Top Sports Analyst: We Are Seeing the Decline of LeBron James
LeBron James is heading downhill, according to a top sports analyst.
ESPN’s Max Kellerman recently ruminated on “First Take” about whether the player remains the game’s best.
“LeBron was twice as good as anyone else when he was at his best. He may still be, a little bit better than everyone else. Maybe,” Kellerman said last week. “Usually he has the playoffs to prove that, I don’t think that’s going to be the case this year.”
Kellerman said he is not the source of his claim about the 36-year-old NBA star.
“Do you know who the highly placed source is … who has revealed to the world, and now it’s been a couple days since he revealed it, that LeBron James is in decline?” Kellerman asked in a clip from “First Take” posted on Twitter.
He then answered his question.
.@maxkellerman believes we are seeing the decline of LeBron James.
“He’s still the best player in the world? Are we still sure about that?” pic.twitter.com/gE8BN428q8
— First Take (@FirstTake) May 5, 2021
“LeBron James. And for some reason, am I the only person who notices who’s talking about this? A couple days ago, LeBron said, ‘I doubt that I’ll be 100 — I knew there was a chance I wasn’t going to be 100 percent this season. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever be 100 percent again in my career.’”
“Make no mistake about it,” Kellerman said.
“LeBron James every year is in the [NBA] Finals and many years has won the championship because when the dust settles when the smoke clears, it’s clear he’s still the best player in the world.
“Are we still sure about that? Because he’s going to have to be the best player in the world to get out of the Western Conference,” he said.
Jay Williams, a former NBA player and current ESPN analyst, said the comment from James was not how another NBA great would have reacted to coming back from an injury.
“I think that LeBron James is the greatest player of all time. I’ve said it, I still stand by it but hearing LeBron talk about this the other day … as a guy who played for the [Chicago] Bulls, who’s watched Michael Jordan for a long time, I’ve never heard MJ say something like that,” Williams said, according to Fox News.
“MJ just wouldn’t say anything at all,” he said.
James had said last week that he may never fully recover from a leg injury.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get back to 100 percent. It’s impossible,” James said.
“I don’t think I will ever get back to 100 percent in my career.”
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