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Jeff Mao Crean Lutheran 11th Grade
As the NBA final comes to an end, people started to actually look at the matches and stats. Does 4-0 really mean Cavaliers didn’t put in as much effort?
There is one player that got most people’s attention, and that is LeBron James. He was put under the spotlight due to his outstanding performance.
LeBron James, the holder of four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, three NBA Finals MVP Awards, two Olympic gold medals, three All-Star Game MVP awards, an NBA scoring title, and is the all-time NBA playoffs scoring leader.
It’s reasonable to say that comparing the two teams is unfair. If we look at the players we can see there actually are more All-Star players in warriors than Cavaliers. In other words, Warriors have more players that are more experienced and more valuable.
If we look back to the teams back then, we don’t see any team that would get this many All-Star players like the Warriors do right now. So Cavaliers‘ defeat was understandable at some point.
But there is still some deficiency that we see on team Cavaliers-why is Lebron James carrying? What about other players?
Kevin love the five-time All-Star player, Larry Nance Jr the guy showed his mastery in dunks, and JR Smith the NBA Six Man of 2013-they are all fabulous players.
If we look at the stats, Lebron alone got ⅓ of the scores for Cavaliers. He’s got almost ¼ of the steals, rebounds and blocks. What’s more surprising is that he made almost a half of all the assists being made by Cavaliers.
If these ratios can’t show how significant Lebron’s performance is to the team, what can? No player has made this much contribution and production to his team like Lebron does.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the only other player that has had more than 30 percent of his team’s stats in the history. However, Lebron has far surpassed that percentage and made another achievement.
To this topic Lebron has expressed his opinion, “I just try to do whatever it takes to help us win, and I felt like I just wanted to do that again in this series.” James said of his seven-game stint of heroics.
People said Lebron deserves better, Lebron says, “just try to make plays offensively and defensively, continue to trust my guys and trust myself, and trust how much work I’ve put into my game. So it’s definitely good to be able to make plays and help yourself advance.”
Having faith and loyalty is what made Lebron respectable.
Even though the Cavaliers were defeated totally, there is still something we can learn from them. There is still something special that we can appreciate.
Lebron carried the Cavaliers, let’s hope all the Cavaliers can contribute a little bit more of their own ability. Basketball is a team game, everyone is necessary.
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Jeff Mao Crean Lutheran 11th Grade>