Chris Townsend

I'm pissed off again.

I believe it was on the pages of this very blog that I ill-advisedly attempted to convince you, noble reader, that I was anything but a crotchety bastard. Well, given that this blog has essentially become a fertile petri dish for my sports-related frustrations, I'll give up on that deception.

That said, I have so much venom for my favorite of all sports leagues that I hardly know what to pick on or where to begin. For instance — I hated tonight's LA-Denver game... Not because the Lakers lost, but because the basketball was mostly rotten and the refereeing was worse. It wasn't favoritism — I didn't think one team necessarily got an edge (though certainly a couple of tough calls and no-calls went against the Lakers down the stretch) it was just terrible all around. And if I wanted to see critical missed free throws and guys jogging down the court behind a play I would watch a Grizzlies-Knicks game in November.

But believe it or not, I am actually more upset about something else. Funny thing is, as mad as I am at the NBA, this is about you... You and your idiotic media-employed enablers.

Hey, YOU — stop criticizing LeBron for making good basketball plays. It's absurd, it's annoying and frankly I've had more than enough of it over the last few years.

The guy is the best player in the NBA. I'm convinced. I think that's the first time I've said that unconditionally. Is Kobe maybe still the best closer for that one-shot, game-closing deal? Possibly. Probably. But I'd still take LeBron first for my team, no doubt about it.

Yet here you all are today... on my radio, in my newspapers, all over my freaking online media, telling me LeBron James is scared or weak or not a real winner because he found a WIDE OPEN teammate for a potential game-winning shot when he was double-teamed — or was it triple- or quadruple-teamed? — in the lane with time running down.

Remember, Delonte West had nailed basically the same shot just minutes before. Keep in mind that even Mo Williams, who had a terrible shooting night, canned a big open jumper down the stretch. To put it in a larger context, think about Michael Jordan's pass to Steve Kerr for a game-winner; or any of the number of game-winning assists LeBron has dished out in his short career.

LeBron's trust in his teammates is part of what makes him so special, part of what I think will send him down in history as the greatest player to ever lace up a pair of shoes with his own name and number on them. So many of the great players (MJ and Kobe to name two) struggled mightily and took great pains to develop the sort of trust and understanding of their cohorts that LeBron just came pre-installed with.

And it really gets my goat that people are still questioning his killer instinct, when I would think that any intelligent basketball fan is watching it develop and blossom right in front of us. The way he has brought a motivated team to every single minute of every single game this postseason is a testament to his leadership skills, and so is the fact that he made a good basketball play on the final possession and got a shot for Delonte West that sees the bottom of the net more often than not.

Could LeBron have forced a shot and hit it and/or drawn a foul there? Possibly. But the fact that YOU people would rather see him put the game in the hands of the refs (and his mediocre free throw-shooting, which is his actual problem... but that's another story for another time) than those of a wide open teammate drives me bonkers.

So just stop it.

I'm Kolsky, and I've said quite enough (and probably a little beyond that).

Stop yelling at me, I love LeBron. He's like Oscar Robertson, but better.

Oscar Robertson? LeBron is like Chuck Norris, but better. (If that's even possible.)