Thursday
Congratulations to Los Angeles Laker Lebron James, who just added another championship to his resume, thereby resurrecting the never-ending sports debate about whether he or Michael Jordan is the Greatest of All Time (the GOAT). For me, the debate is undecidable, along the lines of whether Babe Ruth or Willie Mayes was the greater baseball player. Babe Ruth did one thing very well (hit the ball) while Mayes was more well-rounded (he once pegged out a runner at the plate from deep center field).
Jordan won six championships with a single coach and a single Hall of Fame companion (Scottie Pippen) while Lebron moved between three different cities, delivering a championship to each (two to Miami). In doing so, he adapted to whatever teammates and coaches he had, sometimes playing forward, sometimes center, sometimes guard. Whether or not he’s the greatest basketball player ever, he’s certainly the greatest foundation player ever, perhaps in any sport. If you land James, two years later you have a championship.
Fans, of course, wish a great player would stay with one team—their team—which is why some regard James as mercenary. Why didn’t this Ohio native stay in Cleveland? Why did he “take his talents” to South Beach and then to La La Land? Mercenaries, however, have their place, as this remarkable A.E. Housman poem makes clear.
As you read it, recall that Cleveland, when Lebron returned there, had never won a championship. And while the Lakers are a storied franchise, before Lebron’s arrival they had suffered through a 10-year-championship drought, an eternity for spoiled Angelinos. For them, it certainly felt like “heaven was falling” and that “earth’s foundations [had] fled.”
The poem is an epitaph, but one can’t write Lebron’s yet. Although at 35 he’s ancient for a basketball player, he is far from dead and may have more championships in him, especially given his chemistry with fellow superstar Anthony Davis. Otherwise, however, the poem captures how a group assembled from all over—the Lakers were still putting the team together a year ago last June– surpassed pretty much everyone’s expectations.
And yes, to quote the poem, it was for pay. Many owners are nostalgic for the time when, to their benefit, they could get players to choose loyalty over money, but those days are long gone:
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the days when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and the earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.
James once said that he was given wide shoulders so that he could carry his teammates—hold the sky suspended, as it were. His shoulders proved up to the task against the Miami Heat as he averaged almost 30 points a game (shooting average 59%), along with 11 rebounds and 9 assists to win his fourth finals Most Valuable Player award. The sum of things was saved.
