Fire?

Until you see this look EVERY night he'll never reach HIS full potnetial!

Confucius says, “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” Winston Churchill broke it down like this, “Continuous effort- not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” Mr. Ricky at the shoe shine joint said it best with, “As good as you are you’ll only be measured by what you should have been and only God himself will be able to tell you that.”

LeBron James will probably finish his career someday as the greatest basketball player we’ve ever seen; only time will tell. However, I don’t believe that he will ever become the greatest basketball player that HE could become because he doesn’t possess that fire that will push him to HIS limit.  Understand this playboy, his 75% is better than most cats 100%. So he’s gonna be better than everybody else on the floor when he wakes up in the morning because of genetics alone.

However, in the grand scheme of things that doesn’t mean anything. To chase what Kobe or Mike has been able to accomplish is fruitless because they’ve run their race with their own personal limitations.

See Jordan completely maximized his potential because he always had something to prove and played with a fire that we’ve never seen before. Mike didn’t want to lose a card game bruh. He gave you everything he had every night because he reached down into that place that very few are willing to explore. When he was cut from the high school team and eventually had to go to UNC for three years where he wasn’t the 1st option as a freshman that gave him a chip to play with. When he came into the league he couldn’t go to his left and was an inconsistent shooter that allowed Zeke and Co. to take advantage of him and that made him dig even deeper to ignite an even bigger fire.

When Kobe was drafted 13th instead of 1st and had to come off of the bench initially in his career he had to explore that abyss as well. When Jerry Rice didn’t get recruited by all of the big time football powerhouses, had to go to Mississippi Valley State and play on what looks like a cow pasture the fire began to heat up inside of him too. Coming into the NFL from a small black college he had plenty to prove.

When boyz come from the ghetto, land a good job and make good on that promise they're playing with that same fire I'm talking about.

Having to prove that you are better than you are perceived to be forces you to go somewhere internally that allows you to unlock that hidden treasure we call potential. LeBron has never had to do that because he’s always been better than his competition since day one. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated labeled as "The Chosen One" at 16 bruh! It's hard to push beyond normal limits after that type of introduction!

See when race horses compete they have on blinders so they aren’t really competing. They’re just running as fast as THEY can to finish the line. In track you’re taught that you’re not running against the cat next to you. You’re running against the clock. So in order to be great you have to be as good as YOU can be. Greatness isn’t measured by how well you do against your competition or how well you stack up against what others have been able to do before you.

So even if LeBron breaks every record known to man or wins the 6 titles that boyz say that he has to win in order to become the G.O.A.T., which is a stupid argument because Bill Russell has 11 of those joints, but we’ll go with it. Will he ever become as GREAT as he should have been?

The only time we’ve ever seen this cat play with the fire necessary to maximize HIS potential is during game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals last year when he put up 45 points grabbed 15 rebounds and threw 5 dimes to force a game 7 with the Celtics. It wasn’t about the stats, it was about the look in his eye that night. He had finally gone to that place that everyone NEEDS to go to in order to get everything out of them that God has put in them.

Let's keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! Until he plays every night with that look in his eye he’ll never use all of the gifts that God has blessed him with and I don’t care if he’s able to surpass what Jordan, Bill or Kobe has been able to accomplish because he was never supposed to be chasing them anyway.

This is coming from one of the biggest supporters of LeBron out here bruh! I've written more Hot Joints in support of this dun than I care to count but I'm just keeping it a hundred! At some point he's got to figure out how to consistently go to that place to maximize all of that talent.

When I die I don’t want to sit before my maker and he says these words,”Jay you were able to accomplish a lot of things, you won several awards and the world thought you were the very best at what you did but you fell short of what I had reserved for you because you never tapped into your full potential.” It's sinful not to use all of the gifts that God has given you because you got caught up in trying to compete with someone else's limited potential. I think I just said something playboy!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport