Lebron Best Player of His Era?

Lebron Best of His Era?

One of the first questions I had to ask was who would be the other candidates for the title, best player of LeBron James’s era (2003-2004 season to present day). One of the immediate candidates was of course the Black Mamba himself, Kobe Bryant. Another person would be Steve Nash, the only other player of his career to achieve more than 1 MVP was Steve. Other candidates include, Derrick Rose of the Bulls, KG of the Celts, Kevin Durant or the Durantula as he is also know as, Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs, Dirk Nowitzki of the Mavs, Lebron’s current teammate Dwayne Wade, and finally Dwight Howard who has won three straight Defensive Player of the Year awards.
Another question that I had to ask was out of the candidates who owns a championship ring. Out of the candidates the most rings a player has is, Kobe Bryant who has 5 championships under his belt. Now, I know that ring mean a lot to how good a player is but really I’m talking about skill and being a great teammate. Let’s just compare some of their stats, head to head, points per game, rebounds, assists, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, blocks, steals, and turnovers;
Kobe (in the order that I listed): 25-5-5-.454-.828-.2-1.2-2.96.
Lebron: 28-7-7-.479-.744-.8-1.7-3.3.
Those stats sway towards Lebron to me, especially the 28-7-7 compared to the 25-5-5. What do you think? Okay, back on topic the other candidates with championship rings include, KG, Tim Duncan, and Dwayne Wade.
Now out of those players that have won rings, let’s take a look at who they had on their team and then look at who Lebron has had. Kobe; Kobe played with Shaq when he was in his prime and put up 30 points, 14 boards, and swatted 3 blocks per game, pretty good, right, oh yeah he won the MVP that year also. KG; well let’s just say that he played with the best three point shooter ever and a very good other man called Paul Pierce who won the Finals MVP the year they won the title. Tim Duncan; Tim won 4 NBA titles, very nice, yes, but he had two All-stars with him. The All-stars were none other than Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili who has proven himself to a very exceptional clutch shooter. The last Finals winner in Lebron’s era is Lebron’s now-teammate Dwayne Wade. Wade won the Finals in the 05-06 season but had a very nice supporting cast including, Shaq who averaged a double double in the playoffs, Udonis Haslem who almost had a double double in the 05-06 playoffs, Jason Williams and Antoine Walker both put up double digit points, and great leadership from Hall of Famer Alonzo Mourning.
Now, let’s look at the best team of Lebron’s the 06-07 team when he reached his first NBA Finals. The best teammate he had was Larry Hughes who went for 15-4 (ppg followed by apg) and then Ilgauskas who went for 12 points and 7.7 rebounds. Now to me that sounds like two all right role players but not starters on an NBA Finals caliber team. I believe that Lebron in the 06-07 season had one of the worst supporting casts of any team ever to make it to the Finals.
Let’s turn our attention to Lebron James career achievements. Lebron is the youngest player in NBA history to score 10,000 points and the third quickest (fewest amount of games) behind Wilt the Stilt and MJ. Lebron has 7 all-star appearances in 8 years in the league. Lebron has won MVP twice. He has the 3rd highest ppg in NBA history (27.8). LBJ has the highest efficiency rating (26.9) among active players and second all-time behind MJ. He was compared to the ABA Doctor J, Bo Jackson, and the ’92 Pippen by Bill Simmons in his book “The Book of Basketball, the NBA According to the Sports Guy” (which is pretty cool considering who he is). NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2004. All but his rookie season he was awarded an All-NBA either 1st or 2nd team accolade. Also Lebron is the only player ever to avg. at least 26 points 6 rebounds and 6 assists in their career. There are way too many so I had to stop there on one of his greatest accomplishments. The list literally goes on forever.
After all of my research and after finding some great accomplishments such as the one about Lebron being the only player ever to avg. 26-6-6, I have definitely decided that he is the best player in his era. After all he is only 26 and in the NBA players typically reach their “prime” between the ages of 28-32 so just wait he may just go down in the books (if he wins some rings) as the greatest NBA player.