This NBA Champion Deserves an Asterisk... But It's Not What You Think.

NOTE: Every Friday I send out a newsletter. This piece was in last Friday’s edition.

In April, hungry sports fans settled onto their couch for five straight Sunday nights to relive the Michael Jordan era and the Chicago Bulls. Hours of content about Jordan’s win at all costs attitude, bad pizza, crazy teammates, inner-conflict, and team strife.

If Michael Jordan had a season like this, I have often wondered how it would have been cover on The Last Dance. It would have been the flu game times 100, right? A four month hiatus in the middle of the season, no fans, a restart inside of a bubble (how much golf is Jordan playing inside the bubble in Orlando? 72 holes a day?). Toss in a social justice uprising and a boycott inside the bubble and it’s clear this saga would take up 2-3 hours of the 10 hour documentary. It will certainly be it’s own documentary at some point.

It’s Friday, October 9, 2020. Game 5 of the NBA Finals is tonight and the Los Angeles Lakers are up 3-1. It’s almost inevitable that LeBron James will win his fourth NBA Title (in 10 Finals appearances) with his third team. It’s almost inevitable that LeBron James will win NBA Finals MVP with the third different franchise (unless Anthony Davis cures COVid AND world hunger before tip-off…). This might not happen tonight, but it’s all going to happen (and if it doesn’t, this is the greatest jinx job in the history of sports…)

I wrote this tweet thread in July that the winner of this Finals is legit. I wrote it before the games restarted. I put my stake in the ground. The three tweet thread about the validity of the 2019/20 NBA Championship finished with the phrase “…even if LeBron wins.” Don’t get me wrong, watching LeBron win a title as a Laker makes me want to drive nails into my eyeballs. He has been a torn in my side for nearly half my life at this point. Thankfully, the Celtics landed some punches in the early rounds of the bout, but golly, this last decade has been a bit tougher to watch.

This championship, though, is one that should be marked with an asterisk, but not for the Barry Bonds or Houston Astros reasons. This is an asterisk worth earning. LeBron is 35 years-old, he and his teammates have been in a bubble since July (which, in this day and age, means it’s been roughly a decade in the bubble). He’s been hounded to speak on social justice and police violence. He’s a spokesperson, for better or worse, and takes it on, for better or worse. He isn’t worried about Republicans who buy shoes like Jordan. Some folks think LeBron is the reason NBA ratings are down. Some people think parts of the country are done with the “woke” ballers. LeBron is the poster boy for that distaste, but he continues to press on and set incredible, likely unbreakable, records.

Don’t misconstrue this as a turning point in my distant relationship with LeBron James. But I know that over the last two rounds of the Celtics playoff run I was pacing my living room, kicking pillows, cursing Marcus Smart three points and then celebrating them when they fell. This playoffs, while different, were real. LeBron and Lakers winning is real.

I hate that I have to write this and I hate that the Celtics didn’t at least have a crack at the Lakers in the Finals.