The Queen of the Chessboard
LeBron is a man who needs only one name. There is no need to put James after LeBron. He has as high a Q score as any athlete in America, and, among basketball fans, he is known simply as “The King.”
However, it is another nickname, “The Queen of the Chessboard,” that I think is actually a more appropriate nickname for James.
There is simply no more accurate way of describing the multi-positionality (that’s definitely a made-up word created by NBA fans) of James. He can play every position, 1 through 5, something very few in the history of the sport have been able to say. On a chessboard, the queen can move in basically every direction. (If you want to get technical, the queen can’t do that weird “2 and 1” move that the knight makes, but that’s getting nit-picky.)
We all know LeBron can run the show as a 6' 8" point guard. It’s almost certainly what he is best at, and his 7,772 career assists (as of Wednesday, December 27) already rank 12th all-time. There’s a very good chance that he ends his career among the top three all-time in assists, topped only by a pair of truly pass-first point guards (John Stockton and Jason Kidd). This is the queen moving diagonal — a rare move that only that bishops (point guards) can mirror on the chessboard (NBA court).
LeBron has always shown an ability to score, as well. LeBron is even higher in the all-time points rankings. He sits eighth above numerous all-time legends, and trailing only a glut of all-time big men (Kareem, Malone, Wilt, and Dirk) and a trio of top-tier shooting guards (Kobe, MJ, and Doctor J). There have been times when LeBron’s shot has been a (relative) weakness, but he’s hitting 41 percent from three this season, and it’s not as if his efficiency has ever been anything other than godly. His 58.6 percent career True Shooting Percentage tops every one of the seven names above him in the all-time scoring ranks with the exception of Abdul-Jabbar. And on the track that LeBron is trending (61.8 percent True Shooting over the past five seasons), there’s a possibility that by the time he ends his career, no player will ever have been a more efficient elite scorer in the history of the sport. This is the queen moving straight forward. Not that revolutionary, but of massive importance.
LeBron has also been an elite defensive wing (when he wants to be) for his entire career. The effervescent Shea Serrano highlighted just recently that LeBron’s signature skill is not his shot, or his dunks, or anything on the offensive side of things. His signature skill is the chasedown block. His greatest moment of his career is a chasedown block, and it is one that will go down in the hallowed halls of NBA highlight packages for the rest of eternity.
That’s the queen throwing on the brakes and moving backwards and diagonally one move after traveling (no pun intended) across the board laterally. No one else does that.
But we’re not done yet. The Cavs helped unlock new levels of team success when they shifted LeBron to power forward and even center. In basketball history we have seen a few Magic Johnson types who have made appearances across the positional scale, but never as often, or as fluidly, as LeBron. He goes forward. He goes backward. He moves laterally. He moves diagonally. He’s the true queen of the NBA chessboard.
The part that truly seals the comparison, though: The people who would take issue with calling LeBron a queen and see it as slightly derogatory rather than 100 percent complimentary are the same people who have never truly appreciated LeBron for all his non-Kobe-type greatness. (Or at least the Venn diagram of the two is a near-perfect overlap. Maybe there are a few who can fit into one but not both of those old-school hot take chambers.)
The types who would think of a queen as feminine, and feminine as lesser, are the exact types who would rail against LeBron for passing on the final shot to find a wide-open teammate in the corner. Both are garbage takes.
It’s time for the NBA, basketball fans, and LeBron to lean all-in on calling the most versatile basketball player the league has ever seen by his true name: LeBron James, Queen of the Chessboard.
