Kieran Shannon: 2020 has reminded us of greatness of Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James

FALLING SHORT: ‘The Last Dance’ docu-series was not kind to LeBron James as the Lakers star was compared unfavourably to the great Michael Jordan. Picture: Kevin Cox/Getty Images

It already seems so long ago but you might remember that when the world went into lockdown back in March, one of its first sources of comfort was to turn to Michael Jordan to help it get through it all.

The Last Dance docu-series had been initially scheduled for a June airing, straight after the NBA finals, but such was the clamour for something to divert and entertain us, it was fast-tracked and premiered in April.

Leading the chorus for this earlier release was one LeBron James, and when his wish was granted, he was, by his own tweet, delighted. “April 19th can’t come fast enough. I CAN NOT WAIT!!”

James would have done so in the full knowledge that with the airing of The Last Dance would also bring with it for him a deluge of inevitable and unflattering comparisons, and not just from the haters. The homage to MJ prompted certain other initials to trend: GOAT. And with that, there were plenty willing to leave no room for ambiguity. Greatest Of All Time meant Greater Than LeBron. No Debate! It wasn’t enough just to praise MJ. James’s own claim to greatness had to be buried. And so when we were finally allowed out of our homes, you had folks from west Compton all the way to west Clare, who might not even have seen a live NBA game in their lives, concluding authoritatively that “LeBron wouldn’t be a patch on Jordan.”

Only four months on though from The Last Dance further immortalising Jordan’s last shot as a Bull — that crossover dribble and pull-up shot on Bryon Russell in Utah, with the follow-through frozen for perpetuity — James, probably unknown to some of our sages in Clare, is again showcasing and underlining his own historic greatness.

At the same age as Jordan was hitting that shot in Utah, a 35-year-old James is on the verge of becoming world champion again.

Tomorrow night, he will lead the Los Angeles Lakers into the NBA finals where they will come up against his old team, the Miami Heat.

Since he joined the Heat in the summer of 2010, there has been only one NBA finals which has not featured James — the 2019 edition, when injury curtailed James, and he and the Lakers missed out on the playoffs altogether.

At that point there were plenty of us who felt that James would never again feature in an NBA finals again.

Before injuries would devastate them, the Golden State Warriors looked set to continue their dominance of the western

conference much like James had dominated the east for a decade while the Lakers organisation seemed completely dysfunctional, still dining off glories from a bygone era. His move to LA La Land in the summer of 2018 seemed to be more to make movies and more dollars than to win more championships.

How foolish he has made us all look. Unlike Jordan in his last few years in Chicago, James hasn’t had to battle with a Jerry Krause. The Lakers’ GM Jeff Pelinka has sensibly given James such a say in who to play alongside him, at times it’s been as if James himself is Krause, a player doubling up as a GM.

A promising young cast, scheduled to peak around 2024, were shipped out in a trade for a generational talent in Anthony Davis, a statement that underlined that James was still wanted to win and he was in pure win now mode.

And while it wasn’t he who initially recommended Frank Vogel as team coach, James tellingly approved of it.

Intuitively he knew the last thing the Lakers needed was another Showtime appointment with links to the Lakers ‘family’ and its gloried past. Vogel may not have been a fashionable choice but he has been the right one, his no-frills, steady, and sensible leadership being just what was required for this veteran roster.

Only a couple of players have been as effective and brilliant at 35 years of age as James has been this year — including Jordan himself. But James didn’t have a two-year sabbatical — the nearest sabbatical he had was this year’s lockdown when he was watching The Last Dance like the rest of us. And he didn’t play college. Nobody has been this excellent 17 years into their NBA career as James has been, with him leading the league in assists and only on Saturday night scoring 38 points, pulling down 16 rebounds and registering 12 assists in their Game Five win over the Denver Nuggets to win another conference title.

After James won a remarkable championship with his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, he spoke about all he had left to do was “chase a ghost in Chicago”; while he might never catch Jordan, the spectre of him inspired him more than it haunted him to push on for further greatness.

And that is not the only ghost inspiring him this year. One of the most poignant moments in this surreal year of sport is that of James on the runway of LAX, bawling, having just touched down from a return flight from Philadelphia upon hearing the news that Kobe Bryant, the man who he had just overtaken as third leading NBA scorer in history the previous night, had died in a helicopter crash while James himself had been in the air.

The last time the Lakers won a championship, back in 2010, Bryant was in his prime, the one player on the planet with claim to be better than James at the time. Like James, he was inspired by Jordan, and also overshadowed by him.

A few months before his death, he would tweet an illustration of Jordan in his Bulls gear paternally throwing an arm around both himself and James, accompanied by Bryant’s words: “Stop comparing and appreciate greatness!’”

The truth is, that is wishful thinking. The comparisons are inevitable and ultimately Jordan will prevail in them all. But that shouldn’t detract from Bryant’s or James’s greatness. That they even made it a debate at all — that we would see someone with a killer mentality and aerial game approximating Jordan’s again in Bryant, that just as basketball produced the greatest athlete of the last 20 years of the 20th century, it has produced in James, along with Lionel Messi, the greatest athlete in world team sport of the 21st century — is remarkable.

Bryant also once said: “If you do it right, your game will live on in others. You’ll be imitated and emulated by [others]. Leave the game better than you found it.”

That they all have done.

Rather than be daunted by the ghost of Chicago and that of LA, he has been inspired and driven by them, especially the latter to bring a championship back to the Lakers the year it lost its greatest son.

And Bryant was right. Appreciate greatness when you can. Don’t take James for granted. Because wherever you stand on him versus Jordan, understand this. You’ll probably never again see anyone better than James either.

As tragic and surreal as 2020 has been, it has one upside: It might be the year where we all fully grasped — through a combination of death, an archive, and another championship — the true greatness of the trinity of Bryant, Jordan, and James.