There continues to be questions on whether or not Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James is the best player in the NBA.
ESPN’s “First Take” host Max Kellerman said that he would rather have Los Angeles Clippers star forward Kawhi Leonard over James in a recent segment.
.@maxkellerman is taking Kawhi over LeBron … and everyone is heated 😬 pic.twitter.com/HjebBVc5JN
— First Take (@FirstTake) May 28, 2020
The crew was debating which player they would want in Game 7 of a series if the two rosters were identical.
Kellerman chose Leonard because he won a championship with the Toronto Raptors last year without the presence of a second star. Even though the Raptors had forward Pascal Siakam, Kellerman felt he wasn’t on the same level as other All-Stars.
“Kawhi wasn’t playing with another upper-tier All-Star last year,” Kellerman said. “He just wasn’t. He was playing with a nice roster, but not an upper-tier All-Star. We’re going to pretend he was?”
Former NBA center Kendrick Perkins did not agree with Kellerman, and defended James as the best player in the league.
“Listen, first of all, you’re all over the place,” Perkins said. “But to address your point, Siakam in Game 1 had 32 points. He had 32 points in Game 1 of the [2019 NBA] Finals, on the biggest stage in the NBA.
“He had 16 of those points on Draymond Green, who’s by the way, a Defensive Player of the Year. So don’t give me that Kawhi didn’t have help or he didn’t have this star player.
“So at the end of the day, what we coming back to Max is that the question is, ‘Who’s the best player in the world?’ We’re not predicting the future, we’re talking about right now. And right now, the best player in the world is LeBron James.”
James and Leonard were on a crash course to meet in the Western Conference Finals before the NBA season was suspended.
Now, with the playoff schedule up in the air, it remains to be seen if the two superstars will get a chance to settle this debate head to head.
