LeBron is the goat….but he did change the way the NBA has been covered and I don’t think it’s been in a good way. Very early on in his career the NBA became about him an his pursuit of Jordan, specifically his rings count.
Everything became championship or bust, and not just for LeBron. LeBron has obviously had the most impossible standards set on him but so does everyone else. There is one winner and if you’re not the team winning the championship you are clowned on. Everything else that was accomplished is forgotten at best and might even be used against you. If a player wins the MVP or a team has a great season but they fail to win the title that is just seen as extra fuel to clown on them.
The league is all about the championship, but more specifically how that championship relates to legacy. Everything is about the bigger picture. The NBA is not a league that sells itself on the sport and competition being played on any given night. It is all about what this game means in a greater context.
As a result, the NBA regular season is basically just one long preseason that teams and players hardly care about. Without a competitive regular season there’s no opportunity for more interesting narratives to develop. It’s just championship or bust, and without a good buildup it often ends in an anticlimactic finish to the season.
I just can’t imagine growing up and watching basketball when I was growing up with the new narrative style. Guys like AI, McGrady, Carter, KG (on the the TWolves) etc would just repeatedly clowned on or made irrelevant because they created their legacy during the regular season by putting on a show in a day to day basis.