It’s only been a week since LeBron James bid goodbye to the Cleveland Cavaliers and said hello to the Los Angeles Lakers. For the third time in his career, James created shockwaves around the league by moving from one city to another.
This time, he packed his bags and traveled from East to West on his way to one of the most storied franchises in the NBA.
Among the luminaries from the Lakers whose jerseys were recently hanged to the rafters is Kobe Bryant. Deemed the greatest Lakers player ever by Magic Johnson, Bryant gave the franchise two championships in 2009 and 2010 after pairing with Shaquille O’Neal for three others from 2000-2002. James was inspired by Bryant when the Akron native was still in high school. The two became rivals a few years later after the former Cavaliers superstar entered the league in 2003.
Welcome to the family @KingJames #lakers4life #striveforgreatness @JeanieBuss @MagicJohnson and RP well done!!! 🙌🏾
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) July 2, 2018
This time, he will be challenging Bryant’s legacy head-on. The Black Mamba owns five championship rings while the King has three. Can James surpass his former rival by adding two or three more rings in his four years in L.A.?
A Place in the Lakers Pantheon
The Lakers boast a number of great players in its franchise’s history but only retired 11 jerseys, two of which belong to Bryant. Each of these Hall of Famers played at least five seasons in the Lakers purple and gold before their jerseys were retired. Wilt Chamberlain played the least number of seasons with the Lakers before hanging up his No. 13 jersey but not before he delivered a championship to L.A. together with Jerry West and Gail Goodrich.
With such a short contract to play for the Lakers, James will have to work extra hard in the next few years to add to the banners in the Staples Center rafters to be considered for a place among their greatest stars.
Kobe’s Laker Legacy
From the very beginning since Bryant’s workout with the Lakers as a draft prospect in 1996, West (the team’s general manager for many years) always knew that he was getting a future superstar if he could find a way to acquire the lanky 6-foot-6 graduate from Lower Merion High School.
Since being drafted by the Charlotte Hornets and subsequently traded to the Lakers later, Bryant has surpassed all expectations laid on him by West and the rest of the basketball world. Bryant currently owns the team’s franchise records in scoring, field goals, 3-point field goals, free-throws, steals and more. Despite a brief period in which he wanted to play elsewhere, the recently-retired legend played his entire 20-year career as a Laker.
More importantly, Bryant’s two exhilarating championships after Shaquille O’Neal was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, made him one of the few players in franchise history to own five championship rings as a Laker. This means that one-fourth of Bryant’s career was defined by a championship and he did it all while playing for a single franchise.
The fact that Bryant won all five titles without switching teams and choosing the team (and teammates) that he wants to play for has tilted the discussion of who is greater between him and James in his favor in the minds of some media people and a couple of former basketball players.
LeBron’s Championship Window with the Lakers
LeBron James has the opportunity to win a fourth title (or more) while playing for a third franchise. If he accomplishes the feat, he will be just the third player in league annals to win championships with three different franchises. Robert Horry (Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, Lakers) and John Salley (Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, Lakers) are the other two.
It’s interesting to note that both players won one of their rings as a Laker and James has the opportunity to tie their mark in a Lakers jersey as well.
L.A. has a rich history of winning and James rightly positioned himself to succeed even more by choosing to play for Lakers, one of the league’s most decorated franchises with 16 titles under their roof. Only the Boston Celtics have won more with 17 championships.
With James in their roster for the next four years by virtue of his four-year, $153.3 million contract, both he and the Lakers have a small championship window that they need to maximize.
James will be 37 by the time his contract with them is over, and unless he is surrounded by other superstars, the chances that he will re-sign and battle it out to win a few more titles are very slim. More than likely, he may want to end his career with the Cavaliers by then. But that’s another story altogether.
Kobe Bryant’s five titles have hung heavily on James’ shoulders as the measuring stick in some people’s eyes as to why the former is a better player than the other. Though most of the media, such as ESPN’s writers and editors, rank James ahead of Bryant in terms of greatness, the Lakers shooting guard is considered the better player by Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest player of all time. Charles Barkley, another basketball great, believes Bryant is ahead of James as well based on the number of titles that each has won.
Whether it is justified or not to consider Kobe Bryant over LeBron James by counting the number of rings on their fingers, it does not matter. There’s no doubt that the 6-foot-8 forward is aware of this argument and he wants to turn it in his favor. In order to do that, he needs to at least tie Bryant’s five titles.
The Shadow of the Warriors
The biggest hurdle in James’ career has been the Golden State Warriors and their All-Star-like lineup. Without Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and now Kevin Durant, the St. Vincent-St. Mary high school product would have had more rings on his fingers by now. Instead, he has been thwarted at almost every turn the past four years with the exception of the 2016 title in which his Cavaliers defied history by becoming the first team in the Finals to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the championship.
For James to win another title, he will have to contend with the Warriors again and again. Golden State made the task more difficult for him after they added another All-Star in their lineup in DeMarcus Cousins this offseason on a one-year contract.
James’ road to the championship was already difficult before, but it may be more daunting this season with the presence of Cousins though he will need some time to recover from an Achilles injury that he suffered this January.
There’s little chance that the Lakers right now will be able to compete with this much firepower. At this point, even with the additions of Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson and JaVale McGee, they are ill-equipped to take on the superpowers that reside in the West including the Houston Rockets, Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans.
But if there is any player who can carry a team further than what it is normally capable of, it’s James. The four-time MVP brought a team that was put together mostly at the February trade deadline to the Finals. Just when many thought that they wouldn’t even get past the Eastern Conference-leading Toronto Raptors in the semifinals, the Cavs swept them as if they were a first-round opponent.
Granted, that was in the East where there are fewer superstars, this Lakers team is more talented than the one James left in Cleveland, making it more interesting what he can do with this roster.
Can LeBron Challenge Kobe’s Championships?
The Lakers present James with a better opportunity to win a title sooner than the Cavs could which is why probably the biggest reason he chose to go to Hollywood than to stay in his adoptive hometown. But this current Lakers team is far from a finished product.
Depending on who else they acquire via free agency or a trade, things could get very interesting if they were to find a superstar or two to play in tandem with their prized summer acquisition before the season starts.
More than anything, it’s the Warriors who pose the biggest threat to James tying or surpassing Bryant’s five championships. Number 24 is already a legend in L.A. Number 23 hasn’t dribbled a basketball at Staples Center in a Laker uniform just yet and he hasn’t faced a team as formidable as the Warriors prior to the Finals before.
James is far from being in a position to bring these Lakers to the Finals and, therefore, win championships with them. Should Johnson surround him with an All-Star player or two, and if the rest of the young studs in the roster reach their potential during James’ four-year tenure, then there’s a chance that he could challenge Bryant’s number of rings.
But Bryant’s legacy as an all-time Laker great, debatably the greatest in franchise history, is secure. The most that James can do is add to his own legacy and cement his status as one of the greatest players of all time.
Whether that includes winning four, five or six championships by the end of his career is something that will only be known when the King vacates his throne and retires from the NBA for good.
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