It’s easy to hate these guys when you watch this lame video. It’s almost as bad as the party they threw when the Big Three signed their contracts with the Heat last season. After choking last year against the Mavericks, you would think that a somewhat different tone would be in order.

But LeBron wants to have fun this year. He didn’t do so well as the villain, so the dopey kid is back and his teammates are joining in on the fun.

That aside, however, after two games it does look like LeBron is taking the game seriously this year. He and Wade and shying away from three-pointers and they’re focusing on transition baskets and post-up moves. It’s a shame it’s taken LeBron this long to figure it out, but I guess a humiliating meltdown in front of the world in the Finals will do that do you.

Now we shouldn’t get carried away after two games, as the Heat ran past two older teams. The Mavs have new players and haven’t had any time to work together. They have to win as a team like they did last year. Also, LeBron always looks good in the regular season. Sure, he’s working on developing better habits, but we’ve seen him lose focus during crunch time before.

This team is talented, and they’ll battle for the best record. But none of it matters. They have to win it all. Anything else is a failure.

On the heels of Deron Williams’ deal to play in Turkey during the lockout, Dwyane Wade was asked if he was considering playing overseas.

“I’m not ruling it out,” Wade said, following the lead of numerous stars over the past few weeks. “It’s not something you’re waking up every day thinking about. At the end of the day, you get that itch as a basketball player where you want to play the game. I have no idea when I’ll get that itch.”

That’s just it — the itch to play and the itch to get those checks is somewhere over the horizon during this lazy summer. Deron Williams’ proactive action of signing with a Turkish team was an eye-opener but it may prove to simply be an outlier. Most stars are content to sit back and wait to see how things play out without a whiff of urgency.

It will be interesting to see how many stars head overseas as the lockout drags on. Keep in mind that many believe that the NFL labor strife pales into comparison with what the NBA is about to go through. While an abbreviated season seems unlikely in the NFL, it’s a very good possibility in the NBA.

I had to laugh when LeBron said that he works hard on his game in the offseason because I sure can’t see the results on the court. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are notorious for going away in the offseason and coming back with a new killer move in their offensive arsenal — what move has LeBron developed over the last eight years? How is his game significantly different than when he entered the league at age 18? To me, this is his biggest issue as a player.

Anyway, the relationship between these Wade and LeBron has been one of the more interesting stories this season. Bill Simmons went so far as to suggest that the duo’s interaction towards the end of Game 3 may have sent LeBron into a tailspin.

Remember when Wade tore into LeBron with three-plus minutes remaining in Game 3? When he yelled at him for eight solid seconds? When there was genuine anger in his eyes? When he did it right on the court, right in front of the other players, right in front of 20,000 fans and 10 million TV viewers?

LeBron was never the same after that.

When was the last time anyone ever really yelled at LeBron James? You’d have to go back to high school, right? He just spent the past 10 years being coddled by everyone (teammates, coaches, agents, entourage members, yes-men, general managers, owners, media members, etc.). Imagine he was a little kid (which really, he might be to some degree), and imagine you were his father and didn’t believe in yelling at your kids. Now, imagine your kid screwed up in his second-grade play and, for whatever reason, you broke character, snapped, and berated him for eight seconds in front of everyone. How would he handle that? Poorly, right? He’d pretend it didn’t affect him, but the more he thought about it, it would gnaw away at him (especially once his buddies said, “I can’t believe your dad yelled at you like that”).

Could that have been what happened to LeBron? Did those eight seconds shake his confidence beyond repair? Did he resent Wade for embarrassing him? Did he think to himself, “Fine, you want to act like this is your team, then YOU win this title?”

Wade was angry that LeBron threw the ball to Chalmers in the corner and after Chalmers eventually turned the ball over, Wade let LeBron hear about it. This is not how most of us would react if a friend lit into us, but LeBron’s expression was telling. He was frustrated with the situation and didn’t seem like he appreciated getting chewed out by Wade in the middle of the game.

Only he knows how much that exchange affected his game.

In an attempt to put the final nail in the coffin that is the 2010-11 NBA season, it’s a good time to look back on the 2011 Playoffs and try to make sense of it all.

Let’s start with…

DIRK’S LEGACY

Easily the biggest winner of these Playoffs, Dirk has shrugged off charges that he was soft and/or a choker by leading the Mavs on one of the most epic postseason runs in recent history. Firing up the NBA StatsCube, we’ll find that Dirk averaged 47.5 points per 36 minutes in the clutch (game within five points with under five minutes to play). Not only did he score a ton, but he did it efficiently, shooting 54% from the field, 97% from the free throw line and 60% (!!) from long range. Even in Game 6, after a miserable 1-for-12 first half, Nowitzki had the mental toughness to go out and score 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting in the final 7:22. He’s never going to win as many championships as Larry Bird, but dynasties are a rarity these days (which favors Bird, historically speaking), so now the Bird/Nowtizki comparisons are legit.

CUBAN

Yes, he’s irritating. Most billionaires are. He made his fortune during the internet bubble and had enough sense to get out when the getting was good. He parlayed that into an NBA team, and is definitely a loudmouth outspoken, but in an age when team owners don’t always show a commitment to winning, Cuban has been more than willing to spend in his chase for a ring and in collecting all these aging All-Stars, he finally found a combination with enough grit, determination and defense to put his franchise player in a position to close the deal. Love him or hate him, he’s entertaining, and in a matchup with the Heat, he was most definitely the lesser of two evils. (And give him credit, when interviewed after the Game 6 win, he was quick to defer the spotlight. Classy move.)

KIDD, MARION

Jason Kidd didn’t do much stat-wise in the Finals, and seemed to turn the ball over a lot, but he hit a huge three towards the end of Game 5 and played tough defense on LeBron and Wade for the entire series. After leading the Nets to back-to-back Finals in the early ’00s, he finally got another chance at a ring, and played an important role, even at 38-years-old.

The Mavs got a similar contribution from Shawn Marion, who many left for dead after stints in Miami and Toronto. He helped score when Dirk was getting his rest and played inspired defense on LeBron and Wade at different points in the series. Dallas would not have won the title without The Matrix, especially once Caron Butler went down during the season.

THE JET

Other than Dirk, I can’t see a bigger winner (legacy-wise) in these Finals than Jason Terry. He jumped from also-ran status to clutch Finals performer — one who most definitely backed up his smack talk. He outplayed LeBron down the stretch and didn’t miss a free throw in the clutch in the entire Playoffs. When we look back on these Playoffs a decade from now, we’ll remember Dirk, the Jet, and the Heat’s disappointing performance.

THE BIG THREE

There’s plenty of time for LeBron to redefine his legacy, but this was not a good start. He was mediocre to bad in the fourth quarter for most of the series, and it sure doesn’t seem like this leopard is going to change his spots after tweeting that God decided that it just wasn’t his time to win a title. Um, okay. That doesn’t sound like a guy who is going to hone his post game (like MJ or Kobe) or spend all summer with a shooting coach to make his jumper more consistent.

As for Wade, he doesn’t get off scot-free after fumbling away a chance to tie Game 5 and dribbling the ball off his foot late in Game 6, but he already has a ring, so his legacy has a higher floor than LeBron. And it’s not like the guy didn’t produce — he averaged 27-7-5 and shot 55% from the field in the Finals.

Lastly, let the record show that Chris Bosh played his best ball of the Finals when the chips were down. In the last three games, he averaged 21-8 on 55% shooting, and even hit the winning jumper in Game 3 after a rough shooting night. Bosh was something of a punchline during the season, but he came up big against the Bulls (23-8, 60% shooting) and did some damage in the Finals.

Where does Miami go from here? While some are arguing that Pat Riley should trade LeBron for Dwight Howard, this is certainly not the last we’ve seen of this trio. They made it to the Finals in their first try, and did it with a substandard supporting cast. I expect changes to be made, but I’d be shocked if any of the stars are moved.

Basketball fans will be talking about this series for years, as we’ve never seen anything like it. Superstars have had bad performances in the past, but have we ever seen anything like the LeBron James vanishing act? Those of us who watched him in Cleveland came to understand over the years that he lacked judgement, and after Game 5 last year against Boston, we learned that he could quit under pressure. Yet none of us were prepared for what we saw against the Mavs.

There are plenty of reactions to the debacle, but it’s really not a controversial subject. Everyone saw the same thing – an elite athlete who wilted under the pressure.

Naturally, Bill Simmons had quite a bit to say about it all. He points out that LeBron wasn’t the same after Wade bitched him out late in Game 3 for not being aggressive enough. In his blow by blow summary of the second half, this moment sticks out:

6:42: Just wanted to commemorate this moment: Miami down three, gets a rebound and gets the ball to LeBron on the right side of the key, with J.J. Barea defending him one-on-one … and LeBron turns and throws a pass 20 feet backwards to Wade at midcourt. A few seconds later, Miami gives it back to LeBron, who reluctantly backs Barea down to the low post … and bowls him over. Offensive foul. All hail the King!

(Note that’s too important to be a footnote: If that sequence alone isn’t enough to inspire LeBron to lock himself in a gym all summer until he emerges with a spin move, a jump hook, and a Jordan-eseque fallaway, then he’s the biggest waste of talent in NBA history. You know at the car wash when they offer the “everything” package? That’s what God gave LeBron. He’s threatening to waste it. In a nutshell, this is what makes us so angry about him. It’s not The Decision, or his lack of self-awareness, or the fact that he’s a front-runner … it’s that he’s blowing the “everything” car-wash package. You see an athlete get handed the “everything” package maybe only five times in your life.)

This might go down as his most embarrassing moment. If LeBron James can’t punish J.J. Barea in the post, then he’s become a joke.

Brian Windhorst looks back to last season as well.

Just like last season in Cleveland where James’ performance in the clutch was the polar opposite of what his talent and history called for. Just like when the top-seeded Cavs got behind the Celtics, as soon as the Mavs turned the tables on the Heat midway through this series James’ swagger and game left him. When the Heat were beating the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls, series they took control of early, James was a brilliant frontrunner. At his best, really, finishing those teams off.

It was now when he was expected to rediscover that dominance with anger and motivation from the Mavs and the masses. Everyone around him thought so, too. They talked to him about it, they encouraged him, they expected it. Even his biggest detractors and critics knew it could happen. They qualified and tempered their lashings over the past two weeks expecting James to answer at some point.

But as he went through another puzzling game Sunday — dishing repeatedly to Juwan Howard at the rim instead of taking the ball to the basket himself, passing up wide-open shots when the ball came his way, standing and watching on defense like it was a summer camp drill at times — it got more and more clear.

James couldn’t do it.

Back in Cleveland, Bill Livingston focused on LeBron’s lack of commitment:

He just doesn’t get it, not even in the game of basketball, at which he is supposed to be such an intuitive genius. He does not really know the body angles needed to post up. Worse, he does not want to because then he might get fouled and have to go to the line, alone, just him and a free throw stroke that gets shaky under pressure.

No less than the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, after winning an NBA championship in 2009, asked former Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon to tutor him in inside play. If he wasn’t adding to his game, reasoned Bryant, he was stagnating and others were gaining on him.

Does James possess that intense drive, that surprising humility, that deep capacity for self-examination? It’s doubtful, although James said after it was over, that no one knows how hard he works in the off-season.

Magic Johnson also focused on this last night, recalling how hard he worked after the nightmare of the 1984 Finals when some started calling him “Tragic Magic.”

SI’s Joe Posnanski is also a Clevelander, so he was rooting hard against Lebron, but he had this interesting take at the end of his column.

The way it ended made me feel like this Miami Heat team, with LeBron James playing the lead, wasn’t really good enough to be worth my disdain.

I’m not sure what to think of this. As a team, Miami still had Wade and Bosh. They were a flawed team, but they were the best team, and Wade played like a beast while Bosh showed me something during the playoffs. He’s a competitor and a true professional. The team wasn’t the problem – LeBron was the problem. Had he played just 80% of his ability, Miami would have won the series handily. The problems started in Game 2 when Miami gave away a huge lead. In that game LeBron took two lazy threes late in the game that helped the Mavs get back in it. This was before LeBron check out in Game 4. He killed the Heat and he let down Wade and his teammates, and Miami fans won’t let him forget it. Nobody will let him forget it . . .

Dan Wetzel from Yahoo! Sports sums up the mood in Cleveland very well after watching the LeBron James meltdown in the Finals:

Late Sunday night, a crowd of Clevelanders gathered here to watch their onetime hero turned all-time traitor, and with each disinterested LeBron offensive possession, each failed LeBron chase down of Jason Terry, each embarrassing LeBron crunch-time turnover, the prevailing emotion was simple.

Laughter.

They weren’t hating LeBron here. They were laughing at him.

LeBron started it, of course, laughing at Cleveland nearly a year ago when he took himself to a Boys and Girls Club in Connecticut of all places to announce on national television that he was taking his talents to South Beach. That South Beach has about a million nightclubs and technically no basketball arena said it all.

So on Sunday, Cleveland laughed right back.

All over Flannery’s and places like it across Ohio, they cracked oft-told jokes. (“I asked LeBron for a dollar, he gave me 75 cents back. He doesn’t have a fourth quarter.”) They showed pictures on their cell phones mocking LeBron as a quitter. Bartenders rang bells and shouted things like, “Last call for LeBron.”

He’s right. I watched it and I was laughing away throughout the fourth quarter. We saw LeBron’s limitations under pressure, but everyone else around the country bought into LeBron’s excuses. His teammates weren’t good enough. They didn’t rise to the occasion. He couldn’t win in Cleveland.

Well, he couldn’t win with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh either. And he wilted. His performance was an embarrassment.

If you want to understand how people felt in Cleveland, read the entire article.

And as Wetzel said at the end of his column, “LeBron James had the right to leave. And Cleveland has the right to laugh.”

Gregg Doyel, CBSSports.com: It was a triple-double, if you’re into stats. But as LeBron James told us after Game 3, forget about the stats. Stats are for dummies. So let’s dig deeper than the 17 points, the 10 rebounds, the 10 assists, and let’s do what LeBron wants us to do. Let’s ask a better question. Hey, I have one: Anyone seen LeBron James? What happened to him? This James? The guy in these NBA Finals? Never seen him before. Never seen a LeBron James who refused to attack when someone like the shorter, slower, older Jason Kidd was guarding him. Never seen a LeBron who couldn’t make shots outside of 10 feet, or who wouldn’t get close enough to Jason Terry to stop him from shooting — and making — a 3-pointer with 33 seconds left on a night that Terry was locked in from long distance. This guy isn’t doing anything LeBron James did in the playoff series against Boston or Chicago, but the more I think about it, it’s him — the headband gives him away. He wears it at a tilt, but not because he’s sweating. Because he’s balding. The headband hides his receding hairline. And nothing can hide his receding game. The shrinkage continued in Game 5, shrinkage that started in Game 1 and Game 2, was mentioned after Game 3, and was acknowledged by most everyone else after Game 4. The shrinkage was so bad in Game 4 — James was so bad — that these 2011 NBA Finals stopped being about Miami and Dallas. Days ago the typical white noise generated by a championship series had been drowned out by the shrieking about LeBron.

Randy Galloway, Star-Telegram: It was another stretch run that seemed Hollywood scripted, which has become the norm in this series, and speaking of Hollywood, there was even bad acting by one of the NBA’s most noted actors, Dwyane Wade. His hip hurt. This is the same guy who blew off Dirk Nowitzki’s illness of Game 4 with “he’s a great player without all the dramatics.” What’s this? The drama queen of the league scoffing at someone else’s misfortune? Right back at ya, D-Wade. And where was your game when you were needed? With the Mavericks now up 3-2, the Heat will have to use home court, starting Sunday night in Miami, to rescue their egos and their reputations by winning twice.

Greg Stoda, Palm Beach Post: Before the game, the Heat insisted that it likes – wants? – the NBA Finals this way. It insisted that the challenge Dallas is providing makes more meaningful the emotional, psychological and physical tests Miami endured throughout the regular season and in earlier playoff rounds. Better, figured Wade, that adversity present itself. “That’s what we run on,” Wade said. “It wouldn’t feel right if it was (easy). “All the things we went through all year? If we had come out and won (4-0)? Really? All that for that? “This is what this team is used to. I always look forward to how we’re going to respond.” My guess is that there’s more rationalization than whole truth in those words, and the Heat is using whatever’s necessary to get through these worrisome nights. But it’s difficult to imagine Wade ever thinking that James would be at the root of Miami’s problems.