To stay in the NBA for a long time, versatility is a skill that has a lot of value. If an NBA player can adjust his game according to the need of his team, there is hardly any franchise in the NBA that wouldn’t want the player to become its member.
When it comes to being versatile, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James is the prime example for others. The King’s natural position might be as a forward but he can also play as a guard and center. He proved that recently when he started to play as a center for the purple & gold and still continued to dominate.
While this was something new that fans saw from James, playing as a point guard isn’t. There have been many occasions in his career when LBJ has fulfilled the role of a floor general. He has an amazing ability to make excellent plays for his teammates.
This helps others in getting more open shots and evidently a higher chance of scoring. In fact, James’ ability as a point guard is so good that even NBA analyst Skip Bayless praised him for that.
Skip has been well-known for hating James throughout his career. But in a recent interview, Bayless hailed James as an even better point guard than Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving.
“His [Kyrie’s] career playoff average is 5 a game. It’s not… like, like, LeBron is way better, he’s a 100 times better as a distributor, a point guard, an orchestrator. Kyrie’s not an orchestrator.”
(starts at 2:25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZipR0hUsis
Being a playmaker is not an easy job and not everyone has the talents to do that. But if a player is assuming the role of a point guard for a team, it is the primary responsibility of that player to do so.
Now, comparing James and Irving as point guards is not that hard. Irving is someone who focuses more on razzle-dazzle plays instead of making sure the team’s offense runs smoothly. James, on the other hand, has proved his ability to run a team’s offense while scoring himself.
Looking at Bayless’ comments one might wonder that was it praise for LBJ or did he simply call out Kyrie Irving? Knowing Skip, both options are equally plausible.
