Saturday, January 10, 2009

If I wrote a LeBron James article, it would start like this

Kobe Bryant has proved that with hard work, you can grow up to be Michael Jordan. No, not everyone can have Jordan's athleticism, but his drive to win, his basketball skills, even the fact that he's 6'6" are all reasonable things to attain. Others might not be as great as he is, but there have been a lot of facsimiles and imitators in the league since Jordan left his mark on the game.

But you can't grow up to be LeBron James. LeBron James is a genetic freak, an insane combination of size, strength, and speed that the world has never seen before. Like Michael, people will take things from his game and use it in their own repertoire, but the things that he is able to do won't ever been seen again until cloning becomes legal. You might as well grow up hoping to be Spider-Man or Jesus, because your chances of being LeBron James are just as impossible.

Like no player before him, LeBron James is truly one of a kind. There has never been a player like him before. Others have been labeled "one of a kind" before, like Randy Moss or Shaquille O'Neal or Michael Vick, but with those players, there was always a comparison to someone else. Shaq was always compared to Wilt Chamberlain, a player just as big and quick, but even better than Shaq would wind up being. Michael Vick wasn't even "one of a kind" in his family, and Plaxico Burress has always been the next best thing to Randy Moss. But to get an idea of what LeBron James is, players have to be combined together. It's almost like God said, "Hey, I wonder what would happen if I combined Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan?" That's what LeBron James is: Proof that God loves to play with Legos.

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