LeBron James: Can Pure Motivation Drive the Chosen One to the 2012 NBA Title?

The degree of mockery that LeBron James has been subjected to of late is unfathomable, but it isn't completely undeserved.

Earlier this year during the 2011 NBA playoffs, LeBron, or as he likes to be called, "King James," was unable to produce in the fourth quarter. In late stages of tight matches, when legends are separated from greats, the Miami Heat forward proved to be completely ineffective.

This lack of success evoked many, many jokes about James not being able to play in the fourth quarter.

Here are some from a site with a whole collection of them:

"LeBron James was just traded to the Florida Panthers. He should be wildly successful, since in the NHL, there are only 3 periods."

"Tomorrow is LeBron James day, everyone gets to leave work 12 minutes early."

And of course, the most obvious and popular one:

"I saw LeBron before the game and I asked for $1. He gave me 75 cents. I said where’s the rest? He replied I don’t have a 4th quarter."

These are not the only jokes going around about him not being able to play in the clutch. If you look on the internet, there will be many, many more.

This criticism has not only come from fans who simply enjoy jeering at him but also from the media (though in a very different way). Papers, magazines and reports have been very disapproving of the superstar, who is often compared to Michael Jordan, and MJ is widely considered the greatest player who ever lived.

Many fans, however, ridicule the comparison between Jordan and James for two reasons.

First of all, James has never won a ring. In one year he did lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, but they ended up getting swept by the Spurs. Jordan, however, won six titles by way of two three-peats.

Of course, it is argued that Jordan had Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, Toni Kukoc and others to help him, while James really didn't have that much support when sporting a Cavs jersey.

The second reason is for what I already mentioned: the fact that James is said to have no fourth quarter. While Jordan got better and better as the game progressed into its latter stages, LBJ did the opposite, giving his haters more to hate about him.

Here is part of a report from ESPN: 

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"James has scored just 11 points in the fourth quarter in the Finals, which comes to an average of 2.2 points per game in that quarter, down from his average of 7.6 points in the previous three rounds this season. That means he's contributing less than a third of the scoring that he normally did heading into the series against Dallas."

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According to this snippet, James not only performs worse in the fourth quarter, but he performs worse in the fourth quarter of the NBA Finals, which is another time you must prove what you're worth. 

We've seen so many stars get stronger, more accurate and more confident advancing into late parts of games and even seasons: Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Reggie Miller, Jerry West, Larry Bird and, of course, Jordan.

What many people believe is that James should not be mentioned with those names because his performances in the clutch don't even come close to comparing with those guys.

In the past, there have been several cases where a player who gets criticized for one thing or another gets more motivated to be successful. In fact, this isn't something that happens only in basketball or only in sports, for that matter.

With all this mockery and criticism directed his way, the question is this: Can James actually feed off of all this, use it to his advantage and lead the Heat to the NBA Championship?

Out of the billions and trillions of things that could actually happen next season, here are the four most likely outcomes of this whole scenario.

First, his ego could get in the way. James' ego is no secret. Everyone knows he has a huge head and thinks extremely highly of himself. He made that public when he dissed almost everyone else in the world by saying this:

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"Because at the end of the day, all the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. And I am going to continue to live the way that I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do, with me and my family and I can be happy with that. They can get a few days, or a few months, whatever the case may be, being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat, not accomplishing their goal, but they got to get back to the real world at some point."

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Because of all the bad talk, he could be motivated to do better. However, the argument is that he is so full of himself (which is proved above) that he will just disregard everything that is going on around him without trying to prove his critics wrong because he already believes that they are worse than him.

That is the first possible outcome.

Of course, many players might need motivation that comes by way of negativity and the need to prove critics wrong. However, the fact is that James is an amazing player, arguably the best in the NBA.

What if he and his teammates are just so good next year that they won't even need any other type of motivation? What if King James just takes the league by storm next year and wins the Larry O'Brien trophy by sheer talent?

That is the second possibility.

The third possible outcome is the least likely.

Maybe James will actually realize he needs to put his head down, work like a dog and use his exceptional talent to get a ring.

True, LBJ hasn't been showing signs of coming back down to earth, but if he tries to understand the criticism he's getting, he will try to improve.

The fourth and final possible outcome involves more his teammates than James himself. If the Heat decide to sign a point guard or a center, the two positions in which they lack quality, that could greatly help them. Also, if Chris Bosh or Dwayne Wade perform even better than they have been doing, then Miami could win a title.

It's probably going to be one of those four possibilities, and the third one, though unlikely, would be the best for James, the Heat and the NBA.

It's great for us, the lesser beings who can't perform what these supernatural athletes do, to predict this and predict that.

But what will James actually do?