LeBron: The Return of the King

When LeBron announced that he was heading back to Cleveland, I had a discussion with my Boss wondering why he would stake his future legacy on the relentless historic furies of Cleveland and the Cavaliers. Much to lose, little to gain. Or more like, was the risk worth the reward. It was. 

Good for him and his team. He showed that you can go home again. Cleveland gets its championship...just not sure it is of any eternal existential value because in basketball, you are only as good as your last basket and reflected glory fades fast. But, it was an exemplary performance. 

I have been plowing through several books on myth-making, story-telling, and archetypes, including this tome from Joseph Campbell, "The Hero With A Thousand Faces."  This work is fairly well known among writers because Campbell gets into a cross-cultural analysis of the elements of story-telling that transcend specific societies. The book has some keen insight but does suffer from a jack-of-all trades vibe. Campbell, in his effort to show that mythmaking is similar across the world over, winds up making equivalencies and conclusions that don't stand up.

It made me think of C.S. Lewis's well-known quote about myths:

"Now as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are, they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend (myth) and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing." C.S. Lewis goes on to explain why, that the Gospels take counter-intuitive turns--characteristic of reality--unknown in the literature of the time, just like St. Augustine's Confessions created the autobiography as a genre.  So, Campbell has to explain not only the similarities that these stories share but also their deep differences. 

LeBron's story fits the mythic circle (seen on the book cover) of the hero coming from an out of the way and hard-luck place of origin, of iffy parentage, who displays prodigious gifts, leaves place of origin to fight many battles, and then comes back wiser but with wounds. His beard shows flecks of gray on the edges and if the Cavs didn't win this year, time would not be on their side with LeBron aging.

He is young  enough to still be physically pretty much at the top of his game, demonstrated by that alley-oop dunk earlier in the series that no mortal should be able to do, and the come from behind block on Andre Iguodala's sure-thing lay-up (Andre I. is one of the most amazing athletic specimens on the planet. But LeBron is not from here apparently) in last night's game 7 that was the beginning of the back-breaker 1/2 completed by Kyrie Irving's 3 pointer. Kyrie  was the perfect magician (another archetype who helps the hero). Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore (without the agedness).    

LeBron is old enough to been in the battle before and uses his smarts to perhaps make up for a loss of step (if that has happened yet).  My thoughts are that his gifts are still intact but he feels the  wear and tear in his bones. I have to think that he will continue to play for several more years but hopefully he doesn't go Ali on us and have to get the crud kicked out of him before  hanging up the gloves and sneakers.  He still  has a lot in the tank but one has to think that Golden State is much younger and ain't going anywhere. The game unfortunately favors the three-point sharpshooters that populate the Warriors roster. 

Drone warfare on the hardwood...poetic justice though that Irving's shot was a 3.    

The Cavalier's is a story better than most these days. Sports, for what they are, which is not as much as we make them to be, particularly if played by others, are one of our culture's primary story-telling venues. But the hopes and dreams we place on our team's rise and falling is really kind of sad, as if their victories are our own. They really aren't to any degree. It is 99% the athletes and coaches themselves, and the remaining parties, including the fans, have to fight over the remaining 1%. The fans do pay for it,  which I suppose confers some glory, as fleeting as it is.  So, stand on that 1% Cleveland. 

Today we are story starved, hungry for stories that will feed our souls. Oh, we have plenty of stories. We consume more stories than any people in human history. Television sitcoms, cops and robbers dramas, formula movies full of violence and escapist fantasies, romance and spy novels are cranked out by the respective industries like so many widgets at the factory. But it's a hollow diet. Most of the stories lacks spiritual nutrition, direction, insight and inspiration. It isn't just pop-culture. Stories of many of our serious writers are equally devoid of soul food. As with junk foods, we can consume the stories in great quantities and remain malnourished. The scholar respects the art of storytelling. She knows that that stories from children's nursery rhymes to the most serious novels and everything in between make a profound difference in the lives of the individuals and in the character of society. Whether we want to admit it or not stories all stories teach values in the uniquely powerful way by giving them life in our imaginations." (from ZEN and the Art of Making A Living.)