The Best Day of LeBron James' Life

With four MVPs and two championships, LeBron James has plenty of great days to choose from. Over the last two years, he's lived like, well, a king, winning two regular-season MVPs, an Olympic gold medal and two Finals/Finals MVP combos. 

Despite all that, one day still stands out above all the rest as the best one of LeBron's life: June 21, 2012. 

Going into the day, he was viewed as a man who succumbed to pressure and couldn't win the big game. But he emerged from it as an NBA champion and an all-time great. 

Here's how everything unfolded. 

Pregame

Given the fact that he was constantly plagued by naysayers and doubters throughout the months leading up to this crucial moment, one has to imagine that LeBron was feeling a little bit nervous going into Game 5.

While this wasn't an elimination match for him and he would have plenty more opportunities to close out Kevin Durant's squad, it was still his first opportunity to actually emerge as a champion. 

Fear can be a terrifying psychological entity. It shapes decisions, but perhaps even more importantly, it affects what's thought about leading up to those decisions. 

We human beings can't just turn off our amygdalae and allow fear to leave the equation, but we can do our best to suppress the emotion. That's exactly what LeBron did throughout the 2012 postseason, and it's presumably what happened right before Game 5. 

The method?

Reading. 

At 1:19 in the above video you can find the most relevant quote from James: "You know, you spend so much time with preparation for the game. Sometimes you just kinda need to get away from it for a little bit. So you don't get overblocked."

He relayed another quote to Kurt Helin of NBC Sports: 

"

It just slows my mind down. It just gives me another outlet. Throughout the playoffs all you think about is basketball. All you want to do is play basketball. But at the same time it can become a lot. It can come to a point where it’s overloading the mind and you think about it too much…

The reading gave me an opportunity to—just for those couple hours of the day, or those 20, 25 minutes before the game—just gives me an opportunity to read and think about something else, and get a sense of what else is going on besides the game of basketball. It’s made me comfortable.

"

There was some speculation that this love for literature was simply an act, a publicity stunt to take some of the focus away from his on-court performance. That's a theory that ESPN's Michael Wilbon refused to buy into: 

"

Turns out there's nothing whatsoever feigned about LeBron's one-man book club. Nobody's paying him to read (although it's OK for folks to be paid to lose weight on TV). He's not doing product-placement favors for any author buddies. Simply, LeBron James decided before the playoffs he would be best served if he stopped watching hour after hour of sports on television, and got off the Internet, and stopped tweeting, and stopped reading Twitter. (We should all have such an intervention.) If he could shut off all the noise, LeBron wouldn't have to hear why he and his Miami teammates are such losers and play so poorly in the fourth quarter, and why if the Heat didn't win this year the team should be blown up.

"

Apparently it worked, because LeBron was all business when he strode onto the court for the final game of the 2012 postseason. 

The Game

As Jay-Z and Kanye West's "N****s in Paris" blared in the AmericanAirlines Arena, LeBron slowly strode through the gauntlet of his teammates without showing any emotion. 

He was the first player announced, which was only fitting since he was about to put on one of the most memorable shows in recent basketball history. 

Between a dominant LeBron and an unconscious Mike Miller (who admitted during a halftime interview that he was only open because the Thunder had to double his superstar teammate), the Heat stormed out to a 10-point lead at the close of the second quarter.

They'd finish with a 121-106 victory that was really never in too much doubt. 

Of course, the hero was LeBron, just as it had been throughout the vast majority of the series. Miami's bevy of three-point marksmen certainly helped, as did the other stars, but this was still about LeBron. 

He finished Game 5 with a triple-double: 26 points (on 19 shots), 11 rebounds, 13 assists, a steal and two blocks. No play was as glamorous as his block of Tiago Splitter a year later, but you can still see the highlights out to the side. 

From the first points of the game, a slam in transition as Thabo Sefolosha struggled to keep up, until he sat down for the final time during the 2013 postseason, LeBron completely controlled the action. He left no doubt that he was the dominant player on the court, and a championship was the well-deserved result. 

"It's About Damn Time"

While LeBron struggled to keep his guard up before the game began, he let loose as soon as the outcome of the game was no longer in doubt. 

If I had to guess, it was this release that was the most satisfying moment of all. That feeling that he had finally accomplished his No. 1 goal and no longer had to worry about what anyone thought. He was lost in his own world, at least until he was joined by his best friend, Dwyane Wade. 

Could that moment have been more pure? It was just a real, unadulterated celebration between two friends and teammates. 

But even that doesn't truly sum up LeBron getting the proverbial monkey off his back. That has to be left to his memorable quote during the postgame interview. 

"It's about damn time." 

Nothing sums up LeBron's reaction better, especially because he had to say it twice, almost as if to convince himself he believed he felt this way, before giving a sheepish grin. He knew that he'd just created a cultural meme, but man was he feeling like he was on top of the world. 

The rest of the interview is fantastic as well, as LeBron admits that he actually was hurt by the accusations that he was a selfish player. With a trophy in his hand, the shell could finally come off, and he could appear vulnerable to the world. 

When you're invulnerable, why not?

Postgame Presser

Once the hoopla had died down and LeBron had retreated from center court after having time to hold up both the Finals MVP and Larry O'Brien trophies, it was the right moment for self reflection. 

A little part of me suspects that this is what made June 21, 2012 such a special day for the world's greatest basketball player. Reflection—especially when done honestly and at the proper time—can be one of the most cathartic processes out there, and it seemed to be for the MVP. 

While in school, I studied psychology (among other things), and I can't help but think about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs here.

The basic principle is that there are layered sets of needs that every person must fulfill before they can reach the highest level of satisfaction. As Maslow once explained, self-actualization is the second-highest of these layers, defined as the hard-to-reach point at which a person has put aside the lesser needs and achieved their highest level of potential. 

When he won his first championship, LeBron reached that highest level in his mind, and it was displayed for everyone to see—and hear—when he started reflecting in that postgame presser.

He never would have been able to admit (1:55) that the best thing to happen to him was losing in the 2011 Finals otherwise. 

Quotes like the one relayed by ESPN's Brian Windhorst would never have existed: 

"

I was very immature.

I played to prove people wrong instead of just playing my game, instead of just going out and having fun and playing a game that I grew up loving and why I fell in love with the game. One thing that I learned, and someone taught me this, the greatest teacher you can have in life is experience. I've experienced some things in my long but short career, and I'm able to make it better of myself throughout these playoffs and throughout this whole year, and that's on and off the court.

"

And...

"

It was a journey. Everything that went along with me being a high school prodigy when I was 16 and on the cover of Sports Illustrated to being drafted and having to be the face of a franchise and everything that came with it. I had to deal with it and I had to learn through it. No one had gone through that journey and I had to learn on my own. I can finally say that I'm a champion.

"

How good must it feel to be so on top of the world that you can look back and admit your faults, now viewing them as a positive?

It's a feeling that very few people can truly experience, but it's a universally satisfying emotion. 

Unbridled Celebration

How have your best days ended? 

Probably with a whole lot of fun, so much fun that all your worries are just wiped away. LeBron didn't even have any worries—although the "I ain't got no worries" quote wasn't said until after the 2013 title—so just imagine how good he must have felt. 

The celebration began in the locker room, with LeBron clutching both of his trophies. 

Chris Bosh definitely steals the show with his all-time-great champagne celebration, but it's not like the combo forward wasn't taking part in the festivities either. He takes a minute to become engaged, but then he gets down on his knees for a little champagne-to-head action. 

The party wouldn't stop there, though.

It went on all night, and I'm sure the parts in between were filled with joyous celebration as well, even if we don't have footage.

Below is a video of the party at Club LIV, but be warned that language warnings need to apply here. 

That party looks like way too much fun, and it's a perfect ending to the best day of LeBron's life. Getting to go absolutely crazy, using fog machines, rapping along to 2 Chainz' "Riot" and wearing a shirt with your own face on the front seems like a pretty sweet way to spend a night. 

All the while, the media was clicking and clacking away at their respective keyboards, churning out narratives about LeBron's legacy. For example, there's this quote from ESPN's John Hollinger (subscription required):

"

Want more? James has become one of only three players in the post-merger era (Jordan and Shaq are the others) with multiple seasons of PER greater than 30 (he has three), and this year joined those two as the only ones with multiple seasons of playoff PER greater than 30 (minimum 10 games). 

In other words, if you ended his career today, at the age of 27, James already would be in select company. Only 20 players have at least one MVP and one championship; only 16 have done it with multiples of one or the other. And virtually none of them did it while dominating to the extent James did. If LeBron retired tomorrow, he'll have had a top-10 all-time career.

"

How's that for one heck of a day? 

LeBron made the transition from reading peacefully in the locker room to rapping away—the opposite of peaceful, I must say—in a Miami club, going to sleep with plenty of positive articles written about him and the two most important trophies of his career on the mantle. 

It's no wonder that he had the following to say about the 24-hour time period, as reported by The Washington Post: "This right here is the happiest day of my life. This is a dream come true."

Even if you didn't believe me, you have to believe the King.