In the end, he didn’t have enough. Not enough time, as the clock ran down on the third quarter and the Warriors, within reach at half-time, cruised over the horizon and into history as the NBA’s next great team. Not enough energy, as the effects of a brutal postseason, in which his ice-packed knees became authentic social media stars in their own right, at last began to tell. And not enough support, as the Cavaliers’ cavalry failed to find that extra something to help him take the series to a fifth game.

Afterward came the explanation, or the excuse, depending on how you see things: enraged at the reversed foul call and JR Smith brain fade that snatched victory from the Cavaliers’ grasp on the road in Game 1, LeBron had smashed his right hand into a locker room blackboard and “pretty much” played the final three games of the finals with it broken. These violent delights met violent ends. To his critics – and there are many of them, mostly gathered in the small slice of humanity known as “former NBA All-Stars” – the injury announcement was sour grapes, an attempt to color the Warriors’ achievement, a showy bid to make the story about him rather than them.

To the rest of us, it was a reminder of the man’s competitive spirit, and a monument to the frustration of being historically great in a historically average team. And so what if there was a bit of selfishness involved in the post-match “reveal” of the broken hand? Preening, wounded pride, the spectacle of the great hero laid low: these have always been key parts of the LeBron James Experience. With all his talent and all the hype that has followed him for the past two decades, the great marvel of LeBron’s career is that he’s not more of a dick. We shouldn’t have to reward people for meeting basic standards of human decency, but when you compare him to other elite athletes in his bracket of greatness – Floyd Mayweather, Cristiano Ronaldo – LeBron’s record of pique and poutiness seems vanishingly slight.

Through all this, what was most remarkable was the shocking degree to which the man still cares, despite his wealth, despite his rich cabinet of accomplishments, despite the grind of all those thousands of minutes on the court. Fifteen years after he leapt straight from high school into a blizzard of comparisons with the NBA’s all-time greats, LeBron’s investment in the sport and in the teams he represents remains supreme. If loss has defined LeBron’s career more than victory – and it almost certainly has, since he’s now three for nine in finals appearances – there’s a strong argument to be made that this finals series was his most beautiful defeat. On their own, his season stats are astonishing: the sheer amount of time logged on the job (all 82 regular season games, 42 minutes and 34 points per game in the postseason), the steady tumble of records that have fallen along the way (the most 30-point games in playoff history, the most triple doubles ever in the finals), his ecstatic, agonizing, operatic 51-point Game 1 against the Warriors. In the final three games of the finals alone, he shot 49% from the field for an average 28.3 points, 8.7 rebounds and 10.7 assists per game – all while playing with a broken shooting hand, which is frankly ridiculous. Along the way there were all those moments that speak to an ability that stats alone can’t capture: the individual plays, the off-the-backboard self-assisting dunks, those sparks of maximal do-it-all genius that make LeBron the greatest where others are simply great.

But it was the way he dragged a willing but limited Cavaliers support cast through two seven-game playoff series and all the way to the finals that will define this postseason as LeBron’s most glorious losing cause. That support cast has been mocked as a clueless band of brickers and dumb-dumbs in it more for photo ops on the ’gram than the chance of winning a ring. This is, of course, a caricature – Kevin Love is a former All-Star, and there’s a smattering of good shooting talent on the team – but like all caricatures it contains an element of truth. Unable to call on the creative support formerly provided by his foil Kyrie Irving, LeBron had to do it all for the Cavs this season, at both ends of the court, in offense and defense: a crushing workload from which he never really hid and which he eventually made into something close to art. The critics have charged him with not lifting up his teammates, but that seems baseless when you recall all he did in the playoffs to find the man, to bring others in, to share the scoring burden. If the Cavaliers failed, it is because the Warriors simply had too many options and too many answers when Cleveland really only had one question: LeBron.

As he sledgehammered up and down the court through these finals, looking for support that never really came, I found myself wondering: what must it feel like to be LeBron? To live in that body – a monster truck that drives like a Lamborghini – and have that ability, to deal with the expectations of a city and a sport and a world challenging you to prove your greatness – your status as the most superb, the most powerful, the man who can do everything – at every turn? What must it feel like to be so plainly better than everyone else? It must be incredibly lonely: the loneliness of royalty. No series has better captured the solitude of his greatness – racking up 51 points in a game while JR Smith drives away from the bucket with a chance to win in the final seconds of regulation time – than this one. If LeBron has seemed pissed off with his teammates at times, it’s not hard to understand why. But these displays of peevishness are also part of what makes him so compelling to watch. The man who delivers such freakish feats of on-court athleticism cannot exist without that other man, the other LeBron: the one who maintains unfathomably high standards, both for himself and the world around him, with an almost indignant righteousness. This season has given us the best of both LeBrons.

Where the Warriors embody the worst of American sport’s earnest, on-message pieties, there has always been something delightfully unpredictable and off-kilter about LeBron. The Warriors are America’s good boys; LeBron, as Cavs coach Tyronn Lue recalled on Friday night, is a “bad boy.” It’s for this badness – never fully realized on the court but always there as a suggestion, a possibility, a flirtation – as much as his greatness that LeBron remains such a magnetic presence on the court. Last night the Warriors celebrated their third ring in four years by eating popcorn, player after player parading before the cameras with their mouth full a display of emotion every bit as wild and transgressive as keeping a library book one day past its due date. Last year LeBron marked his finals defeat by shaving his head, going to the gym, and performing a shirtless Tee Grizzley cover straight to camera. As much as for moments of brilliance on the court, this year we will remember his season for the punch through the blackboard, the thousand-yard stare on the bench before overtime in Game 1, and the screw-you diffidence of the “u bum” tweet lobbed at Donald Trump: bad boy moments it’s impossible not to love. Even when he’s bad, LeBron is so very, very good.

The offseason’s great intrigue – where will LeBron go next? – began well before these finals ended, and will only get muggier and more tiring as the summer drags on. For now, be content to savor the spectacle of a player who, 15 years after he had greatness thrust upon him, continues to thrust it right back at us with every spin, every drive, every pout, every improbable pass and blackboard punch and thunderous dunk.