LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan: King James Can't Fly with His Airness

Lebron James might be the "king" but he is certainly not his "airness".

He is the youngest to ten thousand points. He helped lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to an NBA finals berth in the weakest conference in the history of sports. He’s ESPN’s puppet master, exaggerating his success and downplaying his failure. He is corporate sponsorships and the proud alum of the University of…nowhere. He is LeBron James.

I am so tired of hearing the comparison of “king” James to that of his "airness" Michael Jordan.

“But Ryan, he is the quickest to ten thousand points in NBA history AND he led his team to the NBA Finals a lot faster than MJ did,” the collective Le-HYPE fan nation yells back at me.

Of course he’s the quickest to ten thousand! For those of you who don’t remember, he forfeited any sort of college career to turn pro. Three years earlier than MJ. He got a head start, in a completely different type of league than that of when Jordan first came on the scene.

For people to say that LeBron is even on the same level as Jordan is a disgrace to the game. I could puke up meaningless stats and awards, but there’s only one stat that truly stood out to me.

In Jordan’s ROOKIE year he scored more points than all but one of LeBron’s seasons so far. Plus, the one year that LeBron did outscore Jordan, it was only by about 100 points.

Another intangible that LeBron just simply doesn’t have: toughness.

LeBron has yet to play in all 82 of his team’s games. With the exception of his injury plagued second season which limited MJ to only 18 games, Jordan played in all 82 of his team’s games in six of his first seven seasons. LeBron has a very long way to go before he can even hold a candle to the greatest.

Forget about the greatest for a minute, Le-HYPE isn’t even the best the league TODAY. That title belongs to Kobe Bryant, who in my opinion, is head and shoulders above LeBron right now. Come back to me when you have a ring (or three) LeBron.

Now all those facts aside, I’m not saying LeBron is TERRIBLE.

He is a very important part of the direction that the NBA is headed in. If he can get people interested in the game like Jordan did, I’m all for it.

However, for Lebron to lead the league out of the shadow of the NFL or MLB, he first needs to get out of Cleveland and into a major market.

I’m just not going to buy in to all the “King James” hype. No, instead I’m going to hope and pray for another Michael Jordan comeback in Chicago. Only this time behind the bench….