SPORTS DIGEST LeBron James has changed my opinion of him

By Don Wanlass

Contributing Writer

Over my years of watching sports there have been several athletes that I didn’t particularly like during most of their careers who I begrudgingly started to admire as they got older and continued to perform at an elite level.

Pete Rose was one of those. I disliked him immensely during the 1970s when his Cincinnati Reds battled the Dodgers for supremacy in the National League West.

By the time he retired as the all-time major league hits leader, I grew to respect his accomplishments and the way he played the game. He was a player who started in the All-Star Game at five different positions, played on three World Series champions and won three batting titles and two Gold Gloves.

Forget his gambling problems. Rose was a great player.

Nolan Ryan was another player I originally didn’t like. His strikeouts and no hitters always drew comparisons to Sandy Koufax, but Ryan was never as dominant a pitcher as Koufax was. 

Unlike Koufax, however, Ryan lasted. Koufax retired due to arthritis in his elbow at the age of 30. Ryan was still pitching at 46. He led the American League in earned run average at 40. He won more than 200 games after he was 30. 

When he retired, he had won 324 games and struck out 5,714 batters. Randy Johnson is second in strikeouts, more than 800 behind Ryan.

Steve Carlton, a Hall of Famer, pitched in almost as many innings as Ryan. He struck out more than 1,500 fewer hitters and Carlton was a power pitcher.

I have now added LeBron James to the list of players who I begrudgingly respect. He came into the NBA over-hyped out of high school in Ohio. That wasn’t his fault.

The televised debacle when he announced his free agent signing with the Miami Heat was his fault and his chasing rings from Cleveland to Miami, back to Cleveland and finally to the Lakers wasn’t pretty, either.

And his influence on the Lakers’ front office since he got here has helped put the team in its current roster predicament. 

But the dude can ball.

In the next 10 days or so, James will surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the top scorer in NBA history.

He scored 46 points Jan. 24 when the Lakers lost to the Clippers, 133-115, putting him within 177 of Abdul-Jabbar. He is on pace to break the record Feb. 4 in New Orleans, but if he keeps scoring 40 or more points a game, he might do it Feb. 2 against the Indiana Pacers.

And I’m now willing to put James in the conversation of the greatest basketball players of all time. 

Most people consider Michael Jordan the greatest ever. I don’t. 

To me, Wilt Chamberlain is the most dominating player to ever play the game. He averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds a game in 1961-62, a season in which he averaged more than 48 minutes a game. In other words, he rarely, if ever, left the floor.

Abdul-Jabbar would be the second greatest player ever in my book. He scored more points than Chamberlain, won more titles (5-2) and played tougher competition.

Michael Jordan was a great scorer who led the Bulls to six championships in the 1990s, but he didn’t change the way the game is played. Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and James have.

The league widened the lane when Chamberlain began his career, moving him farther from the basket in an effort to keep him from dominating more than he did. 

Abdul-Jabbar was so good in college that the NCAA banned dunking for several years. He won three NCAA titles anyway. His skyhook is the most unstoppable shot in the history of the game.

James has changed the game through his ability to play all five positions on the floor. Before he came along there were centers, forwards and guards. Now you have wings and ball handlers, with an occasional big man. The game is faster paced with players either shooting three pointers or driving to the rack with very little in between.

That’s James’ game. 

Abdul-Jabbar was a shadow of his former self in his 20th year in the league. James, in his 20th season, is still one of the best players in the league.

He is the only player in history to have more than 10,000 rebounds and assists. He has won four championships with three different teams. 

Yes, James has earned my respect for lasting 20 years in a difficult sport and still excelling. Now, if he can only get the Lakers to the playoffs.

LOCAL DOMINANCE: The Clippers beat the Lakers again Jan. 24. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone. The Clippers are a better team than the Lakers and have been for 10 years.

The 133-115 win was a 10-point game with slightly more than five minutes to play. Then the Clippers went on an 8-0 run in 45 seconds and Darvin Ham called timeout and yanked his starters because the Lakers had a game the next night.

It was the Clippers’ 10th straight win over the Lakers. Since the 2013-14 season began, the Clippers are 31-7 against the Lakers. 

That is dominance. 

The Clippers wish they could extend that dominance to the rest of the league and there are some people out there that still consider them favorites to make the Western Conference finals this season.

We will see.

With Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers have two of the top 25 players in the league. They have a decent big man in Ivica Zubac. 

They have veterans everywhere else, with point guard Reggie Jackson, power forwards Marcus Morris and Nicholas Batum, three-point sharpshooter Luke Kennard coming off the bench and role players like Norman Powell, Terance Mann and Robert Covington. That’s a deep rotation.

Yet, the Clippers are only fifth in the NBA Western Conference, nine games back of conference leader Denver. The West is bunched up this year with only four games separating the fourth-place New Orleans Pelicans and the 13th-place Lakers. 

Yes, the Lakers still have a chance to make the playoffs. Anthony Davis is almost healthy (isn’t he always?) and they just landed Rui Hachimura from the Washington Wizards to provide scoring off the bench (I would rather have Kyle Kuzma from the Wizards, but that’s another story).

But the Lakers won’t advance far in the playoffs, especially if they run into the Clippers along the way. The Clippers just have a stronger roster from top to bottom and Leonard and George are both capable of slowing down James in a playoff series.

WEEKEND PREDICTIONS: The NFL conference finals are Jan. 29 and I look for two highly competitive games between the San Francisco 49ers and the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Eagles-49ers should be a defensive battle, although both offenses have players who can have breakout games. I like the 49ers with Christian McCaffrey at running back, George Kittle at tight end and the Cinderella quarterback Brock Purdy over Jalen Hurts and company.

The AFC game is a repeat of the conference final last year when Cincinnati knocked off Kansas City before losing in the Super Bowl to the Rams. The Bengals have the edge again this year, because Patrick Mahomes is limping around on a bad ankle for the Chiefs.

I’m looking forward to a 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl, a rematch of Super Bowls XVI and XXIII, both won by the 49ers.