Article:A Magical Dethroning of King James

On Sunday night, the magic was in the air. Everything fell into play for Orlando as King James succumb to the myths that his skills laid out before he entered the NBA as a thriving star. In the 89-99 Cleveland’s loss to the Orlando Magic, King James was made to give back his crown and was demoted to just another NBA prince.

Playing against the Magic, James has proved to be a great individual player. Luckily for me, he isn’t a great team player. The fact remains the same: great team players win championships and the others are just the greatest without a ring (second best).

In this basketball era where everyone bows down to the Cleveland god, the King James naysayers are proving to be accurate.

I have always said that James outside shot is spotty. His ability to make his teammates better is completely missing. His ability to make game winning shots is rare. All the stats from Tuesday’s night game against the Magic proved all of this.

James scored 41 points on 8 for 20 shooting, a mere 40% shooting for the league MVP. Above that, he only made one shot outside of the paint. That shot was so close to the free throw line that you could have mistaken it for a charity shot. If the Magic hadn’t fouled him so much, he wouldn’t have shot 24 times from the free-throw line and he wouldn’t have scored those 41 points.

And scoring 40 points doesn’t make anyone a champion if they aren’t winning ball games. If James want to make it to the NBA Finals, he better learn how to make his teammates better while putting up 40 points every night. He has a lot of work to do by the next game.

Thus far, James has scored 125 point or roughly 43% of the Cavaliers points this series. His teammates have only scored about 251 points. It turns out that they only worry about lauding King James instead of making a decent contribution to the team.

Oh well, I like to be right. King James will be the Charles Barkley of this era if he doesn’t learn how to make his teammates better.

Good luck to the Orlando Magic. They have more heart and skill than I thought they had. But, Howard did say, “We fight till the end.” If James was smart, he will adopt that very saying because his legacy will be determined by if he can win a championship. His legacy is slowly slipping away.

All hail to the former King James. He was be sadly missed. Wink, wink!