It’s weird that it’s already halfway through July, and I haven’t written anything about the NBA Finals yet. 1st, I just have to say that this was the all-around most entertaining and compelling NBA season I can remember. And really, the postseason wasn’t spectacular. Obviously, there was a lot of drama and plenty of storylines revolving around the Finals, but the rest of the playoffs weren’t exactly of superb quality. Still, I can’t think of an NBA season that I watched more of including the regular season from start to finish than this one (all that, and this lockout is threatening to shorten or even cancel the upcoming season all together)…and this season wouldn’t have been half as compelling if it weren’t for “the big 3” (or more specifically LeBron James) landing in Miami. LeBron’s decision and the Heat were, as the saying goes, the rising tide that lifted all the other boats.
Now, for full disclosure’s sake I am a LeBron fan. If it weren’t for the way he announced the taking of his talents to South Beach or the pompous preseason victory parade (“not 5, not 6, not 7…”) I wouldn’t have really had any problem with his choice to leave Cleveland. Even aside from that, many people think LeBron is too coddled, too sheltered, and too catered to. That may all be true, but I can’t help but admire his skill set and his athletic gifts. He is, in the most positive sense of the word, a freak of nature. I think it’s because of that that LeBron-haters and fans alike were somewhat baffled at his uneven Finals series performance.
I’m one of those people who would say after stepping back and looking at the whole picture that this past Miami season was a success. If I told you that a team went from winning only 40-some games and getting bounced in the 1st round of the playoffs one season to losing in the NBA Finals the next, you would probably count that as a monumental improvement, right? Well, that’s exactly what the Heat did in one season. Now, with all the hype surrounding this team and the expectations that they put on themselves it’s probably not fair to view things in quite that way, but you see my point.
The overwhelming majority will say that LeBron choked in the Finals (or at the very least seemed to vanish for large portions of games at a time). I see it as partly that, but I think there were other factors as well. 1st, we have come to view LeBron as superhuman over the course of his career in terms of his durability. There is evidence that other stars, like Wade and Kobe, will begin to physically break down at this point in their careers when they are logging major minutes. LeBron just seems indestructible. Even in the ultra-intense, extra-physical postseason he was playing what seemed like 45 minutes a night without showing any signs of wear and tear. Maybe after 20-some games he was just out of gas. In the normally worthless segments where they would show a miked-up coach’s huddle, a number of times we heard Coach Spoelstra say something like, “You cannot get tired,” to LeBron. Maybe in the end LeBron was human after all.
What further magnified LeBron’s performance (or lack thereof) was Wade’s own superman act in the Finals. The juxtaposition of Wade playing like a madman with LeBron’s disappearing act made him look even more putrid. Wade, other than a costly turnover at the end of Game 5 I believe, played great…LeBron did not. But in today’s 24-7 news cycle world, how quickly people forget what happened a week or 2 before. Both LeBron and Wade were at the tops of their respective games in the Boston series (as for the most part they made Paul Pierce and Ray Allen look like 2 guys from the 50 and over league who accidentally stepped onto the court where the young bucks play), but in the Chicago series it was LeBron who almost singlehandedly willed Miami into the next round while Wade looked lost, slow, and injured. (To me, LeBron just about did it all against the Bulls: run the offense, score, rebound, and oh-by-the-way be the defensive stopper on the other team’s best player and reigning league MVP. By the way, I know it’s not how the MVP voting works, but if you want any evidence to why LeBron probably should’ve been the regular season MVP again all you need to do is look at Cleveland’s regular season record the previous 2 or 3 years and compare it with this year’s. With LeBron, they still probably didn’t have enough talent to win a title, but they were a 60+ win team. Without him, they couldn’t win 20.)
To me, the difference in LeBron in the playoffs (aside from a puzzling Game 4 performance) can be summed up by a quote Jeff Van Gundy uses a lot: “it’s a make or miss league.” It is virtually impossible to stop LeBron from getting off what is for him a makeable jumpshot. At the end of the day if he makes those shots, there’s nothing you can do. If he misses, you live to fight another day. Against Boston and Chicago, he was raining down jumpers from everywhere: pull-ups, 3’s, tough contested turn-arounds…against Dallas, those shots weren’t falling. In addition to that, LeBron inexplicably didn’t get to the free throw line at all in the Finals. Part of this was that he didn’t seem to take the ball to the basket as often. Part of it was because Dallas was able to contest most of his shots without fouling. And part of it was that refs just decided that a certain amount of contact wasn’t going to be a foul in that series. It’s not necessarily bad officiating; it’s just how the game was being called. In past series, some body contact on the way the rim might have constituted a whistle. Against Dallas, the officials made it clear early and often that that wasn’t going to be a foul.
2 things still bother me about LeBron’s game. The 1st thing is that he has still yet to develop a consistent post game or midrange jumpshot. Similar to what Kobe did after several years in the league, he got in the gym one summer following a season and worked relentlessly on those 2 things. LeBron would probably not even need to master as many moves as Kobe because he is bigger, stronger, and can jump higher. He needs to be able get the ball at the top of the key, take one dribble to get to a spot along the free throw line, elevate, and hit that shot. He also needs to just learn a turnaround and/or jumphook in the low post turning over either shoulder. That’s it. The 2nd thing is that for some reason, as big, strong, and athletic as he is, he doesn’t always seem to take the ball as strong to the hoop as he could. Shawn Marion is a decent-sized, athletic wing defender. LeBron is an inch taller, 50 lb. heavier, and can probably jump over him. There’s no need for LeBron to double and triple clutch on drives to the basket. I’m not sure if I will ever quite figure that out…unless he truly did just finally get fatigued.
And while I said from the beginning that the season shouldn’t be looked at as a failure, because of all that the title was right there for the taking. Sure, this was Miami’s 1st season with this group, Mike Bibby and Mike Miller couldn’t hit wide open shots to save their lives, and most of the rest of the Heat’s roster was utter garbage, but they were 2 games from winning a championship against a Dallas team that was flawed as well. On paper, regardless of their seeding I looked at Dallas as the weaker team in all 4 of their series. And yet in spite of all that in the end it just seemed like it was their time. In a complete contradiction to what I just said it didn’t seem as if Miami so much lost the series as Dallas won it, and by the end Dallas truly did look like the better team. I’m happy that a bunch of their vets finally got a ring. Especially Dirk and J-Kidd…it just seemed like both were too good of players to go their whole careers without at least getting one. One can only hope that after maybe the greatest start-to-finish NBA season ever that this labor issue can get solved, and we won’t miss out on 2011-2012.
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