The Trouble with MJ

This will be delicate subject because it involves the greatest basketball player of all time and will actually be a little negative. Not anything negative about MJ but about the era he played in and the players he played against.

To start lets talk about those two puppets that everyone seems to be getting sick of seeing on TV. Kobe and Lebron have become the face of these playoffs and almost everyone assumed that the two would roll through the playoffs and collide in an epic Finals match up made for prime time TV. Along the way Vitamin Water, Nike and etc tried to get ahead of the game by releasing ads about the two best players in the NBA. With both the Lakers and Cavs in dogfights in the Conference Finals, many people have gotten sick of the hype build up for both players. This is where it ties in to MJ.

MJ was the first ever guard/forward to come along and control the game the way he did. Before MJ the game went through the post and the teams that won titles won titles with excellent post play, but then MJ came along and showed that a truly dominate guard/forward could take over a game/series and the offense could still work smoothly. Fast forward to today's NBA, the best players are all hybrid players. Now its a league that plays a style similar to Jordan's Bulls and this leads to the nonstop Jordan comparisons for the elite players. Luckily for today's NBA there are 3 players who can live up to the comparison D-Wade, Kobe, and Lebron.

When Jordan was playing he was the only one of his kind. The best guards of the time were still traditional shooters and passers like John Stockton, Mark Price, and Clyde Drexler. The league was still a big man league with David Robinson, Hakeem, Ewing, and the emergence of Shaq. What this meant was that there was still only one player playing the style and swagger of Jordan. SO naturally he became the face of the league because he was so unique.

Now fast forward to today, Lebron, Kobe, and D-Wade are the unique guard/forwards in the league that runs through the guard/forward position. Now instead of one unique player like MJ there are 3 or more depending on who you consider an elite player. So this leads to the overexposure of all 3 because the league does not want to leave another behind.

SO the problem with MJ was that he was so unique and so unchallenged at his position that it made publicity for the league easy, but in today's game we are blessed with multiple MJ style players and this means 3 times the publicity and advertising for those 3.