On the court, LeBron James is building a resume that will ultimately place him amongst the game's greatest players, including Michael Jordan. But when looking at the picture as a whole, it is clear that King James will never be Air Jordan.
Jordan transcended basketball in a way that has never been matched. And that can easily be seen by looking at how many people tuned in to watch the NBA Finals when Jordan was playing.
Jordan's 35 career games in the Finals averaged 25.3 million viewers. In James' 20 career Finals games, an average of just 15.0 million people tuned in.
And while the size of Jordan's audience tended to grow as his career moved along, the number of people watching LeBron and his merry men has declined each of the past two seasons. And while the audience for game seven will certainly push this year's number up, it still won't come close to the size of a Jordan-fed Finals audience...
