Can't Knock the Hustle by Matt Sullivan

Author:Matt Sullivan [Sullivan, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub

9

Keeper of the Soul

JANUARY 23, 2020

Brooklyn

LEBRON JAMES REMOVED HIS JEWELS, emptied his floral brown jacket for the metal detector and strutted through the Barclays Center tunnel. Photographers and camera operators backpedaled onto each other’s toes, defenseless to his championship acceleration. This was the primetime crew, and in the beam of their lights, stardust collided: The L.A. Lakers were in town. LeBron walked in tune to his headphones made by Beats, a company from which he’d made $50 million when it sold to Apple. He walked down the red carpet, which was black, and stomped over the logo of its Nets corporate sponsor, a sneaker app named GOAT. This acronym translated, for sports fans across the globe, to Greatest of All Time.

There could never be a single greatest basketball player, or else the debate would die out. Even Michael Jordan, during a rare public speaking appearance that very afternoon in Paris, said that LeBron James was “one of the best players in the world,” reminding the record-counters that the two 23’s had played in different eras, with evolving rules and atmospheres. LeBron, though, was a constant ballast; having absorbed all challengers with an exuberant gravitas and adapted to a more generous style, he’d redefined himself as one of the best passers in the NBA—a point guard, actually. Kevin Durant, occasionally sick of his own talent, had a player-of-the-year trophy on the floor of his closet, propping up a stockpile of his fashion-designer housemate’s latest streetwear collection. As these two towering figures and their fellow superstars of the 2010’s aged into their thirties, they were hyper-conscious of both their place in the pantheon and how the next wave of complete players might render them slightly more forgettable, sandcastle memories washed back into a legendary sea.

NBA players especially enjoyed quibbling over their own GOAT lists: MJ, LeBron and Kareem were in the top five, for sure. Bill Russell had to rank over Wilt Chamberlain, for more reasons than one. KD, at 31, was already in the mix. Magic and Bird. Shaq, too. And, of course, Kobe Bryant, the singular bridge from one generation of greatness to the next, who was in the process of being elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020.

Here in the tunnel, LeBron led his team from the bus to the visitors’ locker room, through a corridor decorated by Brooklyn’s general manager with large framed photographs to lure (the Nets’ state-of-the-art practice facility), to re-celebrate (Jay-Z in the black-and-white jersey) and to intimidate (that time Jarrett Allen blocked LeBron). No such feeble distraction, however, nor any damn list, could deter King James from his business of champions. Not this year. The Lakers hadn’t made the playoffs during his first season in L.A., but they sat atop the powerful Western Conference now, largely thanks to the production of 26-year-old Anthony Davis, for whom LeBron and his associates had traded most of the franchise’s young core of talent, and who was playing better than the 35-year-old GOAT directing The Lake Show.

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