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 . . .
