Maybe this was what was needed. The superstar that is supposedly incapable of taking over. The other superstar who had disappeared and then reappeared like the ghost of christmas past to spook his coach into making some cockamamie excuse for him post game and for his antics. Maybe it was Lance Stephenson, the former prep phenom, becoming an internet sensation for the first time in his career delivering a choke sign hand guessture as Lebron James missed critical free throws in game 3. Maybe that’s what allows the giant to come out. Maybe that’s when enough is enough and great players assert themselves in a way that we expect them to.
The thing is, with Lebron and Wade and this Heat collabo, we’ve pre-written the story. Well you can make the case that with the signing party they threw for themselves in Miami, they wrote their story. We figure that this will all end in champagne and the inevitable “Here we go” articles professing allegiance to the Lebron bandwagon fearing death if you resist. We’ve been waiting for Lebron to show us what he’s capable of and he did that in game 4. Call him whatever you want, but if there was anything about Sunday it was this: it was great.
It was greatness that we had all but given Lebron yet hadn’t seen in quite some time. You see, Lebron is in the unenviable position of being born with otherwordly talents that we all can see. There are plenty of people that dissect his performances and give grades based on complicated mathematical formulas that convinced me that if I had to understand this math crap, those guys had to hear Fran Drescher reading a book to you as you tried to sleep. But the fact is, greatness is seen with two eyes and two ears.
The best is when it happens at someone else’s court. I fondly remember the moments that Michael Jordan used to tear out the collective spirit of the Madison Square Garden faithful during the nineties or when Reggie went on his scoring barrages. Or when Lebron went Cleveland (as the kids are calling it) on Detroit by scoring the final 25 points in what was essentially the first GREAT Lebron performance. The crowd tries and tries to will its team but the look on the players faces tell it all: helpless, tired, and incapble of finding any answers. Then you look out at the fans who have no answers. Who have their hands on their heads. Mouths are usually open. Hearts are broken. Tears are fighting to come out except foolish pride is keeping them in. These are the expressions of futility. Its a force of nature that you can’t stop and you hope it goes away without doing any more damage.
The Pacers had played from the tail end of game 2 till the second quarter of game 4 against a flawed Miami Heat team. Basically they played against the Knicks. A superstar heavy team with no other role players to speak of and basically 2 other guys you could semi-trust in a crucial spot. The Pacers had enjoyed competing against this team because they knew they could beat this team but its funny when two of the five best players suddenly come out of the doldrums, realize what they are and act like it. At one point during the third, and going into the fourth the dynamic duo had scored 38 consecutive points. They came to the understanding that if they were to lose, it would be on their terms and not by any one else’s.
I had a foolish conversation the other day about the play that had Miami draw up a three point shot for Mario Chalmers. The logic was sound: you give the three point shot to your BEST three point shooter. Except, that’s if you do things by the books. There’s an older book that must be brought into play whenever you have to make crucial decisions. When you have the greatest player in the world, right now, you HAVE to allow him to win or lose the game. Game four was proof. There is no way you allow the ball to wind up in anyone else’s hands EXCEPT his. He’s the force of nature. He’s the carrier of his destiny and the one who shall write the script of how it all ends.
There is nothing to stop Lebron James and Dwayne Wade except themselves. They pre-wrote their own script. The only question that remains to be asked is: who wrote such a shitty game 3 episode?
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