LeBron James is on an unprecidented run right now.
After the Cavaliers impressive Game 7 win over the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron finally made it to his eighth straight NBA Finals series, dating back all the way to 2011. James became the only player in the modern era, and only player not a member of the 1960’s Boston Celtics to appear in 8 consecutive Finals series.
Obviously, LeBron is still a couple of Finals appearances away from owning the record of most consecutive appearances, which currently belongs to Bill Russell and five of his teammates from the Celtics dynasty in the 60’s. Russell and co. made it to 10 straight Finals, which is an insane accomplishment, but there are some asterisks that need to be added at the end when comparing both he and LeBron’s insane runs in the postseason.
For starters, there were only 8-9 teams in the NBA during Russell’s run of dominance, compared to the 30 LeBron has been competing against his entire career. Also, free agency wasn’t even a concept back in the 60’s so teams had no way to get better — or worse in case of the Celtics — unless it was through trades, which were rare, or the yearly draft.
On top of the diluted teams and talent pool, because there were so few teams in the league, a team would only need to win one round in the postseason to make the Finals. To make things even easier, the first-round was only best of 5! If LeBron was playing under the same rules, he’d have at least 10 titles by now.
Finally, given that there was no free agency, the Celtics were free to hoard almost all the Hall of Fame talent the league had to offer at the time, with Russell playing alongside 5-6 HoFers at a time, compared to LeBron’s 2 — arguably 3 — during his stints in Miami and Cleveland.
So even though Russell went to 10-straight NBA Finals in his career, context matters, and LeBron’s stretch of dominance over the East since 2011 should be ranked as the greater achievement.
