The LeBron James Legacy (Podcast)

The NBA Finals eight days ago, and questions about where LeBron James goes next have dominated the basketball media ever since. Whether LeBron stays or goes in Miami has been a bigger deal than celebrating the San Antonio Spurs, and that was true even on postgame shows on the sports channels in the immediate aftermath of the Spurs’ clinching Game 5 last Sunday night.

I’ve chosen to wait several days, to make sure we first celebrated the Spurs before we went too deep into questions of the LeBron James legacy. Here at TheSportsNotebook, the immediate reaction to the Finals was the extraordinary legacy of Tim Duncan and where he now fit among basketball’s all-time greats.

LeBron JamesBut now it’s time to talk LeBron James legacy in particular and the Miami Heat in general. I’ve chosen to make this the first topic TheSportsNotebook has produced its own podcast on. In the 23-minute program found below, we address the following topics…

  • Was this year’s NBA Finals really just about San Antonio being too good, or does Miami have more to answer for?
  • How does this Miami team compare to the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers, another LeBron James team that lost decisively to the Spurs?
  • Evaluating LeBron’s legacy by two different criteria—that of a “normal” great basketball player, and the even higher standard set by Chicago Bulls’ legend Michael Jordan.
  • LeBron’s own play in this year’s NBA Finals.

This is TheSportsNotebook’s first self-produced show and I apologize for anything not quite up to professional snuff, but it is a clean broadcast and I hope readers who are in a position to listen to some audio will give it a listen.

Click To Listen: LeBron James Legacy