As big a star as LeBron, LeBron has faced vast criticism throughout his career as is the case with many sporting geniuses. James has been criticized for many things such as his selfishness, immaturity, arrogance, or being a complainer (Herbert, 2015). However, the most popular and recurrent criticism against LeBron is that he has repeatedly failed to rise to the occasion during numerous defining moments of his career, which includes losing in the NBA Finals six times out of his nine attempts (NBA Staff, 2019). It is argued that this makes him far more inferior to Michael Jordan who had a perfect record of 100%, i.e. six championships in six Finals.

Despite being a big LeBron fan, I too have often felt that LeBron is an underachiever at least to some degree, and 3 championships often look quite bleak against his name and certainly do not do justice to all the superhuman basketball skills he posesses. The NBA community has often been quite divided on the issue of just how much credit should LeBron be given for his accomplishments (Schwartz, 2017). But that is not what this article is going to focus on. I am not going to touch on the LeBron vs. Jordan or Kobe debate in terms of skills or accomplishments at all. I will, however, bring forth certain areas where LeBron has clearly transcended above his contemporaries and provide evidence for it.

Lebron James has been considered by many to be the best player in the world for the better parts of the last ten years and there is more than enough evidence to validate that claim including 3 NBA championships, 9 Finals appearances, numerous individual awards, and two Olympic gold medals. James once stated in interview few years ago that at this point in his career, he is now essentially chasing the records of Michael Jordan (the ghost in Chicago) as he now possibly feels he has surpassed all of his contemporary peers by a long margin (Jenkins, 2016).