The best basketball player leave Cleveland? It's impossible.
Who's the best player in the NBA, Kobe Bryant or LeBron James? Discuss in the comments section below.CLEVELAND - The world's best basketball player cannot possibly leave Cleveland.
Forget it. Not gonna happen.
This guaranteed, stone-cold lock doesn't come from Las Vegas bookmakers or runaway parochialism. It's simply geography.
Kobe Bryant plays in Los Angeles.
Exhibit A in why the regular season is a glorified intramural scrum might well be the team Bryant's Lakers meet in the NBA Finals starting Thursday, but Bryant's play is a close second.
(Did I say the Boston Celtics were old? Get me rewrite. I meant cold . . . cold-hearted winners.)
Bryant delivered a similar reminder that the game's greatest players are more than the sum of their skills. He did it for an entire series against the Suns, averaging 33.7 points, 8.3 assists, 7.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocked shots. In the final minutes of Game 6 on Saturday in Phoenix, he scored 11 of L.A.'s final 14 points and assisted on the only other basket.
Teammate Derek Fisher was moved to tell reporters that Bryant "literally can will the ball in the basket."
All I know is that figuratively speaking, torch passings -- in the case of the Celtics, obits, too -- should wait until the NBA goes dark after the league finals.
LeBron James is deservedly the league MVP. Bryant is even more deserving of his cemented reputation as a winner, a status James can only hope to reach when he grows up.
World's best player? That's a fluid title.
I'd take James for the next 82 games.
Give me Bryant for the next seven.
I'd trust Bryant to stop a momentum shift on the road from turning into an avalanche.
I'd take him with the shot clock so drained there's only time for a contested jump shot. In that situation, I'd take him over Michael Jordan, too.
None of this is a shot at James' game. He has the superior skill-set. He's younger, stronger, more explosive, a more generous teammate. But that last part is also a negative.
In maturity and leadership, James shows his age or personality or both. He's still only 25, and with one surprising appearance in the NBA Finals, he simply hasn't had every tangible and intangible ingredient tested as Bryant has. But it also could be true that he simply isn't nasty enough.
I don't mean he lacks the mettle to win games. I mean he likes being liked. He straps teammates on his back. But sometimes what they need is a kick in the pants.
After Sasha Vujacic's ridiculous flagrant foul made a much tougher night out of a Lakers rout, Bryant was asked how he felt about the trouble Vujacic caused the Lakers.
"He's still breathing," Bryant said, insinuating that if the Lakers had lost, that might not be the case.
Contrast that with James' "What, me worry?" attitude about the Cavaliers' lack of focus against Boston even with coach Mike Brown giving him the opening to rally his teammates after a lopsided loss.
Suns coach Alvin Gentry was speaking of Bryant -- and not James on Saturday -- when he said, "He's the best player in basketball, and I don't think it's even close."
C'mon, now. Let's not get carried away.
I'd take James first in a draft of every NBA player.
But let's just say there's a city that hasn't won anything since 1964. And it strikes a desperate deal with the devil to end the drought.
Even the devil would put Kobe Bryant in wine and gold to make sure he delivers on his end of the bargain.