My Love-Hate Relationship With Lebron James While Living in Toronto
He’s great and all, but I really wish he wasn’t so great
Daily Blog #3
I’m not really a sports fan, but in 2017 I found myself watching more of the NBA than I ever have and became strangely invested in the performance of my home team, the Toronto Raptors
Lebron James has somehow managed to have a career record of 39–9 in the regular season and 8–2 in the playoffs against the Toronto Raptors. His stats against the Raptors are astounding.
These numbers are great, great for Lebron, great for his legacy, great for a very weak Cavs roster that is relying on Lebron to perform another miracle and win 4 games for them again so they can get out of the second round. They are great numbers if you’re a fan of Lebron James, great basketball player, does a lot of charitable work, great at avoiding any media hijinks — it’s really hard to poke any holes in his character.
But they kind of suck if you’re a Raptors fan. This is arguably speaking the best Raptors team ever. This is their first time getting the first seed in the Eastern Conference (admittedly a very weak Eastern Conference), best regular season record in franchise history and they were the second best defensive team this season. They’re playing great basketball.
As a team the Raptors have more depth, better defence, better offence and better chemistry (I don’t have a stat to prove this, but the Cavs locker room is probably really awkward now). The crazy thing is, all of this can go out the window when playing against a generational talent like Lebron Raymone James. Lebron is the first player to win a playoff series with none of his teammates scoring 20 PPG, he is playing the best basketball of his life at 33, but his team sucks.
Team sports are a funny team because most of the time you lose because of your team’s overall performance, but there’s always that one guy that seems to be able to pull off miracles and take a bunch of bums to the finals (sorry JR, Kyle and Kevin).
Here is to sincerely hoping that the Raptors go all the way.
