National Basketball Association

LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and chasing ghosts

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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LeBron James is untouchable, finally, inconceivably, inevitably, for the first time in his NBA career. In returning home and ending Cleveland’s championship drought, he accomplished what he set out to do since his rookie season, shaking one final monkey off his overburdened shoulders, and fixing what would have been the most infamous broken promise of his career.

The quest for self-improvement has never ended with him — the goalpost is ever-moving — but for the first time in his 13-year career, the question truly arose: how much more can LeBron James truly strive? And then, of course, as per Lee Jenkins’ profile in Sports Illustrated, he announced he’s “chasing the ghost” of Michael Jordan.

The beauty of Jordan’s career, though, is that near everything went off without a hitch. The three-peat, the 6-0 Finals record, the endless clips of game-winning plays, the storybook game-winning Shot’s that bookended a career littered with them. LeBron’s career, on the other hand, is the opposite: a question of whether extraordinary beauty can distract us from blemishes; if enough strings of unmatched dominance can eventually outweigh those occasional, mystifying lulls, most obvious against the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 Finals but present even during Cleveland’s first two games against the Golden State Warriors in these past Finals. He even hinted toward this flaw on the Open Run podcast, talking openly about how the photographic memory that allows him to pinpoint dimes can also result in paralysis by analysis in crucial moments. Minus a few… hiccups, LeBron has always been remarkably self-aware about his legacy. He sounded, more than at any time before, like a man who knows where he stands.

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So LeBron has to know he can’t touch Michael in the traditional sense. No matter how many more rings he wins, he can’t undo the past losses, the missed opportunities that his detractors will inevitably point to. He can’t undo the “4” in his 3-4 Finals record. He can only hope to hit .500, and hopefully ascend from there. He’ll have to do it his own way, and he has an opportunity few before him have ever had. LeBron’s durability, combined with advancements in sports science, already have him pegged as the healthiest star of all time. So his climb up the all-time stats ladder doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. Legions of young fans will click on Basketball-Reference for the one day and see LeBron’s name plastered on top. Perhaps more importantly, in a manner that’s more reminiscent of Shaq than it is of MJ, LeBron has the potential to mean something important to three generations of NBA fans. Immortality has never been so tangible.

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