Jordan as the game’s best ever.
Yes, being the sport’s all-time scorer is overwhelmingly important in such an argument, whether or not you believe that moment sealed the deal when it happened back in early February.
And, yes, also being fourth all-time in assists is its own remarkable data point. Just this past season, LeBron climbed on that list from eighth to fourth, passing Magic Johnson, Mark Jackson and Steve Nash.
Those are big deals. But they were expected. One of LeBron’s all-time great skills has been his availability, and that, even 10 years ago, made it easy to do some scratch-pad arithmetic and see he was overwhelmingly likely to rise to those places on those all-time lists.
But the Lakers winning an NBA title this year was never a clear-cut likelihood, especially as they stumbled to a 2-10 start and became engulfed in drama, recriminations and doubt. Recovering from that would be tantalizingly more helpful in an argument between His Airness and King James.
A fifth ring would cut LeBron’s deficit versus Jordan to one. Perhaps as important, it would give LeBron one more than Steph Curry, undercutting the argument already percolating out there you can’t be the GOAT if you’re not even the most dominant winner of your generation.
It’s a specious argument, but still common among Jordan lovers (of which I’m one) looking for any reason to shout at those who think LeBron is probably already the GOAT (and I’m one of those, too).
But there’s something more powerful for LeBron’s case if somehow he, Anthony Davis and this recalibrated, post-NBA trade deadline team can go all the way: The narrative force it would conjure.
We like to think arguments over…
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