No team is truly a one-man team, of course. But not all teams are equal and not all great players are, either. Sometimes a superstar has to be more than just a team’s best player: he has to become the team itself.
As LeBron James pulls what is left of the Cleveland Cavaliers toward the franchise’s first championship, he is adding what might be the greatest chapter to his legacy – a title with little assistance.
When James won two finals in Miami, he did so with roster that included Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Ray Allen. Without Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving – the two players who were supposed to help James deliver a title in his return to Cleveland – James is trying to win with what might be one of the worst supporting casts of any NBA champion.
If James does, he will join a small list of basketball superstars who became one-man teams in the modern NBA and college era. Ironically, enough, he will be much like the player who led Golden State to the 1975 NBA title …
1) Rick Barry
Of the men who were named to the NBA’s 50 greatest players in 1996, none might be more complicated than Barry, whose brilliance was often muddied by his grumpiness. Former teammate Billy Paultz has been quoted as saying: “Half of the players disliked Rick Barry. The other half hated him.” A reputation that later in life he has come to regret.
He is also perhaps the greatest player to shoot his free throws underhand.
By the spring of 1975 he was in the middle of a career that had seen him go from being an all-star who played close to the basket to someone who played outside, handling the ball and shooting jump shots. In one amazing finals run, he dragged the Warriors to a four-game sweep of the Washington Bullets, who had the league’s best record that season.
In the sweep he averaged 29.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists. The Warriors’ second-leading scorer, Jamaal Wilkes, averaged just 11.5 points a game. That’s how dominant Barry was.
But perhaps his biggest legacy is the one he left in his sons Jon and Brent, who played in the NBA, and Scooter, who played on Kansas’s 1988 National Championship team with …
2) Danny Manning
By his last year at Kansas, Manning was already considered the best player in college basketball. But his 1987-88 team was not one of the school’s best. The team finished third in a strong Big Eight with a 9-5 conference record. An 11-loss regular season earned the Jayhawks a sixth-seed in the Midwest Region. After an easy win over 11th seed Xavier in the first round and a hard-fought three-point victory against Murray State in the second, Kansas rolled over Vanderbilt in the Sweet 16 and defeated conference rival Kansas State 71-58 to wind up in the Final Four, played in Kansas City, just a 40-minute drive from campus.
Manning scored 25 points and had 10 rebounds in beating Duke on the first night of the Final Four, and then delivered 31 points, 18 rebounds and two blocks against Oklahoma in one of the greatest championship game performances ever.That team is forever known as “Danny and the Miracles,” which is perhaps the best nickname of a one-man team until a player later spawned the name Jordanaires …
3) Michael Jordan
Six times Jordan’s Bulls won NBA titles– but his greatest performance was his last. Chicago’s 1997-98 team was not nearly as dominant as even those that had won in prior years. Jordan was 34, Scottie Pippen, was 32 and after two straight championships following Jordan’s return to basketball in 1995, there was a sense this was indeed the end of the Bulls’ run.
But for one last time, Jordan dominated a finals opponent. This one was Utah, with John Stockton and Karl Malone both in their prime. Jordan scored 33 and 37 points in the first two games.
Then in game six, Jordan gently nudged Utah’s Bryon Russell,and dropped the jump shot that finished the Jazz, in a finals run that was the finest until a player who grew up in Chicago went on a tear of his own …
4) Dwyane Wade
At 24 years old in 2006, Wade was at the peak of his professional career. James and Bosh were still four seasons away from joining him in Miami. The Heat was Wade’s team, and it seemed he did everything on it. But it was in the finals against Dallas that he really took off. From games three to five he scored a total of 121 points and almost single-handedly destroyed the Mavericks.
He wrapped up the championship scoring 36 in game six with 10 rebounds, five assists and four steals. It solidified his reputation as perhaps the game’s best player at the time and one of its most likeable superstars.
Lost in Wade’s brilliance was an outstanding Finals run by a Dallas opponent who would come to overwhelm Wade’s Heat five years later …
5) Dirk Nowitzki
Year after year Nowitzki delivered superstar seasons for the Dallas Mavericks while never winning the biggest games. Then in the year of LeBron, Wade and Bosh, that changed. Over a six-game finals he was unstoppable.
With Miami leading the series 2-1, Nowitzki scored 21, 29 and 21 points in three-straight games to lead Dallas to its elusive championship. He also averaged 9.7 rebounds in the Finals and made 45-of-46 free throws. Then he wept. Yet it might not have been the best postseason run in 2011.
That came from …
6) Kemba Walker
Connecticut’s 2010-11 team was not one of its best. Walker, a junior guard from New York, was the Huskies’ best player. As UConn struggled through the regular season there was a thought it might not even make the NCAA Tournament. At 9-9 in the Big East, the Huskies came into the Big East tournament as a ninth-seed and had to beat DePaul and Georgetown to even hope for an NCAA bid. Then Walker hit a shot at the buzzer to beat Pittsburgh. Two games later, he scored 19 to lead UConn to the tournament title.
In the NCAAs he had 33 in the second round against Cincinnati and 24 in a Sweet 16 win over San Diego State. He scored 18 in the first game of the Final Four against Kentucky and 16 in the championship winner over Butler.
A year later he was named the 28th-best NCAA Tournament player ever.
