LeBron James has enjoyed tremendous success during his incredible NBA career and has thrust himself into the GOAT debate today, but his critics are always quick to bring up one point. Unlike the greats of years past, James left the team that drafted him, the Cleveland Cavaliers, without winning a championship in 2010 and formed a superteam elsewhere to win one.
The likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird didn’t do that, but James pointed out in a recent interview with Time Magazine that they got to play with Hall of Famers early on.
“‘I was comfortable with changing that narrative because my journey is different from those guys’ journey,’ says James. He points out that Johnson, for example, in his rookie season joined with Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the first of the five titles they would win together. ‘I wasn’t privy to that,’ he says. ‘M.J. spent his first couple years without a Hall of Fame teammate. But then, boom, they drafted Scottie Pippen, and boom, here comes Phil Jackson.’
“Bird, meanwhile, teamed up with Robert Parish and Kevin McHale in year two. ‘I didn’t see that the franchise was going on the trajectory that I was going on in my career,’ says James. ‘I wanted more. I wanted to win at the highest level.’ He rejects the notion that chasing titles with fellow stars counts as some kind of cheat code. ‘It’s no different from someone in business going from one place to the next place, because they get a better opportunity to be around better people,’ he says.”
James is on point here. Let’s take a bit of a deeper look at their careers.
The Los Angeles Lakers selected Johnson with the No. 1 pick in the 1979 NBA Draft. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was already on the Lakers at that point, and he had five MVPs to his name. Abdul-Jabbar won his record sixth MVP in Johnson’s rookie season and would continue to be a force in the following years.
As for Bird, the Boston Celtics selected him with the No. 6 pick in the 1978 NBA Draft, and he’d join the team a year later. He led the Celtics to an impressive 61-21 record as a rookie, but they would lose in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Fortunately for Bird, help was on the way after that. Despite that excellent record, the Celtics got the No. 1 pick in the 1980 NBA Draft thanks to a previous trade with the Detroit Pistons. Instead of selecting a player with it, they traded the pick to the Golden State Warriors for Robert Parish and the No. 3 pick that year. The Celtics selected Kevin McHale with that pick, and he’d end up in the Hall of Fame, as would Parish.
Lastly, we get to Jordan, whom the Chicago Bulls selected with the No. 3 pick in the 1984 NBA Draft. He dominated from the get-go, but the Bulls lost in the first round in each of his first three seasons. Scottie Pippen then arrived via a trade with the Seattle SuperSonics in 1987, and he’d eventually turn into a superstar and end up in the Hall of Fame.
Had James gotten to play with this kind of talent in their primes, you’d imagine he’d have never left the Cavaliers, who selected him with the No. 1 pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. To say his supporting cast was underwhelming in comparison would be an understatement.
In those first seven seasons with the Cavaliers, James saw only two of his teammates make All-Star teams. That was Zydrunas Ilgauskas in 2005 and Mo Williams in 2009. As you can see, they only made it once, too.
So, you can’t really blame James for leaving the Cavaliers in 2010. Even the great players need great teammates to win championships, and he didn’t have any. When he finally teamed up with two stars, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, on the Miami Heat in 2010, he won.
James won back-to-back titles with the Heat in 2012 and 2013. He then won his third with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in 2016 after returning to the Cavaliers. Lastly, James won his fourth championship with Anthony Davis on the Lakers in 2020. Yes, he needed help, but so did almost everyone else who came before him.
