Does Lebron James deserve the hatred he is getting

Does LeBron James deserve all the hatred he is getting?

LeBron James love him or hate him the man has skills. Is he better than Michael Jordan however is yet to be known, the stats can sort themselves out for that one.

LeBron James is for some reason hated by half of the world’s population and is loved by the other half, the majority of this hatred has only recently occurred when the former Cleveland Cavaliers star declared his interest in moving and taking his talents to the Miami Heat, this was in order to play alongside fellow Olympians Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.

When arriving in Miami LeBron bought the hatred upon himself with a welcome party where he stated that they would win “not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six and you know where this is going” championships. So from that point of view yes some of the hatred is deserved.

But when you take in the simplicity of all of this and come round to the fact that at this present time he is the greatest player currently in the NBA, I’m not saying greatest ever, but currently the greatest. The hatred is not deserved.

The stats that LeBron has averaged over the current season are jaw dropping the man averaged 37.5 minutes per game, he shot 53.1% from the field, he backed that up by shooting 36.2% from behind the three point line and shooting 77.1% from the free throw line. To add to his amazing shooting percentages he also average 7.9 rebounds per game with 1.5 of them being offensive and 6.4 being defensive, he averaged 6.2 assists per game not bad considering he averaged 27.1 points per game and was the 3^rd leading scorer behind Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant. All this whilst also guarding a bigger man and only giving up 1.5 fouls per game and not fouling out during the regular season.

LeBron James won the NBA’s most valuable player award for the 3^rd time this year out doing Oklahoma City’s young gun and scoring champion Kevin Durant. The two have now come face to face in the NBA finals to try and be crowned World Champions.

How can anybody say that the hatred towards LeBron is deserved? People say that LeBron James isn’t clutch and that they wouldn’t choose to give him the ball when the game is on the line, I say to these people you guys are crazy. The table 1.0 below shows the number of clutch shots in the last 5 minutes of games to be taken and made by players since 2006. Clearly this table shows that the person with the best percentage and the guy you should want taking the clutch shots is in fact the same guy that so many hate because he is apparently not “clutch enough”, and that man is LeBron James.

Table 1.0 (Clutch shots since 2006)

Player	FG	FGA	FG%	3PM	3PA	3P%	Ast'd	%Ast'd	Best	Worst
LeBron	333	714	0.466	74	231	0.320	79	0.237	55%	42%
Roy	166	371	0.447	24	71	0.338	26	0.157	48%	36%
Vince	185	420	0.440	42	117	0.359	72	0.389	50%	38%
CP3	187	430	0.435	23	73	0.315	22	0.118	50%	37%
Dirk	235	541	0.434	34	107	0.318	107	0.455	48%	40%
Melo	193	447	0.432	23	72	0.319	84	0.435	52%	42%
Rose	168	401	0.419	4	31	0.129	23	0.137	44%	40%
Kobe	317	769	0.412	58	185	0.314	69	0.218	46%	39%
Wade	205	507	0.404	27	101	0.267	34	0.166	47%	32%
Iggy	158	394	0.401	24	112	0.214	28	0.177	48%	31%
Durant	191	479	0.399	40	123	0.325	103	0.539	47%	35%
Pierce	167	430	0.388	32	97	0.330	60	0.359	44%	21%
JJ	174	449	0.388	40	114	0.351	47	0.270	46%	32%
R.Allen	151	391	0.386	78	215	0.363	105	0.695	44%	34%
Russ	150	403	0.372	13	56	0.232	23	0.153	42%	30%
Avg.	199	476	0.415	36	114	0.300	59	0.300	47%	35%

To add to my statement that LeBron is in fact a big time player let’s take a look at a further three tables that compare LeBron’s shooting in Playoffs to Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade.

Final 24 Sec (Playoffs since 2000)

Player	FG	FGA	FG%	3PM	3PA	3P%	Ast'd	Ast'd
Kobe	6	21	0.286	1	8	0.125	1	0.167
LeBron	5	12	0.417	1	3	0.333	1	0.200
Wade	2	5	0.400	0	2	0.000	0	0.000

Final Minute (Playoffs since 2000)

Player	FG	FGA	FG%	3PM	3PA	3P%	Ast'd	Ast'd
Kobe	10	31	0.323	2	10	0.200	2	0.200
LeBron	10	20	0.500	1	3	0.333	1	0.100
Wade	3	10	0.300	1	5	0.200	1	0.333

"Clutch" (Playoffs since 2000)

Player	FG	FGA	FG%	3PM	3PA	3P%	Ast'd	Ast'd
Kobe	81	203	0.399	11	41	0.268	12	0.148
LeBron	70	154	0.455	17	48	0.354	10	0.143
Wade	39	102	0.382	4	15	0.267	5	0.128

These tables show me that in every aspect of being a big time player in the NBA playoff that I would prefer to have LeBron James taking the clutch shots and trying to win me the match than having either Kobe Bryant or Dwayne Wade taking them.

LeBron being ringless, what does that have to do with him not being good enough? I’ll tell you, it has absolutely nothing to do with him not being able to perform it has to do with the players he has around him being substandard or that they came up against a better team, notice I said team not player because a team wins rings not an individual. Lebron’s teams in Cleveland were average to say the least and he still got them to the finals of the Eastern Conference.

I believe that he does not deserve all the hate he is getting and that the current Miami team he is with will either win the playoffs this year or next year but when they do they will then win a few in successive years.

Reference List

http://www.libertyballers.com/2012/2/29/2832299/lebron-james-kobe-bryant-dwyane-wade-clutch-nba-playoffs-4th-quarter

http://www.nba.com/playerfile/lebron_james/