Gooner wrote:BigRedDog wrote:Gooner wrote:
LeBron, Irving, Love, Smith, Thompson, Korver, Dellavedova, Deron Williams, Richard Jefferson, Shumpert...those teams were stacked.
You're literally just naming random guys. Over Half of the guys you've listed are scrubs or washed up and are making lebron's case for him.
You don't understand the importance of role players. Guys like Livingston, West, McGee and Pachulia have had their place on the Warriors, and they were respected. On the other hand, everybody disrespects LeBron's teammates.
The problem is that you can't separate out individual games, series and years. You just have them all mashed together in the way most detrimental to James, but it's a fictitious creation.
Role players are hugely important. In the 2012 finals, James had great stats, but several of his role players went off too. It was a great team win. I didn't think I've ever heard anyone arguing James was carrying bums in that series.
In the 2011 finals the role players were pure trash. Joel Anthony got big minutes. Despite terrible role players the Heat still should have won,butnJames had the worst series of his life. That series is on him. He should have overcome poor role player play there, but he didn't.
In 2013 Mario Chalmers had a great game six and Ray Allen made an iconic shot. That shot should be his career defining moment, but James haters have siezed on it to discredit James and by making it about James are the ones who are undermining the credit role players deserve.
Throughout the Heat runs Bosh sacrificed for the betterment of the team. He was a big part of the Heat coming from behind to get past the Celtics when he came back from injury. He deserves plenty of credit for their success, but be also tended to underperform at times.
The 2016 title was again a great team effort. JR Smith was an excellent, vitally important role player with good defense and timely threes including some big one in game seven without which the Cavs probably don't win. Tristan Thompson was great through the playoffs. Richard Jefferson's old self made a difference. But don't tell me Matthew Dellavadova was a key role player in the finals. He was unplayable. He did help in earlier rounds for what that's worth. Obviously Kyrie was huge there too.
But in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 James was the best player on the floor and lost. A big part of that was inadequacies of his supporting cast especially in 2015 and 2018, though there were problems in 2014 and 2017 as well. The other part was that the teams James faced in 2014, 2017 and 2018 were flat out elite even by championship standards. Combine elite competition with inadequate support and its basically an auto loss. (See MJ in 86). It doesn't even mean the support is bad in terms of general NBA support. There is a difference between championship level supporting casts and second round level supporting casts which you seem to be missing.