Friday, June 10, 2011

The Curious Case of Lebron James

LeBron James might be the most physically gifted athlete to ever play professional basketball.  He is a sculpted 6' 8", 250 pounds, an impossibly large, agile, powerful and explosive amalgam of fast twitch muscle fiber, cat-quick reflexes and a MENSA-level basketball IQ.  If you took, say, vintage Scottie Pippen* (who, by the way, has been seated semi-courtside for every Finals game and has scored almost as many points as LeBron in the 4th quarter), exposed him to gamma radiation, and then harpooned him with a designer cocktail of HGH and Barry Bonds' vitamins, the resulting predatory mutation would approximate Lebron.

*I'm stealing a Joe Posnanski trademark by using the asterisk here -- I promise not to do it again.  Scottie the Basketball Analyst and Historian recently opined, perhaps after suffering a migraine that melted his cerebral cortex, that while Jordan was the greatest scorer ever, LeBron might be the greatest player ever.  Scottie said this before the Finals commenced.  Five games, eleven TOTAL LeBron fourth quarter points later, Scottie now looks more ridiculous than he did when he refused to re-enter a playoff game with 1.8 seconds left because Phil Jackson had picked Toni Kukoc to take the final shot (which, incidentally, he made).  Jordan, the Greatest Holder of Grudges of All Time (GHOGOAT), will never forgive Scottie for this traitorous idiocy, and is undoubtedly planning to have Charles Oakley murder Scottie and pin it on Brad Sellers, who was always weak-minded and therefore deserves to be framed and lethally injected for his basketball inadequacies.

LeBron has been -- for the past several years -- hailed in most quarters (with the exception of the Kobe-Is-The-Messiah fever swamps populated by 14 year old Mamba worshippers and Mark Jackson) as the best player in the NBA.  Stat crunchers like ESPN's John Hollinger rave, justifiably, about LeBron's historically great PER (2nd only to Jordan), and suggest that he's had as many transcendent playoff performances as MJ.  Which proves that John Hollinger, while perhaps brilliant, has descended into madness and should be involuntarily committed.

In the Eastern Conference championship series against the Bulls, LeBron not only scored at will, taking over several games in crunch time while D-Wade was in a shooting funk, but during key moments when he was asked to guard the Bulls' best player, he absolutely suffocated Derrick Rose, the recently crowned league MVP.  

The point is, LeBron is already -- nine seasons into his straight-out-of-high-school NBA career -- an historically great player, the total package (well, except for the pesky fact that he remains an unreliable shooter with a post up game that rivals that of Steve Nash), with the potential to rank among the very best to ever play: Jordan, Russell, Jabbar, Bird, Magic. That's the company he's trying to keep.

But a strange thing has happened on the way to the King's coronation: verily, he began to play like a court jester.  Again.

Yes, we all witnessed, with a mixture of fascination, glee and consternation, Incredibly Shrinking LeBron in last year's playoffs, when he submitted three consecutive stink bombs against the Celtics after his Cavs held a 2-1 series lead -- the most infamous being his Game 5 disappearance, when he played more like Henry James, notably one of the worst 'ballers among famous English writers.

We all know what happened next.  LeBron decided he had grown tired of trying to win all by himself, kicked all Ohioans in the groin, and alienated the rest of the country with "The (very poor) Decision" (the one positive to emerge from that execrable display of tone deaf cheesiness was that it made a laughing stock out of intrepid Jim Gray, who is now a side line reporter for the Stihl Lumberjack Tour) -- and took his monumental narcissism to South Beach, to join forces with co-Superstar D-Wade and Above-Average Mini-Star Chris Bosh, formerly of the Toronto Pteradactyls, the NBA franchise best known for allowing Kobe to score 81 points during a meaningless regular season game. (Incidentally, Vince "the amazing half man" Carter once scored 82 points during a Toronto intra-squad scrimmage, but banged his shooting elbow in the process, causing him to place himself on the IR for two weeks against the advice of team doctors, who all told him he had a "minor boo boo" that could be treated with a Dora the Explorer band aid and a lollipop, to take his mind off it.  Vince was once the Next Jordan, until people realized that his heart, much like the Grinch, was ten sizes too small. But I digress.)                 
After Lebron and Company -- in a lavish, garish, obnoxious celebration for having accomplished absolutely nothing -- promised to win "not one, not two, not seven, not Infinity ..." NBA Championships in Miami, things got off to a rocky start.  He and Wade didn't know how to co-exist; Bosh looked utterly lost; Rony Seikaly routinely dominated the Heat front line in alumni scrimmages; the team choked away numerous games in the fourth quarter because they executed like FEMA in close games; the media vultures began circling 17 year old, 2nd year head coach Eric Spoelstra (ok, he's 22), waiting for Darth Riley to take command of the malfunctioning Death Star.  However, the team gradually found its stride in mid-season; LeBron and Wade figured out how to dominate without getting in each other's way, the Heat began to strangle teams with their aggressive, lock down defense and jaw-dropping, Cirque du Soleil transition game, and wound up with the best record in the league.  Then they methodically dispatched proud Boston and upstart Chicago in two grinding, physical series -- the kind they weren't supposed to be able to win -- and were seemingly poised to shut up all their critics by rolling over the older, far less athletic, historically soft Mavs in the Finals.

But then LeBron apparently ate some bad carne asada, and the plot started to get a little screwy. 

7, 0, 2, 0, 2.  Those are the game by game 4th quarter scoring totals for LeBron in these Finals.  (And the two he got in game 5 were a gift, an uncontested lay up with 30 seconds left after the game was over and the Mavs were letting the clock run out.)  So, basically, Lebron has legitimately scored TWO POINTS during "winning time" in the last four games of the most important series of his career.  That's one basket more than avid Heat fan Gloria Estefan. This is not only "un-excusable", as the King himself admitted, it is unfathomable and nearly un-possible. LeBron James is, by all accounts, the best player in the league.  He can get his shot off any time he wants.  He is being guarded in this series primarily by Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd, whose combined age is 113, or slightly less than Dick Clark, pre-cryogenic unfreezing.  Heck, if he just curled up in the fetal position inside the paint, and waited for a Dallas player to trip over him, he might draw enough charging calls from Joey Crawford to get himself to the free throw line a half dozen or so times, which would be more than the THREE free throws he has attempted in a nearly 60 minutes of crunch time.  This is not merely poor play -- it is non-existent play.  (I do not want to hear any exculpatory mewling about Lebron's "defense, facilitating, rebounding, intangibles, motivational speeches during time outs or any other pathetic excuses intended to mitigate his abject awfulness at the end of these games.  Every Miami player and coach knows there is something terribly wrong with LeBron, and at this stage must be desperately hoping for a miracle cure.  Maybe he should watch "Shazaam!")

There is really no precedent for what we are seeing with LeBron.  No truly great player has ever vanished -- become an absolute non-entity, an apparition, a rumor, royal excess baggage -- to this extent in a championship series.  Lots of guys -- including the best ever, Jordan -- endured bad shooting games.  It comes with the territory.  But with all the greats, you knew they were there.  They were fully present, competing, fighting, trying to impose their will, effecting the outcome.  Not LeBron.  He continues to Fade into Bolivian, the Greatest No-Show on Earth.

It has been clear for a long time that LeBron is not a ruthless, pathological competitor like Jordan.  He lacks the velociraptor DNA that was injected into MJ at birth.  Fine -- no one else had it, either.  But there's something more going on here.  I think part of it -- which is almost never discussed -- is that LeBron is a very limited offensive player.  Yes, he's a great scorer, but that is due almost entirely to his freakish athleticism.  He is so much more physically gifted than the puny mortals against whom he competes, that he has never had to refine his game.  He does not have a well rounded, diversified offensive tool box.  When he gets hot (although improved, he remains a mediocre, but streaky shooter) he makes 3's, and becomes unguardable.  Or, he takes off like an ICBM and dunks on your head in transition.  That's pretty much it.  He has no post game -- nada, not even a fade away or jump hook -- which is inexcusable given his size, strength and leaping ability.  Further, he really has no mid-range game; he has not developed a reliable, stop-and-pop, 12-18' jumper that Jordan and Kobe perfected.  The rotation on his shot is still a bit goofy; it resembles a lazily tumbling asteroid.  So, when his jump shot goes (and right now it's clearly gone, having fled and taken its talents to environs unknown), he is reluctant to shoot, and when forced to play a half court game where he can't get up a head of steam and rumble to the hoop, he has no viable third option.

This partially explains why Udonis Haslem has scored more points in the fourth quarter of this Finals than LeBron.  I did not make that up.

LeBron also strikes me as a guy, despite all his accomplishments, accolades and bravado, who periodically -- and at the worst possible times -- suffers from a paralyzing loss of confidence.  Again, Jordan, Bird, Reggie, Kobe, all the great end-of-game assassins -- never thought this way.  If Jordan was cold, he shot more, offended by the idea that the ball was not obeying him.  (In one of his most amazing games, MJ -- who had apparently played something like 6 rounds of golf before tip off and completely messed up the mechanics on his shot, actually started off shooting 1-20 against the Miami Heat, yet remained undeterred, and scored 20 points in the 4th quarter, almost dragging the Bulls back from a huge deficit to win the game; John Paxson has said it is his favorite Jordan performance).  After any poor shooting performance, Jordan usually came out the next game in a barely containable fury, having convinced himself that someone on the other team, or in the media,  had been talking trash about him, and laid apocalyptic waste to everything and everyone in his path.  One of my favorite anecdotes about Jordan is that during one NBA Finals game, when he was struggling with his shot, players on the opposing team's bench were becoming more and more dismayed with each Jordan miss, knowing that retribution would be forthcoming in the next game.      

LeBron is not capable of summoning that kind of maniacal, win-at-all-costs intensity, which probably makes him a far healthier and well adjusted person.  But it ain't the stuff of greatness.

The hyper-scrutiny and criticism that LeBron has endured over the past week almost makes me feel bad for him.  But he brought this on himself.  When everyone is a witness, everyone gets to see the train wreck, in super slo-mo, hi-def.  I honestly don't know whether LeBron has the fortitude to snap himself out of this walking coma.  Maybe -- spurred by an adoring home crowd and erupting competitive pride -- he will unleash a legendary, vindicating performance in Game 6.  He's fully capable of putting up a 42/13/8 masterpiece, silencing the haters, and leading his more talented team to a title it should win.  On the other hand, the trend lines don't bode well; four consecutive games of "shrinkage" is a hard thing to reverse. (Plus, the basketball Gods owe Dirk and the Mavs after the Shining-esque officiating horrors inflicted on them in the 2006 Finals.)

I'll be rooting for the Mavs, but I'll also be rooting for LeBron to be great.  Watching a talent like LeBron struggle this mightily is not pleasant viewing.  Well, except in several million Cleveland households.  I'll be expecting great (and by that I don't mean that I hope LeBron plays like Sue Bird.)