INDEPENDENCE, Ohio – LeBron James had a bad game.
Maybe, if one of our erstwhile sportswriters had been able to embed himself in
the James camp before and after the Cleveland superstar’s head-scratching
performance in Game 3 against the Boston Celtics Sunday, we’d learn the whole
story. All of the particulars that led up to, and all of the ramifications that
spun off from, James scoring just 11 points in 45 minutes in the Cavaliers’
unexpected 111-108 defeat against the previously overmatched Celtics.
At the very least, we might have gotten a piece of sports journalism to rival
this from the files of celebrity profiles. Surely, Frank Sinatra having a cold
back in 1966 couldn’t have been a bigger deal than LeBron James having a bad
game here in 2017.
“No blame. We’re all to blame. We lost – it happens,” Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue
said after practice Monday, his team preparing for Game 4 Tuesday night (8:30
ET, TNT) at Quicken Loans Arena.
The Cavs coach had been asked, considering how much credit James gets when
Cleveland wins – games, series, a championship last spring – how much blame
should go his way when it loses. James himself did not talk with reporters.
Let’s just say Lue didn’t make it all the way from little Mexico, Missouri
[pop.: 11,543] to become an 11-year NBA backup and then coach of the league’s
title team without smarts.
“It happens,” Lue said. “For a guy who played great for five straight months,
he’s got to have a bad game sooner or later. He’s human. He didn’t shoot the
ball well. It wasn’t his ordinary game.”
That it wasn’t ordinary was evident not just in the numbers and the outcome, but
in some uncharacteristic moments in the immediate aftermath. There was James
being heckled in an arena hallway by an apparently over served fan, rankling him
enough that the Cavs star stepped toward the alleged Hiram (Ohio) College
alumnus for a brief exchange before security whisked the guy away. Think of
Sinatra in his prime being approached by a too-loud conventioneer far away from
the bright lights, in the wee hours.
A few minutes later, James needled a Cleveland radio reporter, accusing the man
of only asking questions after Cavs defeats. He was wrong, both on the facts and
to do it, but it had been that kind of night.
“I think when he goes home, he’ll watch the game again,” teammate J.R Smith said
Monday, when asked how James handles poor performances. “He’ll take it hard that
night. And then the next day he’ll wake up and be fine with it. Well, not be
fine with it, but accept it more.”
The impetuous Smith, the teammate they call “Swish” who loves the shirtless
life, analyzing James’ mental state? Major role reversal and rare, limited to
his pal having a bad game.
“That’s my job as his teammate and as his friend is making sure he stays
confident in what he does, and you know, just trying to get him out of it,”
Smith said.
Then he added: “I mean, I never have that problem. I’ve been confident every
time I’ve stepped on the court. Whether I’m falling out of bounds or shooting a
free throw, confidence is something I never lack.”
No one bothered to point out to Smith the difference between confidence and
conscienceless.
“He’s got to be aggressive, get downhill, play like he’s been playing, play
confident,” Smith continued. “That’s what I always think, when people of his
stature or people like him, you’ve got to play confident the whole night and
play aggressive. It’s the Eastern Conference Finals. [That performance is] not
enough for him. For what he does, what he brings, it’s not enough. He knows
that. We know that. Just expect him to be better in Game 4.”
The entire day went like that, James’ bad game sparking endless scrutiny,
intense analysis and plenty of snark. The usual suspects ranged from Cleveland
sports talk shows to national television networks. The chatter was everywhere.
If every version had been an autopsy report, James’ DOA performance Sunday would
have been suffered death by a thousand different causes. Here were some:
He missed shots and thus grew reluctant to take many.
James was his usual facilitating self early, getting teammates such as Kevin
Love and Kyrie Irving going. But that went on so long as the Cavs built their
lead to 21 points midway through the third quarter, that he was unable to shift
out of it. He went scoreless and missed his only four shots over the final 16:31
of the game.
Boston made a determined effort to seal off the lane to James’ penetration,
which he had used to such great effect in Cleveland’s blowout victories in Games
1 and 2.
James’ back, a nagging malady for the past couple of seasons at least, had
spasmed out on him again. Sleuths watching on TV wondered about a heat pack of
some sort under James’ warmup attire before the game. But then, his various
methods and apparatuses for dealing with back pain have been on public display
for a while.
He went passive on purpose, a challenge to the other Cavs to pick up his slack
for some future night when he might have a bad game. And in this case, they
didn’t.
He lacked focus for one reason or another, from not taking Boston seriously
after the Cavaliers built another 21-point lead to something far away from the
court, some private distraction to which folks only could allude.
So unaccustomed to playing home lately, the Cavaliers exhaled and dragged out
some bad habits from their underwhelming regular season, such as squandering big
leads and getting too casual defensively.
Maybe James took the night off for “rest” without sitting on the side in street
clothes.
And so, on and so forth. Yada yada yada. Some of it is a natural extension – as
James’ climb up the career playoff totals catches and passes one NBA legend
after another – to measure him against Michael Jordan. How many clunkers did
Jordan have in the Finals or the conference finals? Betcha never saw Michael
settling for 11 points on 13 shots in a game so big? No, Jordan never scored 11
points in a playoff game and only twice finished with as few as 17.
Some of it is the era in which James plays, rife with social media. Some of it
is James’ own “fault,” conditioning everyone to expect eye-popping numbers on a
nightly basis – he had averaged 34.3 points through Cleveland’s first 10 games
this postseason.
Some of it comes the duty of being a team’s undisputed leader. Some of it is
entirely legitimate – the difference in James’ on-court assertiveness and level
of engagement was undeniable compared to the first two games of these East
finals, for sure. Whatever the genesis, Game 3 will be remembered at least
through the Finals, assuming Cleveland advances, because it meant a required
return to Boston for a Game 5, adding a little extra time and mileage to the
schedule of a team – and star – who cherish their days off.
And some of the analysis has been over-hyped. Boston hit shots that it missed in
Game 2. James and his mates yielded to human nature in underestimating their
twice-pummeled opponents.
And as long as his margin of error is so thin now, if it’s worth noting that
this was the sixth time James has scored fewer than 15 points in a postseason
game (his teams going 0-6), then so is this: James has bounced back to the tune
of 28.3 points, 9.5 rebounds and 5.7 assists in his next game. His teams have
gone 5-1, outscoring the other guys by an average of 13.4 points per game.
If nothing else, imagine the story that might be written if LeBron James has
another bad game.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here,
find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its
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