There is a very strong possibility that LeBron James will end his NBA career with four championships, and no more. For someone who's played in 23 seasons, is only four titles disappointing? Maybe, but let others argue that.
Another argument recently resurfaced, attached to James for many years since his time with the Miami Heat ended, and he moved on to win championships with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Lakers.
This particular argument, however, would be correct or incorrect based on how you define winning. Is it only winning in the NBA? In James's case, his “winning” did indeed start in Miami, but the fact that the time there made him a winner is one narrative that he recently refuted this week, while his Lakers are enjoying their best stretch of the season.
LeBron James was a winner before he got to the Heat
One of the Lakers' recent wins, which extended their win streak to eight games, came against James's former team, the Heat, in Miami last week. It was there, in South Beach, that James won his first and second of four NBA titles, having gone his first seven years in the league without one.
His time in Miami, which included one of the biggest "Big 3's" of the past two decades with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, included many highlights and disappointments. That said, James's four seasons with the Heat were the era of his career that vaulted him into the dreaded GOAT debate with Michael Jordan.
The thing is, though, since his days in Miami, James has not won nearly as much as many anticipated he would. Since 2013, the Heat's second title with James, the "King," has just two titles. That's a 12-season span with only two titles, so the argument can be made that James hasn't done much winning since the Heat.
However, what James has or hasn't done since Miami was the narrative recently brought up, or resurfaced. After the Lakers beat the Heat on Thursday, a reporter in front of James indicated that it was with the Heat that he became a winner. James immediately cut in to refute the reporter's remarks, pointing to his winning ways before coming to the NBA.
"Uh, nah, I became a champion here, but I will always be a winner," James said. "I mean, my first year ever playing sports I won a little league football championship, and a basketball championship and then my second year I repeated it. I won three state championships in high school, I won a national championship in AAU basketball.
"I come from a winning cloth, I come from winning basketball, so I've always been a winner," James continued. "But this is the place that helped me get over the hump. I give a lot of credit to Spo [Erik Spoelstra], and us holding each other accountable and our coaching staff, our players, every day we came in and busted our ass every single day upstairs in this arena, because we knew if we went hard in practices, then the games would be a lot of easier. But yeah, I've always been a winner."
Though James never won with the Cavaliers in his very early days, he carried many of those teams to the playoffs and once to the finals. It never resulted in a championship until he returned to Cleveland years later, but even in losing, James can still be considered a winner.
Everything pre-NBA can be counted as winning, exactly as James said. Unfortunately, when it comes to his NBA career and the GOAT conversation, many will always hold James's Heat era against him, despite the two titles, arguing that he needed Wade to win.
James won his first NBA rings in Miami, yes, but he was a winner before he arrived. It will only depend on how you view James as a basketball player in relation to greatness, on which side of the fence you sit with this specific narrative. There will always be another narrative linked to James and Heat, though. How much more could they have won together had he stayed?
We'll never know. But let's not get it twisted: James has always been a winner, even if it ends with only four titles. In his eyes, nothing can be taken away from him, and no narrative will ever get pushed on him to the point where he believes his legacy is in question.