- AP Photo/Michael Conroy
- LeBron James playing in game four of the Eastern Conference finals last night
LeBron James is a frightening athlete. I’ve never seen his like. Well, maybe Michael Jordan. But Jordan played in Chicago, and we saw enough of him to know his powers weren’t absolute. We hoped Jordan would lift the Bulls to victory in the games they absolutely had to win, and over his last six full seasons Jordan always did. But there were no guarantees.
James plays basketball with a lackadaisical menace. He doesn’t demand the ball; he doesn’t hog Miami’s shots. But when a shot has to be blocked, or the ball stolen, or a basket jammed home, James provides what the occasion demands so effortlessly and routinely that the game always seems to resolve itself according to a script he’s writing on the fly. We rooted for the Heat to lose to the Bulls but didn’t expect them to. Now we’re rooting for them to lose to Indiana, but we don’t expect that to happen either.