It's funny because it's true - because it was true when they shot the film long before the 2011 NBA Finals, and because it remains true now.
Before the Finals - before Dirk Nowitzki completed his career-long metamorphosis from a soft player willing to hide inside his shell to a man hardened by, and seemingly impervious to, pressure - a lot of little Shawns were barking about James' basketball brilliance. It hardly mattered that there was almost no empirical evidence to rightly place James in the same discussion as Jordan and Wilt and Russell and Magic and Bird and the other one-name greats who dominated the game before James came along and so brazenly crowned himself King.
You don't hear much from the Shawns these days. They've been drowned out by an anti-LeBron din. LeBronLeBronLeBronLeBronLeBronLeBron. It is all LeBron all the time now, but none of it is positive.
Even if James eventually wins a title or two, he can no longer be theoretically placed at the top of the NBA's all-time list. He might be thought of as one of the best, but he will not be considered the best. In the process, with ill-advised tweets and fake coughs and I'm-still-me-and-you're-still-you rejoinders, he took the final steps to becoming a permanent antihero. There's no going back now. Those who continue to root for him are polemicists and little more.
That, more than a ring and a parade, is what James lost this postseason.
These Finals didn't just serve to make champions of Nowitzki and Mark Cuban and Dallas. These Finals doubled as the death of hype and the birth of reality. James, no matter how defiant, has a different and permanent image now - one that is far less flattering and mythical.
