Savoring Their Moments

LeBron James was still on all fours at Oracle Arena, in a full celebratory sob, but Twitter had forgotten all about the classic Game 7 that had just been played between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. The discussion had already moved on to something more pressing: Does this win move James to No. 4, or No. 3, or No. 7, or No. 1 on the (strictly speculative) list of the NBA’s greatest players of all time?

By the next morning, that conversation had left Cleveland’s first professional-sports triumph in 52 years behind entirely. Instead, the topic of the moment was how former player and current commentator Charles Barkley had “disrespected” LeBron by keeping him off of his personal GOAT list.

This hyper-accelerated chain of social-media events isn’t exclusive to basketball, of course. It reminded of the one that had followed Novak Djokovic’s own long-delayed triumph, at the French Open, earlier this month. The world No. 1 had barely finished carving a heart in the clay in Court Philippe Chatrier when the question of whether, now that he had become the first man since Rod Laver to hold all four major titles at once, we should start calling Djokovic the greatest tennis player of all time.

The obvious answer, in the cases of both LeBron and Djokovic, is: too soon. Way too soon.

I’m not against GOAT debates. I’m not one of the sticklers or puritans who says we “can’t compare players from different eras.” These conversations are fun. They’re part of the glue that binds sports fans together; they help us appreciate what made a particular athlete great, and our minds naturally gravitate toward making comparisons, so why not say what we think? We can use the intellectual exercise, right? My only caveat is that the subjectivity in these exercises should always be recognized and encouraged, and that everyone’s personal list is as valid as anyone else’s.

That’s why I actually liked Barkley’s list of the seven greatest players in NBA history: (in descending order) Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan. Yes, he excluded LeBron, but he also has Bryant and Duncan ahead of Magic Johnson. That seems preposterous to me, but now I’m interested in hearing Barkley’s rationale. This is when GOAT debates get good.

As I said above, though, the James and Djokovic discussions came far too soon. The most obvious reason is that both of these men are in the middle of their careers. Djokovic is 29, Lebron 31; they may soon be in decline, but they’re not going anywhere for a while, either. LeBron has three rings at the moment; he could finish with that many, or he could finish with five or six. Djokovic has 12 majors so far; he could finish with 12 or 15 or 18 or 20. Aside from that, his two closest competitors in terms of major titles won, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, are still active. As Andy Roddick, who knows all three of these legends well, tweeted after the French Open, “Discussing GOAT in men’s tennis right now is like reading three quarters of a book, and wanting to discuss the ending.”

But as I was watched James and Djokovic reach their long-sought goals this month, I found a more important reason not to start herding them into GOAT debates right away.

By immediately ranking these two athletes, we must immediately begin thinking of them in terms of “better” and “worse.” As I said, there’s plenty of time for that in the long run. In the short run, though, this has a reductive effect. What’s left out of the stats that are always at the heart of the GOAT debate is the experience of watching LeBron and Djokovic play. What’s forgotten is that every great athlete is not, in reality, better or worse than another; rather, each brings a unique brand of excellence to the court that resists comparison and categorization. It’s this unique quality in LeBron and Djokovic that should be savored and celebrated, before we begun converting their brilliance into cold hard numbers.

What Djokovic showed in Paris was an all-around mastery unlike anything I've ever seen. He completed his personal Grand Slam by winning on clay the way he wins on other surfaces: by doing everything so well that he never needs to do anything spectacularly. The strong slice serve to set up a point. The bullet return reflexed within an inch of the baseline. The point-starting heavy crosscourt forehand and point-ending two-handed backhand. The unparalleled down-the-line forehand that he keeps in reserve. The ability to attack and defend at the same time. In Paris, he wove all of those elements together, and built his rallies with a rhythmic sense of control. Djokovic played to a beat all his own, one that no one else can keep.

LeBron, to me, has always been one of a kind as a basketball player; with him, comparisons to other NBA legends fall short. He’s not a pure scorer like Jordan or a pure shooter like Larry Bird; the closest forerunner may be Johnson, but unlike James, Magic was a pure point guard.

For a long time, I saw LeBron mostly when his teams played my team, the Sixers. Granted, that’s been a lowly organization for many years, but no one else had ever done what James routinely did to them: wait until the fourth quarter and then win the game by himself. James is the ultimate floor general and maestro, someone who moves his four teammates around like chess pieces; he can make a game develop according to his script.

James has come up short four times in the Finals, and has been accused on various occasions of passing too much and not wanting to take the big shot. That was true again in the first half of this Game 7, but in the fourth quarter, he kept the ball in his hands, slowed the game to his pace and commanded both ends of the court.

“I watched Beethoven tonight,” said James’ first officer, Kyrie Irving.

What’s most unique about great athletes, of course, is their athleticism. It’s their way of expressing themselves, and something that can never be captured in a GOAT list. The sports that Djokovic and LeBron play both emphasize this: Tennis is a game of individual vs. individual; basketball, America’s most free-flowing and creative game, is about the power of the individual within the group.

I’ll remember Djokovic at the French for the way he dismantled rising star Dominic Thiem in the semis. Djokovic took a step back and, sliding from side to side at full speed, absorbed everything Thiem had and rifled it back with pace and accuracy, and a little something extra that his young opponent couldn’t match. It was the Djoko unchained that he rarely lets us see.

I’ll remember LeBron, as everyone else will, storming the length of the court with a minute to play and soaring, Superman-style, from out of nowhere (or maybe from out of the sky) to block a layup that seemed all but through the rim. It was as if, to catch up to the play, LeBron had orchestrated time: He stopped it for everyone else and sped it up for himself.

Djokovic’s semifinal masterpiece and James’ gravity-mocking block: Even in the hyper age of social media, we can take a moment to savor those plays, and the men who gave them to us, for a day or two.