Neymar, the lightning rod, has been electric in Rio

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Neymar is a lightning rod.

The good kind, drawing defenders and finding ways to decide games anyway. And the bad kind, who can be that dreaded D-word – a distraction. He is, plainly, one of the most gifted and influential attackers in the world. He’s certainly one of its most famous players.

But these are strange times in Brazilian soccer. It’s a fallow period. The five-time World Cup-winning national team is suffering through an unusually weak generation of talent. Explanations are myriad. Few are convincing.

Above the fray of relative and unprecedented mediocrity stands Neymar. The star. And the enfant terrible. The world-beater at Barcelona, whose transfer there from Santos was almost unimaginably deceitful, wherein his father and his new club seem to have conspired to hide tens of millions in proceeds from his old club, third-party investors in Neymar’s rights, and the various tax authorities in Brazil and Spain. Somehow, Neymar and his father picked up almost half his $100 million or so fee, which was reported as merely two-thirds of that to the tax man.

Neymar the once-in-a-generation talent. Neymar the swaggering superstar. Neymar of the dodgy dealings.

Neymar the party boy.

At 24, he’s been carrying his national team for some time now. Incredibly, his senior team tally of 46 goals already puts him at fifth all-time. He’s more than halfway to Pele’s record 77. His .66 goals per game stands higher than Ronaldo’s success rate, and Ronaldo’s considered one of the best pure strikers of all time. Neymar isn’t even really a striker. And now consider that Ronaldo had Romario and Ronaldinho and Rivaldo around him. Neymar, by and large, only has Neymar.

Yet it’s somehow never enough. He dragged Brazil into the semifinals of the 2014 World Cup on their home soil. And it’s little coincidence that after a horrific kick to his back in the quarterfinals against Colombia ended his tournament, a conspicuously Neymar-less team looked rudderless in a 7-1 loss to Germany in the worst humiliation in national team history. Would Brazil have beaten Germany with Neymar? Perhaps not. Probably not. But it likely wouldn’t have gotten clobbered either.

When Neymar can’t do it all, when he can’t lift the rest of his team above itself, the guy who’s making them competitive at all is blamed for the shortcomings of his peers. On the national team, he has no Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez and Andres Iniesta around him, like he does for Barcelona. He can’t hang out on the left wing and wait for the play to come to him. He has to drift all over the field and go find the ball. If Brazil is going to build an attack, he usually has to start it and deliver the final pass.

After a hapless beginning of these Rio Olympics, he’s done exactly that. The 0-0 stalemates with South Africa and Iraq have long been forgotten. Brazil is in the final. And it’s because Neymar toiled to get them there. He scored the opener and assisted against Colombia in the 2-0 quarterfinals win.

He scored the opener and assisted twice against Honduras – with a splendid through ball and an inch-perfect corner kick – and then got a second goal with a casual late penalty. He twice came close to scoring again in the 6-0 semifinal destruction of Honduras and its grossly negligent defense on Wednesday. He’s done it in spite of getting kicked all over the park, his opponents taking almost a half dozen yellow cards each game just from fouling him.

It took him 14 seconds to get the winner against the Hondurans. He went down in a collision with the goalkeeper as he scored on the turnover he forced from a defender. He got up. He slumped back to the grass. He was stretchered off. And he got up again.

[RELATED: Neymar leads Brazil in dominating Honduras, reaching Olympic final]

That’s the theater of Neymar, the flashy grinder. Laboring through games with his socks pulled over his knees. Running tirelessly, showing off post-modern hairdos all over the field.

But early in this tournament, when things seemed to be coming undone for Brazil, there was criticism again. Neymar had gone on holiday in the U.S. while his peers were ingloriously knocked out of the Copa America Centenario group stage – by agreement between Barcelona and the Brazilian federation, he would rest during Copa and play at the Olympics. He’d hung out with Justin Bieber. He’d lounged by the pool. He’d gone out at night. Stuff every soccer star does. When Neymar does it, it somehow isn’t okay.

“The captain of our team is not up to being captain,” spoke Zico, Brazil’s star playmaker from the mid-‘70s through the mid-‘80s. “He must worry just about football.”

As if he knew this was coming, because it had come so many times before, Neymar had already addressed this argument before the tournament. “I think you have to start by looking at what I do on the pitch,” he’d said. “The moment I am off the field it’s my personal time. I like to go out and have fun with my friends. I have family too, so why can’t I go out to clubs? I can and I will. I am well aware what my duties are the next day. I am going to keep going out and I don’t see anything wrong with that.

“Imagine you’re 24 years old,” he continued. “Earning what I earn and having all that I have. Wouldn’t you be the same as me?”

You would. And as long as he keeps delivering on the field, he’s well within his rights to enjoy the spoils of his stardom. Neymar is delivering.

Neymar has Brazil a lone win from its first-ever Olympic soccer gold medal.

The lightning rod is capturing the electricity and turning it into something useful.