National Basketball Association

LeBron James is a Jedi Master

Published Jun. 5, 2015 2:02 p.m. ET

foxsports

by Kyle Welch

As the Cleveland Cavaliers look forward to Sunday after a dismaying Game 1 loss in the NBA Finals, things look bleak for our heroes. The Cleveland Cavaliers are outnumbered, outgunned, and outpaced by the formidable Golden State Warriors: the Cavaliers’ third scoring option has been sidelined since the end of April and the team’s second best player may be done for the series after brief flashes of brilliance in Game 1; the Warriors are one of the eight teams to ever outscore opponents by an average of over 10 points per game in the regular season; and the Warriors played at the fastest pace in the NBA during the season, playing over 100 possessions per 48 minutes and attempting over 42 percent of their field goals early or earlier than early in the shot clock.1 The Warriors narrowly missed having both the best offensive and best defensive team in the league,2 and made nearly 40 percent of their three-point field goal attempts while cruising to 67 wins, the most in the NBA since the 2006-07 season.

So our heroes are backed against a wall — in a figurative trash compactor that ruthlessly crushes junk basketball in its unstoppable jaws. If you’ve got a bad feeling about this, you’re not alone. Courage and intellect alone won’t save the Cavs from being vaporized or pulverized into a fine paste.

But things aren’t hopeless. There are a few reasons to believe in the Cavs when things appear dismal. With a little luck, fate, mysticism, magic, divine intervention — call it whatever you like — the Cavs can prevail over the powerful Warriors. So they’re fortunate, because some combination of these invisible forces are attainable when you’re led by a Jedi Master.

Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi: “Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

What the hell is a Jedi Master? In the Star Wars Universe — either a body of fictional places, people, and events that originated in the 1977 movie Star Wars, or the historical events that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, depending on how many action figures you own — Ben, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, described The Force to the young, anxious Luke Skywalker, who had stumbled across “the strange old hermit” living in seclusion on the deserts of Tatooine, which curiously enough looks a lot like the desert four-to-five hours outside Los Angeles.

Obi-Wan’s description of The Force doesn’t sound all that different from an experienced professional basketball player describing the concept of “the team” to an aimless and intractable rookie who just told his coach where he ought to shove his bleeping whistle. The Jedi are members of the fellowship devoted to understanding and harnessing the power of the Force for good, and Jedi Masters are the few who achieve ultimate knowledge of the force, establish the deepest spiritual connection to it, and (presumably) complete a two-to-four year postgraduate degree while racking up a crippling amount of student loan debt in space cash.3 Well, LeBron James has ascended to a level comparable to Jedi Master in basketball.

Laugh? Sure. Snicker? Why not. Titter? Well, that sure is a funny synonym for “giggle.” But it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Consider this, by taking part in the annihilation of the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron James became the first player since Bill Russell and several of his teammates on the 1966 Celtics to qualify for the NBA Finals for the fifth consecutive year.4 Sure, it’s silly to ascribe an attuned connection with a fictional ancient space religion to a basketball player, but not as silly as you think.

Consider this. In The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons is infatuated by a lot of things: Larry Bird, gratuitous insults about Wilt Chamberlain, the prevalence of cocaine in the late ’70s and early ’80s, professional wrestling, The Wire … but most of all, he’s obsessed with learning “The Secret” — meaning “the secret” of winning basketball.

Simmons’ belief in The Secret was chiefly inspired by something Detroit Pistons point guard Isiah Thomas said,5 and he spends a large portion of the book studying, parsing, and dissecting interviews, biography passages, and personal interactions with some of the NBA’s best players to learn more about The Secret — not unlike how an archaeologist would pore over Grail lore to learn where that prized chalice is.6 In the book, Simmons finally thinks he has divined The Secret of basketball from a Vegas poolside interaction with Thomas.7

Those [championship Lakers, Celtics, and Piston teams] were loaded with talented players, yes, but that’s not the only reason they won. They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and valued winning over everything else. They won because their best players scarified to make everyone else happy. They won as long as everyone remained on the same page. By that same token, they lost if any of those three factors weren’t in place. …

The secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball.

The same sentiments are echoed by others throughout the book (both directly and indirectly), such as Gregg Popovich, Bill Bradley, and basketball guru Bill Walton. Though he never outed The Secret by name, probably no one understood it better than Bill Russell, the last player before LeBron James to lead his team to five straight NBA Finals and 11-time NBA champion.

Musings on The Force and The Secret sound like the rambling drivel of lunatics to be sure. Two sets of people tend view intangible basketball in the same fashion: 1. The Front-Runners and Ignoramuses-the fans who view LeBron James as dominant solely because of his physical indestructibility or Stephen Curry as successful solely because he has the purest shooting stroke. We all have this friend, and all of his arguments start and end with, “But dude, Kobe man.” And 2. The Analytics Snobs-the numbers-obsessed stat junkies who think James reduced PER and win shares per 48 minutes are the only things that matter. Maybe they’re both right … maybe there is no spiritual component to basketball.

But then you hear NBA legends struggle to articulate the elusive nature of the game or see them try to comprehend the inexplicable, such as when Thomas says, “When 12 men come together like that, you know, it’s … it’s … You wouldn’t understand,” in between dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.8 Eventually, even the agnostics and atheists begin to think that the mere belief in such things as The Force or The Secret are as important as their existence themselves.

Darth Vader: “The Force is strong with this one.”

Near the end of Star Wars, Darth Vader became concerned once he realized that the target he was trying to lock into his cross hairs was adept in the ways of The Force. Similarly, Golden State should be wary of LeBron’s ability to produce points with his unique command over his Cavalier team and adroit manipulation of team basketball.

LeBron James is averaging 8.3 assists per game in the postseason, trailing only point guards John Wall and Chris Paul.9 James is generating 21 points per game by assist at a rate of .34 points per pass, trailing only Wall in both categories. He’s scored the fifth most points on post possessions and is the leader in team-points per game on drives at 18.3 points per game.

James involves all of his teammates, distributing more than an assist per game to five different Cavalier teammates, equaled only by Wall.10 Cavalier players shooting off passes received from James make 42.5 percent of their three-point attempts, over ten percent higher than the team’s shooting percentage on threes not facilitated by James — because James generally creates open shots for his teammates.

Let’s also not forget that James is an excellent rebounder, with six double-digit rebounding games in the playoffs — the ball seems to seek him out in traffic as if it’s drawn to him by a personal tractor beam. James’ balance and all-around impact is otherworldly: James could become only the second player to average 27 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists in a playoff season (Oscar Robertson did it three times in the 1960s).

Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi: “Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.”

But those are just the statistics — the numbers are merely the statistical manifestation of having complete command of game flow. James manipulates basketball players around the floor like pieces on a chessboard. His self-promoted nickname is King James, but it’s the queen in chess that’s the most dangerous and versatile piece. Take the .gif below as an example. James catches the ball in post position (practically at the three-point line), faces up Butler, draws all eyes to him like Mick Jagger wandering into your local Whole Foods (at one point every Bulls defender is gawking at James), Aaron Brooks leaves Matthew Dellavedova to help on Perkins (why???) as Gasol moves over to double James, James Jones cuts but isn’t open, and LeBron points and nods (does he? it’s almost imperceptible) toward the far corner, effortlessly slings an inconceivable pass like a missile from a trebuchet to Dellavedova on weakside, who swings it to James Jones, who’s now lost Gibson for the second time and glided toward the far corner, who knocks down a wide open three-pointer. All part of James’ grand design, like a two-move checkmate.

Stories like this … about a player “controlling the game,” sound like ghost stories and smell like bong resin. But only until you see it. Fans and writers normally just call it being “in the zone.” You could sense it in games with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, you could sense it last year when Madison Bumgarner confounded the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, and you could once sense it with Roger Federer and Tiger Woods. Last Friday on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Brian Windhorst spoke about James’ presence on the court.

From an efficiency standpoint [James is] way behind where he’s been the last four years. But from a leadership standpoint, he’s never been higher. The mastery that he had over the Atlanta Hawks … there were times, Colin, where I felt like LeBron was controlling the other nine players on the floor. He had such a control and command over the way the game was being played … at a confidence level, we’ve rarely seen athletes rise to that level of dominance.

In his recent press conference, James told Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick, regarding James “playing better than at any other point,” “I wouldn’t say this the best I’ve played in a stretch run. I would say ’09 I had a pretty good run when we lost to Orlando. … But I think now, when you put my whole body of work as far as how I approach the game mentally, as well as my game, I’m very very confident in my ability to be able to see the game, even before the game is played.

Pregame premonitions? Controlling the other nine players on the floor? Then what did James do? Turn the opposing team’s small forward into a chicken, set him on fire with his mind, then served chicken tenders to the fans in the first row? But these are things we hear when a player is “in the zone.” And LeBron is channeling some heavy stuff right now.

Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi: “You must learn the ways of the Force if you’re to come with me to Alderaan. … I need your help, Luke. She needs your help. I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”

James wasn’t always the master. He’s always been able to cheat gravity and do feats of strength (the Jedi equivalent of using a lightsaber), but never to extract this much out of his team. To disregard what he learned from Dwyane Wade in Miami, as well as Mike Miller, James Jones, and Shane Battier, would be folly. But now he’s the one doing the teaching to Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love, and the question is if he took enough to heart from those who guided him.

“[James is] a constant teacher and I’m a student of the game,” Irving has said. “He has been through far more experiences than I have. He’s constantly teaching. You want to take advice from someone who has done it before and who has been successful at it.”

When Kyrie asks questions like, “Is this similar to what a playoff game feels like?” he’s trying to tap into the wisdom that teammates like James and Miller have obtained from playoff exposure. Irving later said of the adorably innocent question he asked Miller in an October game, “Yea, that was the second game of the season. … And now having experienced a playoff series against them, it was totally different. It was packed, you could just feel the energy … and that [has been] almost every arena we’ve played in [in the playoffs].”

When a reporter clumsily asked Kyrie Irving what type of a parental role James has played for Irving and his teammates, it sounded like a stupid question — mostly because it was. But to say that James and Irving have had a mentor-mentee relationship, or master-apprentice relationship, isn’t absurd. It’s the growing process for any brash, whiny young star — though I suspect James lives in a nicer house than a monastic Jedi — and the Cavs probably need Irving to hit a few three-pointers with his eyes closed to win this series. With Irving’s injury aggravated in Game 1, they may never get them anymore.

Han Solo: “Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.”

If you think all of this pseudo-religious psycho babble about someone whose job it is to throw a leather bladder at a metal hoop is ridiculous, or if you view James’ entire persona as the product of a transparent P.R. machine, or think his mid-court pose/collapse was contrived, Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith are your antidote. Han Solo in Star Wars derided The Force as “a lot of simple tricks and nonsense,” and I imagine that’s how J.R. Smith once felt about the concept of team play.

Though Smith has come around to work on behalf of the team in James’ company, his gunner instincts remain largely intact. “I’d rather take a contested shot than an open shot any day,” Smith recently said. “It’s kind of boring when you take open shots.” Even though Smith’s aim was erratic in Game 1 (he shot 3-of-13), the Cavs still need someone who espouses the belief that nothing is any match for a “good blaster” at his side, even if he secretly has faith that other forces are at work.

C-3PO: “Let the wookie win.”

This will all seem ridiculous if the Cavs get obliterated, or even better, if the Cavs’ best strategy has nothing to do with James but unleashing Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov on the offensive boards like Chewbacca, Han Solo’s furry copilot who doesn’t respond well to losing. The Cavs’ two wookies did their part last night, as Thompson had six offensive rebounds and Mozgov had 16 points, some emphatic dunks, and two clutch free throws. Maybe the Cavs should leave the magic at home, and let Thompson, Mozgov, and Kendrick Perkins perform the basketball equivalent of ripping someone’s arms off and bludgeoning them to death with them.

Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi: “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

I couldn’t find an appropriate way to use this quote in the post, but it had to be done somehow. While we’re here, let’s torture this Star Wars analogy for all it’s worth. The City of Cleveland is Princess Leia, the Death Star is the Golden State Warriors (if that wasn’t apparent already), Matthew Dellavedova is R2-D2, James Jones is C-3PO, and Dion Waiters is one of the Jawas. Jar-Jar Binks? Moondog, obviously.

General Motti: “This station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it!”

Darth Vader: “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

Wherever LeBron James’ final place is in basketball canon, there’s no question that right now — at this moment — he understands this basketball thing nearly as well as anyone who’s ever played it. Whether you want to call it The Secret, The Force, The Zone, or even The Knack is irrelevant. No one makes it to six NBA Finals and five straight without some psychological edge, some innate understanding of how basketball works.

In Game 1, James became only the seventh player to score 44 points or more in an NBA Finals game. However, James and the Cavaliers were unable to stop the fully operational battle station that is the Golden State Warriors, going cold in the final minutes.

The Warriors are a 67-win destroyer of worlds. When the Cavaliers go into the next several games armed with barely enough ammunition to put a dent in Golden State’s drywall, they’re going to need some invisible forces to guide their shots to the most explosive target. If any select few in the universe have the power to harness that magic and wield it, LeBron James is one of them. Help us Obi-‘Bron Kenobi, you’re our only hope.

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