In the wake of Team USA’s Gold Medal run in the 2008 Olympic Games, those of us whose lives are fueled by basketball are already looking forward to the upcoming basketball season. Around this time last season Kobe Bryant and the Lakers were the most dominating and interesting story of the offseason for a myriad reasons that included, but were not limited to A) Bryant throwing both his teammates and management under the conjectural Buss (yes, Jerry too), B) Dr. Buss saying Bryant could be traded and Bryant’s wanting to get the hell out of Los Angeles and C) Lamar Odom’s tattoo on his scalp. The Lakers being the most interesting team heading toward training camps has been the case for the last three or four seasons, however, with Andrew Bynum coming back with Pau Gasol in the front court, the Lakers look to be an actual basketball team going into a season for the first time since the 2003-2004 season, which is why the Lakers aren’t the most interesting team next season. And with that being said, this may be the most awkward thing I’ve ever considered writing in my lifetime (for reasons to be explained later).

Unlike the two other major American sports, football and baseball, fans of basketball have been captivated by individual players instead of team concepts for as long as I can remember. There are a plethora of athletes who are larger than their teams and there was even one, Michael Jordan, who was bigger than the sport itself. We as basketball fans love being able to watch a single player dictate how a game is going to happen just by his own abilities, which is why guys like Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady and Paul Pierce (God forbid) will always have fans. This is why, when we talk about the Celtics in the 1980s, we immediately garnish beautiful words about Larry Legend instead of everything every player on that team represented, and this is completely different from baseball and football. When we think about the Steelers of the 1970s we remember that Steel Curtain defense and how they owned the AFC, we really don’t think about any individual players, and I’m sure if I asked either of my two roommates (who are both three years younger than I and are both huge football fans), they would be able to give me Larry Bird’s name in a conversation about the Golden Era of basketball before they came up with Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Green or Jack Ham’s names when talking about that dynasty of the 70s. The same goes with baseball. We’ll remember Hakeem Olajuwon as a representative of the Rockets of the 90s, but we won’t remember guys like David Cone and Derek Jeter as much as we remember the Yankees of the late 90s as a whole unit.

Photo Courtesy of nationalpost.com

This idea of the individual vs. the team, as far as basketball vs. football and baseball go, is a very interesting concept and isn’t only applied to eras, but to individual years too. Terms like the ’72 Dolphins or the ’85 Bears resonate with football fans as much as Jordan in 1987 or Charles Barkley in 1993 does with basketball fans – which leads me to the reason why this season the Lakers will not be the most interesting team going into the 2008-2009 season. With the acquisition of Gasol, the emergence of Bynum’s talent and the depth of their bench, Bryant no longer has to go for 45 points every night for his team to win games. The seasons of Bryant averaging 30 points per game are over even though he still remains the single greatest game closer and offensive force that this league has witnessed since 1998 (as we all watched in the fourth quarter in the U.S. vs. Spain gold medal game). Non-Lakers fans will no longer have to monitor the progress of Lakers games just to make sure they aren’t missing another Bryant scoring binge. The probability of Bryant going off for 50 points has decreased because the level of play from his teammates has increased. You can look at Bryant’s production, or the production of any great scorer, like you would look at a supply and demand graph with supply being surrounding talent and demand being points. As supply increases, the demand will ultimately decrease, which is why Bryant only had three games where he scored 50 or more points before the 04-05 season and only one 50+ game with Gasol on the roster. Every other 50 point game Bryant has had (and there have been twenty others) have come between the dates of December 20th, 2005 and April 15th, 2007, times when the talent surrounding him was unquestionably low.

With Gasol and a healthy Bynum on the roster, along with a competent point guard and, as Chuck Klosterman once called Lamar Odom, “the worst good player in the NBA or the best terrible player in the NBA,” Bryant no longer needs to go on stretches where he scores 40 points in four straight games (twice in one season) nor does he have to average at least 40 points for a whole month (also twice, in the same season). And all of this has opened up the door for the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James (as much as I despise his game) to be the most interesting team to watch going into the 2008-2009 season. The only people who are going to follow every Lakers game next year are die hard fans, beat writers and Bill Walton, who loves his son in “epic proportions,” or something like that.

Everything is set for James to have one of those memorable years. James is only 23 years old, his point guard is a guy kids from Compton have probably never heard of in Mo Williams, his shooting guard is a guy who averaged one twenty-point game every 26 games he played in last season (he missed 30 games), his power forward has hands like granite and probably wouldn’t be able to score if he caught a pass anyway and his center just turned 33, but moves like he’s 60. Even in the woeful Eastern Conference, James is going to have to score like a madman for the Cavaliers to stay competitive.

Now, if anyone knows that LeBron is no Kobe Bryant it’s definitely me. LeBron only had five games where he scored more than 40 points last season (and as I noted earlier, Kobe had four 40-point games in a row, twice, in one season, and seven 40-point games in two consecutive months), but he can put up numbers that will keep even the most uncompromising LeBron haters interested as this season goes along, and we all know that he’ll do it in spectacular fashion as he showed in these Olympics (well, unless he goes on a jump shooting binge like he did against Detroit in the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals, at which point ugly was an understatement).

The thing is, we have never seen this combination of size and athleticism in a basketball player and we’ll probably never see it again. He seems to have the competitiveness and hunger that all great scorers throughout the years have had, and his pros (ability to get to the rim at will, ability to run the fast break himself, size, strength etc.) have definitely outweighed the cons (terrible jump shot, no mid-range game, inability to consistently play on the block, poor free-throw shooting etc.) thus far and well, he doesn’t have the best teammates in the world (unlike the Olympic team he just played for). LeBron James is already known and loved internationally (everywhere except for Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and maybe Angola), he is remarkably athletic and naturally gifted and is coming off a ridiculous statistical season. Although I’ll still consider his game vastly overrated until he can regularly hit a 17-foot jump shot, I’m very excited about the potential numbers James will put up this season. I’ll be checking box scores regularly just to make sure he isn’t going off on some unsuspecting team (like the Knicks). We should all take a page from those terrible WNBA advertisements when thinking about LeBron and the 2008-2009 season and expect great, because that’s exactly what we’re going to get.


LeBron James photo courtesy of all-nba-all-basketball.com

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Phillip Barnett is a senior writer for Talkhoops.net and can also be read at imsohideous.blogspot.com