LeBron James: Winning 3 ESPY's Solidifies Historic Run for Heat Star
The ESPY’s certainly have their flaws, but when you win three separate awards, it’s pretty clear the season you just had was rather spectacular.
LeBron James walked home with every award an NBA player could win on Wednesday night. He took home the ESPY for Athlete of the Year, Championship Performance of the Year and NBA Player of the Year.
You could also give him a healthy dose of the credit for the Miami Heat winning Team of the Year.
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It’s clear the past 12 months have been the year of LeBron—no other athlete comes close.
He was the undisputed MVP of the league after averaging 27.1 points, 7.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists while shooting a blistering 53 percent from the floor in the regular season. He was a freight train with no brakes—regardless of who stood in his way.
He did all of this while getting booed relentlessly the entire season. The vast majority of fans wanted to see him fail.
For his regular season accomplishments alone, he deserved the ESPY for NBA Player of the Year
Then came the postseason.
After years of hearing yapping heads like ESPN’s Skip Bayless harp on his inability to win a title and play his best in the clutch, James proved everybody wrong with a postseason stat line that placed him alongside the all-time greats: 30.3 PPG, 9.7 RPG, 5.6 apg, 1.9 SPG and 50 percent shooting.
Wow.
His triple-double in the closeout Game 5 of the finals over the Oklahoma City Thunder was as “clutch” as it gets without nailing a buzzer-beater. Nobody had a bigger weight on their shoulders entering April, and LeBron shut up each and every one of his critics. And he did it with two hobbled co-stars as both Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were dealing with various ailments through the postseason.
Remember his 45-point 15-rebound and 5-assist performance to stave off elimination in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals over the Boston Celtics? While it still may be fresh on our minds, I’d argue it was one of the 10 greatest postseason performances of all time.
Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal…this is the company LeBron is now in when it comes to all-time great postseason efforts.
From the scapegoat for multiple failed playoff runs to the king of the sports world, it’s been quite a year for LeBron James.
Nobody else comes even close.
