What a first round exit means for the legacy of LeBron James

LeBron James suffered arguably the biggest blemish on his career resume since his collapse in 2011 against the Dallas Mavericks.

James and the Lakers were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by the Phoenix Suns.

While the Lakers were the 7th seed, they were still favored to win the series and on paper were the much better team.

With James gaining ground in the G.O.A.T. conversation with each record he breaks and every year he continues to play, this is something that will be held against him.

However, it is important to keep an objective view on this. There will be plenty of people who give no blame to James for this collapse by the Lakers. However, there will also be plenty of others who will say this is why he can never be the greatest of all time.

Coming into this postseason, James had never lost a series in the first round. This is often an argument that would be used to defend James when the fact that he has lost in the Finals is brought up.

14-0 in the first round is a very impressive feat from James and speaks to his ability to carry teams of all talent levels. It shows how even when he is the underdog in certain first-round series, he is able to ascend past the odds and raise the ceilings of his teammates and the team as a whole.

However, with this blemish, that perfection will come to an end. With James and the Lakers being favored in the overall series along with every game of the series, it is not a good look that he could not pull off this series win.

This will be the end of the conversation for many. James once again fell short of expectations despite having a star-studded roster around him. Some will think that he was defeated by an inferior team led by a 24-year-old Devin Booker and a 36-year-old Chris Paul.

He also did not really step up his game for the playoffs this season. He averaged fewer points, rebounds, and more turnovers in the playoffs than in the regular season. This is very unlike James and will be held against him.

However, as previously mentioned, this is an objective look at the effect on LeBron James’ legacy and context is important.

This has been an awful year for the Lakers and LeBron James in terms of injuries. After winning the NBA title in the 2019-2020 season, they had the shortest offseason in American sports history. This led to star players on the team like Anthony Davis and LeBron James to miss substantial amount of time due to injuries.

James played fewer games this season than he ever has in his eighteen-year career. This led to there not being much time to gain on-court chemistry with players like Dennis Schroder, Andre Drummond, Montrezl Harrell, and Marc Gasol.

If he was able to spend the entire regular season on the floor with key role players like this, there is a good chance there would have been far fewer miscommunications that led to bad rotations on defense and bad passes that led to turnovers on offense.

Along with this, injuries greatly limited Anthony Davis in this series. He suffered a groin injury that kept him out of most of game four. He also missed all of game five due to this injury. These were two of the four games that the Lakers lost.

Even when he was in the game, he did not look like himself. He was far too comfortable settling with contested mid-range shots rather than taking the ball to the rim and dominating the paint against smaller defenders.

This first-round loss is a huge blemish on James’ playoff dominance and G.O.A.T. resume. It was viewed before this season that a team led by James would be a lock in the first round if not a lock to make the Finals.

Although the context around the series makes it look better for LeBron James, many will not look into or care about the context.

This is one of if not the biggest knock against James’ headlock on the league since his Finals performance against the Mavericks in 2011.