I’m not sure what Cleveland fans will do when their next champions are crowned, but I don’t think they’ll be setting cars on fire and breaking windows. I think they’ll walk out of their homes and head downtown, to Public Square, gather in drunken clumps, some howling, some praying, and hug it out till daybreak. I believe that Cleveland will never be the same; it will be a better, happier place. I truly believe that Cleveland’s collective soul will be redeemed on that great and glorious day. Nothing Less.
— Scott Raab, The Whore of Akron
Austin Carr had stopped crying … sort of.
The locker room was still moist, and some of the people who own the Cleveland Cavaliers were carrying around bottles of champagne that defied description (and would most likely not make it through customs). Everywhere, there were people who’d come to Cleveland to work for the franchise. But Carr, now the team’s television analyst, wasn’t just an employee. He was a lifer, a Clevelander since the team’s second year of existence (1971), a team that went 23-59 and played in the old Cleveland Arena, on 37th and Euclid, in front of 5,000 or so cigarette-smoking fans most nights.
But the tears had dried now, sort of, as all those who had come on Dan Gilbert’s plane whooped and hollered in the locker room, and all those who had grown up with LeBron James in Akron smoked cigars, and as James brought his kids with him up to the podium, the demon smote, dead at age 52, the Curse ended, at long last, by a native son of Ohio.
“Been waiting a long time,” Carr said.
They all had, the people who live in what they call Northeast Ohio — that region of the state encapsuled by Cleveland, on Lake Erie, by Medina and Elyria to the West, by Youngstown, an hour and a half east of the big city, and by Akron, about 45 minutes southeast of Cleveland down Interstate 77. They have been the ones who stayed, even as the jobs and a lot of the hope left, because most of them couldn’t go. They watched the Cuyahoga River burn in ’69, and they watched Cleveland go bankrupt in ’78, and they watched the Browns leave and they watched Tamir Rice die.
And they stayed.
They stayed and attached themselves to their sports teams, which excelled rarely but failed spectacularly when they were good. They stayed through “Red Right 88” and “The Drive” and “The Fumble” and “The Shot” and “The Decision.” All those disappointments have happened since 1964, when running back Jim Brown led the Browns to an NFL title, Cleveland’s last major sports championship. Since then, Cleveland’s sporting hearts were constantly broken anew like figurines in a china shop, besieged by a never-ending series of charging elephants.
They stayed and waited, stayed and waited. Even the promise of a local economic spike from the upcoming Republican National Convention next month was tempered by the announcements of all the companies that have already announced they won’t be coming. (Insert your own reasons why that is so here. I have mine.)
We know that sports don’t pay the rent or get drugs out of the neighborhood, or put out the fires or elect non-corrupt public officials. But we also know that sports matter, to a great many people, and most certainly to Clevelanders. And so it mattered when LeBron James became the most coveted basketball player on Earth when he was 15, because he was from Akron, and that made him important in ways that those of us who aren’t from there, and only parachute into town occasionally, will never understand.
And it mattered when James turned 18 and entered the 2003 NBA Draft, just when the Cavaliers had the first pick, because Cleveland now had the most coveted basketball player on Earth. Cleveland had something the rest of the world wanted. It had been a very long time since that had been true. And it mattered when James left in 2010 in free agency to sign with the Miami Heat, the pain so raw, the feelings of betrayal so profound that none of us who weren’t from Cleveland or Akron could understand.
And it mattered again Sunday in Game 7 of The Finals, when James led his Cavaliers to the most unimaginable of comebacks, to win the whole damn thing.
“I came back for a reason,” James said Sunday night. “I came back to bring a championship to our city. I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone, and I knew if I had to — when I came back, I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get back to a place that we’ve never been. That’s what it was all about. Right now it’s just excitement. It’s not even relief. It’s just excitement for us as a team, as a franchise, as a city, as a community. To be able to continue to build up our city, to continue to be an inspiration to our city, it means everything. I’m happy to be a part of it.”
It mattered so much to Raab, a brilliant writer for Esquire, who was from Cleveland, that he spent much of the year that followed James’ departure basically stalking him in Miami, wishing him nothing but ill will. Raab wrote a book about his travails and whose title left no doubt about his position — a book that ended, gloriously for Raab, with James and the Heat going down in flames to the Dallas Mavericks in The 2011 Finals.
There was not a sequel. Not once James — a free-agent again — returned to the Cavs in 2014, promising nothing but his best effort, but being in a much different position as a player than he’d been in Miami. There, he was the most important piece of the SuperFriends, but still one of three — and on a team where Pat Riley still held the hammer.
In LeBron 2.0, in Cleveland, there’s been no doubt who’s been in charge, on and off the court, from minute one.
“It’s bigger than basketball,” James’s agent, Rich Paul, from Cleveland, the second R in LRMR Marketing — LeBron, Randy (Mims), Maverick (Carter) and Rich — whispered Sunday night, while James retold from the podium just how the hell the Cavs came back from a 3-1 deficit to the defending-champion Golden State Warriors to become the first team in league history to overcome that deficit and win The Finals.
Just how the hell did James win his third title and third Finals MVP, on a team that looked like chum just six days ago? And how did he do that while becoming the first player ever to lead both teams in every major statistical category — points (29.7 per game), rebounds (11.3), assists (8.9), steals (2.6) and blocks (2.3) — in The Finals? How the hell did he run down Andre Iguodala for that momentum-changing block late in the fourth quarter of Game 7?
Just how the hell did James wrestle those 52 years to the ground and beat a Golden State team that looked for all the world like it would be the greatest single-season team in NBA history?
“He was willing to take that, be willing to carry that load,” Paul said. “Most guys in professional sports have a me mindset. He has a we mindset. We stretches further than his house, than his locker room. It’s we that the kids that are watching me grow, watching me and modeling their games after me. It’s we, kids that grow like me and that struggle for the next meal. It’s we and others who raise their grandchildren, single parents. It’s we, being a young black man and not supposed to make it to see 18. That’s we.”
That was the subtext of these Finals, the matchup of James and Stephen Curry — Curry, from a two-parent household, whose father was an NBA player, who grew up in a stable neighborhood, and who had eclipsed James as the league’s best player in, seemingly, the blink of an eye. It was Curry who was the two-time Kia MVP and whose team won 73 games this season, while James and the Cavs seemingly meandered through the regular season, culminating in David Blatt getting fired as coach and replaced by Tyronn Lue.
It should go without saying that James didn’t share the sentiment that he’d been passed by Curry. As The Finals went on and as James seemed to grow and Curry seemed to shrink, James relished the chance to re-establish just who the most Alpha Male in NBA was (and is). That smirk after James swatted Curry’s shot in Game 6 Thursday was not by accident. It was months in the making.
“I got a text today from someone in Chicago who said ‘the whole city of Chicago is pulling for ‘Bron,” Paul said. “And that has nothing to do with the Bulls. But it has everything to do with where we come from.”
Legacies are heavy weights.
James had parried everyone, including me, who has asked him during the last two years what winning a championship in Cleveland would mean to him. It is not simple, his feelings for the city; James has always noted that he’s from Akron, not Cleveland. His affinities, loves and loyalties are first with Akron, including the kids that he’s helping put through college. His high school was in Akron. The friends that are his closest and help him navigate his life are from Akron.
But Akron does not have an NBA team.
And James plays for Cleveland.
And until Sunday, James had never played in a game that, if his team won, would end the Cleveland curse.
Thirteen NBA seasons, and all of the big games and moments James has faced, but until Sunday, he never had a championship for The Land on his racket.
“It’s Father’s Day, Game 7, and I’m in the city I love with my one & only child, & it’s heaven,” Raab had said via direct message Sunday morning. “And it is agony, waiting & hoping & worrying. I’m good, maybe the luckiest Cleveland fan ever born. But damn, I’ll be 64 soon, & I want to share a CLE title with my family & friends. And I want one for a great city that hasn’t had much to celebrate for a long, long time — two generations of heartbreak and failure. Like the players, we can only do what we can do, control what we can control, give it our all, & live with the results. Like them, I want to BE in the moment.
“As crazy as fanhood is, it matters at depth to me & every Cleveland fan I know. I’m happy to be here, knowing that LeBron & Co. have a chance to do something truly epic. I’m thrilled, & come what may, I’m proud.”
Of course James wanted to win for himself, and his teammates, and his city/cities. But that weight, those five decades … it’s impossible to believe that none of it sat on his already bad back like a piano.
He had parried again Saturday.
“I don’t think it’s went through my mind until you asked me,” he said to me during his news conference Saturday, when I asked him about the moment and what it would mean for Northeast Ohio for the umpteenth time.
“Well, you say pressure because everyone — that’s like the whole world, the word everyone likes to use in sports is ‘pressure,'” James said. “I don’t really get involved in it. But I guess in layman’s terms, pressure, I think it’s an opportunity to do something special, and I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can be a part of something that was very special.”
Oh, come on!
Dwyane Wade. You know him! You guys are close friends! LeBron knows what’s at stake Sunday, right?
“He does,” said Wade, who flew in from Hawaii Sunday morning to be at Oracle Sunday afternoon. “He just doesn’t want his mind to go there right now. Like, you just want to focus on the task and not think about anything else outside at this point … you have to know how to do that. To be that great, you have to know how to do that. You have to know how to shut this crowd out; you have to shut out whatever everybody’s saying, everything. He’s good at that. He has a lot of years of experience.
Even Wade was blown away by what James did in Games 5 and 6.
“I told him, ‘that’s the LeBron I’ve known for 13 years,’ ” Wade said. “He’s got his foot on the gas pedal.”
For 46 years, the Cavaliers had been occasionally good, but never great. The highlight of Carr’s years as a player was the Miracle of Richfield in 1976, when Cleveland upset the defending conference champion Washington Bullets in the Eastern Conference semifinals and took the Boston Celtics to six games in the conference finals.
“It would mean so much, because I’ve been with the franchise from the beginning,” Carr said. “And to watch us almost get there, and watch us grow and grow and grow, and to finally get to the top? Like I always tell people, I’ve been fighting other NBA cities since 1971. And to finally end up on the top? There’s no way to explain it. You just cry. It’s a release.”
A generation later, another group of Cavaliers — “The Team of the ’90s,” as Magic Johnson had predicted in the late 1980s — got close, but never as close as everyone thought they would. Those Cavs, with Mark Price and Larry Nance and Brad Daugherty, won 54 games or more three times, and made the playoffs nine times in 11 seasons. But they ran into Michael Jordan’s Bulls, and could never get past them.
“The pressure is there, you know it and feel it,” Price said Sunday. “The fans are so great, as a star player you really want to be a part of delivering it to the franchise and the city.”
So Gilbert and James, famously, made up. But the task still seemed as high as the billboard that once again featured James in front of Quicken Loans Arena upon his return, the one that has “Cleveland” on the back instead of “James.” It was a brilliantly orchestrated return, as good as “The Decision” was bad — who can argue with the tale of the Prodigal Son (yes, there were two sons in the Bible story, and James is an only child. Just go with it)?
But there was work to do, last season and this season. The Cavs were at their worst when things were at their best. When they won a few games, they tended to coast through the next few. When challenged, their attention held for a few games. But then it would slip again. They were clearly still the best team in the East, but looked again like Finals fodder for whichever team came out of the Western Conference’s meat grinder.
Nothing looked especially different when Golden State won Game 4 at Quicken Loans Arena to go up 3-1. They’d dispatch the Cavaliers quickly in Game 5, and James would fall to 2-5 in Finals series, and never mind that his teams had made six straight Finals; he was going to be a loser again.
“I think when we were down 3-1, I think it was the first time we’ve had appropriate fear all year,” Cleveland General Manager David Griffin said. “I think we understood this was going to take, literally, everything that we had. This team, this group of guys, is really blessed to be able to say that whenever they’ve given everything they’ve had, nobody has beaten them … they were the most confident down 3-1 team that you’ve ever seen.”
James was sanguine as his team’s plane flew West last Sunday.
“For me, when I came up here after we lost Game 4 at home, I said, hey, listen, we’ve got to take one possession, one game at a time,” he said. “We’re going to Golden State, so we’ve got to fly home anyways, so why not have another game? And I believed in that. And my guys believe in me as their leader every single day. I preach to them every single day. I’m their leader, and they allow me to lead those guys every single night. I was just true to that. I believed, and nobody else believed besides the other 14 guys and our coaching staff and our fans.”
No, no one else believed. How could you? This was the stuff of fairy tales, and fairy tales are not what they’ve known and lived in Cleveland for so very long.
“When we were in Vegas,” Paul said late Sunday night, “and he was deciding whether or not he was going to come back, I told him, ‘go on vacation. I got it.’ And one of the things he talked about was, I could stay (in Miami) and win more championships, or I could go back home. It’s not about basketball. It’s bigger. It’s legacy. It’s giving a positive mindset to Northeast Ohio. People in Northeast Ohio, it’s really like you have to work for everything you have. And there’s no Fifth Avenue. There’s no beach. It’s a grind, grind, grind city. And a lot of people wake up with the mindset of, I can’t. People wake up saying ‘I can’t.’ So if you’re eating ‘I can’t’ for breakfast, how can you be successful?”
In the great comedy “Major League,” the sadsack Indians won the pennant, beating the Yankees behind Willie Mays Hays and Pedro Serrano and Jake Taylor and Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn. It was, and is, a cult classic. But it was a movie.
Movies aren’t real.
LeBron James? Oh, he’s real.
TOP O’ THE WORLD, MA!
David Aldridge takes a look at the week that was around the NBA, and uses that to help him rank which teams are the top 15 in the league right now.
(previous rank in brackets; last week’s record in parenthesis)
1) Cleveland [2] (3-0): Go crazy, Cleveland. Go crazy. It’s been a long wait. Enjoy.
2) Golden State [1] (0-3): First three-game losing streak of the season could not have come at a worse, or more unexpected, time.
3) Oklahoma City [3]: Season complete. You wonder what KD thought about the Warriors’ collapse, and how it will impact what he thinks of Golden State as an option.
4) Toronto [4]: Season complete.
5) San Antonio [5]: Season complete.
6) L.A. Clippers [6]: Season complete.
7) Miami [7]: Season complete.
8) Atlanta [8]: Season complete.
9) Boston [9]: Season complete.
10) Portland [10]: Season complete.
11) Charlotte [11]: Season complete.
12) Memphis [12]: Season complete.
13) Indiana [13]: Season complete.
14) Detroit [14]: Season complete.
15) Dallas [15]: Season complete.
TEAM OF THE WEEK
Cleveland (3-0): LeBron James was otherworldly, but Kyrie Irving was pretty spectacular himself, and Tristan Thompson was pretty doggone effective throughout this series in the paint at both ends, and Kevin Love and J.R. Smith made big contributions in the Game 7 win Sunday. It was a team effort and something that Cavaliers fans can savor forever. No one has ever done what their team did. That’s forever.
TEAM OF THE WEAK
Golden State (0-3): There will be a lot of ink and a lot of bandwidth devoted to what exactly happened to the Splash Brothers in this series, and whether Draymond Green’s suspension was warranted, and how much Andrew Bogut missing the last two games really hurt. But the bottom line is the bottom line: the Dubs got outplayed three straight times, and twice at home.
NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT …
Why, Ayesha. Why?
Why couldn’t Ayesha Curry just say “the refs sucked tonight,” and been done with it?
Her tweet after Game 6, after her husband, Stephen Curry — the two-time league MVP — fouled out in Cleveland against the Cavaliers put a famous name and face to the murky world of NBA Conspiracy Twitter. That she quickly deleted the tweet saying the game was rigged and apologized, citing numerous stresses — her father had had trouble getting into Quicken Loans Arena before Game 6; officials said he bore a resemblance to a con man who has talked his way into games several times over the years — didn’t matter. Those who see gray in the shadows everywhere found a new champion.
Break out the tinfoil.
If it’s June, it’s the annual airing of grievances by fans (he notes, again, that that is short for “fanatic”) who forward the view that their team was done in by nefarious means, by a secret cabal that puts its thumb on the scale to ensure that a big-market team or a superstar player or a historic franchise or some combination of them wins when it shouldn’t.
The conspirators always involve the NBA Commissioner, the referees, the Illuminati, assorted underworld figures, singer/songwriter Irving Cohen and — only once — Miss Piggy. The parties all want all series to go seven games, because the longer the series goes, goes the argument, the more money the league makes.
Except, that argument is completely false.
No matter how many times one says this, those who see hidden faces and voices controlling their lives, rather than taking stock of themselves, don’t listen. The money that ABC, ESPN and Turner (my bosses) paid to the NBA was paid out when the new television contracts were signed last year. The league already has the money. It does not get another farthing if any series goes four, five, six or seven games.
But conspiracies don’t require facts. Indeed, the appearance of facts only proves how vast the conspiracy really is!
Every couple of years, it’s necessary to revisit the reasons why constantly calling games whose results you don’t like “rigged” is so corrosive, to everyone. It’s not funny, it’s not new and it’s not interesting. It also isn’t right. The league did not suspend Draymond Green for one game after he hit LeBron James in the groin in the waning stages of Game 4 after the Cavaliers petitioned the NBA and demanded a two-game suspension, a league source said Sunday.
That isn’t possible, because Commissioner Adam Silver instituted a new rule — quietly — last season that changed the league’s existing policy. Now, if one team complains to the league about a foul call, or series of calls (teams often send in links to refs’ calls during games with which they disagree), or the results of a game, the other team involved must be informed about the complaints. It’s kind of like the discovery phase before a trial; you have to know everything the other side has as evidence. The Warriors were not informed about Cleveland’s petition because there wasn’t one.
And Green was suspended for Game 5 against the Cavs because he had been warned, quite specifically, not to hit any more opponents in the groin after he kicked Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams there during Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, and only received a fine from the league.
Once again, there isn’t a case to be made for league-controlled playoff conspiracies, for several reasons:
It requires the abandonment of logic
This is why I hate dealing with drunks and any other chemically-enhanced people. They say, ‘what’s your name?’ You say, ‘David.’ They say, ‘what do you mean by that?’ And things deteriorate from there.
The notion that games are fixed and/or rigged at this level means ignoring a series of facts that make the idea impossible: a) a lot of people would have to be involved for it to work; b) it has to work despite the talents and efforts of (ital)everyone who isn’t in on it(endital), and would be working honestly to achieve the opposite result; c) this all has to happen without anyone finding out about it; d) which assumes that everyone involved is so well-compensated that they’d never look to cash in by selling their info/story to TMZ or someone else who’d pay, e) the lie has to last forever and everyone involved has to take it to their grave; f) the fixers would have to never be greedy [if you’re paying a ref, say, $100,000 to fix a game, what’s to keep him from asking for $250,000 later? You’re all the way in. You have to pay him to keep him quiet], g) changes of heart and pure blind stupid luck.
Now: could one or two of those things happen? Sure. Could they all happen at the same time? Not unless you believe your life and what happens in it is completely out of your control.
It demeans the performance of great players
What LeBron James did in the last three games of The Finals was otherworldly. He was as good as anyone who’s ever played in a Finals game, and I’ve seen almost all of them in person over the last 30 years. And to say that he had nothing to do with the Cavs winning those games, that the outcome was somehow predetermined, is an insult to the work he and his teammates did in winning the series.
It would mean that the NBA is both omnipotent and stupid
How can a league with so much supposed power to affect the outcome of Finals/playoff games through its referees or other means be so bad at affecting the outcome of Finals/playoff games?
Among the things the NBA has not accomplished during this era of felonies:
* No seventh game for Michael Jordan and the Bulls. This was, by far, the most popular and ratings-driving team in league history. Chicago and Jordan were in the four highest-rated Finals in history (1998 against Utah, 1993 against Phoenix, 1997 against Utah, 1996 against Seattle) and six of the top nine. Jordan drew in casual fans as well as hardcore hoopheads, and the Bulls were a compelling storyline throughout their six-championship era. Yet they never played a Game 7 in six Finals appearances. You would think a league so adept at making one team win over the other would know how to manipulate one lousy game to ensure a ratings-grabbing season finale with its marquee player.
* No matchup of LeBron and Kobe Bryant in the Finals. This was all the rage around 2008; the league’s going to make sure the Cavs and Lakers play each other in The Finals. Yet two of the league’s three most popular players in the post-Jordan era (Allen Iverson being the third) never hooked up in the championship series.
* No Lottery victories for New York (2015) or Los Angeles (2015, 2016), the league’s two largest TV markets. Surely, a league that perfected the frozen envelope/bent corner in 1985 to deliver Patrick Ewing to the Knicks has learned over the last 30 years how to fix a Lottery through much less detectable methods, and would have handed Karl-Anthony Towns to one of its historically important franchises rather than the Minnesota Timberwolves (not that there’s anything wrong with the Timberwolves). But not only have the Knicks not gotten the first pick in the 13 times they’ve been in the Lottery since ’85, they haven’t come close to getting the first pick. They’ve only been fourth once, and that was last year — in a year when they would have been second had the pre-Lottery positions held up.
* No elimination of the Spurs, the team that has produced some of the worst TV ratings in history in The Finals, yet has won five championships since 1999 and appeared in six Finals series. How in the name of Arthur C. Nielsen could the networks and the league allow this scourge to stand?
It can lead us down some dark alleys
Social media isn’t all bad. It can help bring people together in times of tragedy or hardship; it can provide help to solve problems in minutes or seconds instead of days or weeks; it can just make people feel less lonely. But the corrosive effect that negative tweets and other social media produce threatens to overwhelm the good works. It often produces a mob mentality online. It’s one thing when one or two yahoos says you look fat in that dress, or you only got that job because you’re black; it’s much scarier when it comes at you from dozens of different directions. It’s hard to say it’s just a few people, even though it is just a few people. It feels like lots more.
Now, before you say “Lakers-Sacramento, Game 6, 2002”: I have said since that day that that game is the one game in all the years I’ve covered the league whose results I can’t explain. I cannot explain why the Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter. That that game’s officiating has been scrutinized dispassionately and found to be bad, but not criminal, will not matter to those who believe otherwise. I’ve said that if anyone has any genuine concrete evidence, other than former referee Tim Donaghy’s word that the game was fixed (he did not work that game), I’ll be the first to write about it.
There is none.
There are only suppositions, theories and beliefs. Which are fine to hold, but are not proof.
… AND NOBODY ASKED YOU, EITHER
Hello. It’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet
to go over … everything. From RV Oliver III:
I don’t believe the NBA per say is rigged. But, I can’t say that I don’t believe officials gather before the game and decide how they want to officiate the game (and that it isn’t based off of previous games). But, who is to say that’s so wrong?
You’re absolutely correct, RV. Officials most certainly discuss their upcoming game before the opening tip, when they meet together in the morning, and in the refs’ locker before tipoff. They talk about each team and what they like to do, and thus what to look for. Take Golden State. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are constantly moving without the ball, from one side of the floor to the other; good refs would then be looking to see if the opposing guards or whoever switches on them is grabbing or impeding their movement. The refs would go over those tendencies beforehand. But they’d also talk about watching to see if Andrew Bogut is setting illegal screens at the elbow or the wings to free up a Splash Brother. By contrast, a Kings game would likely feature a lot of paint touches for DeMarcus Cousins; the refs would talk beforehand about looking for lower body contact by defenders, and/or making sure Boogie doesn’t drop a shoulder into the defender prematurely. Now, there is a potential problem: you don’t want the refs anticipating calls by letting actions in previous games color what they see. That’s the fine line that refs have to walk every game; be ready, but let the game you’re watching tell you what to call. Do they make mistakes and blow calls, up to and including in The Finals? Of course they do. But a mistake in The Finals, or a bad night officiating, is not prima facie evidence that “the fix” is in. It means refs are human and they mess things up on occasion.
AKA LeBron Ain’t (Bleep), Vol. XIV. From Jeffrey Gebeau:
I have enjoyed some of your work in the past, but your commentary on Wade is so wrong that you’re into the territory where you really need to publish a correction. Write as many LBJ apologist pieces as you like (yes, that’s what it was — own it), but don’t denigrate a fellow all-time-great to prop him up (especially the one that to this point James hasn’t proven that he can win titles without).
During James’ first season in Miami, the 2011 campaign, Wade was fourth in the league in scoring at 25.5 ppg (James was second at 26.7 ppg). In the playoffs, Wade actually outscored James 24.5 ppg to 23.7 ppg.
I’ll return to that postseason in a moment, but, first, it doesn’t take too much critical thinking to deduce that the pair were the two best players in the league that season. Prior to playing together, both routinely clocked in at 27-30 ppg and about 7 apg. What do you think would have happened if they had stayed apart?
It was LeBron’s failure in The 2011 Finals that cost Wade a second Finals MVP, which would have cemented his legacy and probably made him less likely to be subjected to snide (and grossly inaccurate) asides from myopic media members (like yours). Then after 2011, Wade alone made the decision to step back, not because he was “on the back nine of his career,” but because he realized after The Finals that James couldn’t function as a co-leader. Wade had been both the star and a supporting player in his basketball lifetime, while James had always been leading man. In other words, Wade chose to defer because James can’t follow not because he couldn’t lead.
Wade explained all this at the time, but I’m not surprised you missed it (you all never pay attention to him anyway). Anyway, despite stepping back, Wade averaged 22 pts and 5 apg (if that’s “charitably, the back nine of his career,” then, tell me, how good was his front nine?), although by the end of the season he did sustain knee injuries that would mark the close of his prime.
I could continue, but I hope you recognize at this point how egregious your error was. There’s a lot that could be said about how sadly typical it is of the coverage Wade has received throughout his career, and how that has resulted in conceivably the worst systematic underrating of a superstar in sports history. (Want to argue my point? I have numbers).
But, at this point, you have the chance to show your substance as an analyst and admit that you got this one badly wrong (because I’ve rendered your argument beyond salvage). Ideally, you will man up in print but, to show yourself to be a journalist of some mettle, you will at least acknowledge this with a mea culpa.
Um, you were saying, Geoffrey?
But forget that James now has as many rings as Wade, and has led his Cavs to the championship. Let’s look at your argument. What you’ve “proven” is you can cherry pick stats. I am not anti-Wade; I just stated an opinion, based on facts.
In Wade’s first seven (pre-LeBron) years with the Heat, he averaged 25.4 points per game — including the 2008-09 season, when he led the league in scoring at 30.2 per game. And, he averaged 9.2 free throws per game in those seven years. Getting to the free throw line was one of the central parts to Wade’s game, which relied then on his strong drives to the basket and ability to absorb contact while getting his shot off. Wade did indeed have a very good year in 2010-11 — which, conveniently, is the only season of the four seasons he and James played together that you wrote about. And he was very good the first five games of The 2011 Finals against Dallas, averaging 28.4 points per game.
But in the last game — which Miami lost, at home — Wade shot 6-for-16 and scored 17 points. I’m not saying D-Wade cost them the series with one bad game, but to say Miami lost to Dallas due to “LeBron’s failure” is ridiculous. He certainly wasn’t great in that series. But he averaged 17.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 6.8 assists in the series, and shot 48 percent from the floor. Again: not great, but hardly a “failure.”
And after that season, Wade’s scoring numbers went, slowly but steadily, down: 25.5 points in 2011-12, 22.1 in 2012-13 and 21.2 in 2013-14, the last season he and James played together. His free throw attempts have also gone down — over the last six seasons, he’s averaged 6.3 attempts per game, down almost three per game compared with his first seven seasons. And he’s been slowed by injuries, most notably to his left knee, which required surgery in 2012, and in which he’s battled tendinitis since having his meniscus removed while at Marquette in 2002.
The injuries left Wade, by 2013-14, unable to play in back to back games, as the Heat managed his minutes. And in The 2014 Finals, he averaged just 15 points per game and shot 43.8 percent in the series against the Spurs. He’s still been a very good player for most of these last six seasons, because he stays in great shape and he’s smart and tough. But he’s not as explosive as he used to be, and not as potent a scorer.
Your assertion that he decided to “take a step back” because James had to lead is not correct. He took a step back because he wasn’t physically as capable of dominating games any more, and the Heat did better with the ball in James’s hands, with Wade and Chris Bosh playing off of James as he drew double teams. That was the whole point of James coming down there; as he entered his 30s, Wade needed help. In other words, Wade was on the back nine of his career, which is what I wrote (other than the word “charitably,” which may have been what triggered all of this from you). Feel free to disagree.
Return of the Sidewinder! From John Ferensen:
Any thoughts on Kevin Calabro finally getting back in the booth for a full 82-game schedule? Also, if the Trail Blazers could somehow steal Marques Johnson away from Milwaukee, the dream of the ’90s really would be alive in Portland, right?
First, it’s never a good day in our business when someone gets fired, so I was sorry to hear the Blazers were replacing their longtime local TV guys, Mike Rice and Mike Barrett, along with radio analyst Antonio Harvey. But I am delighted that Kevin, who was the Sonics’ play-by-play guy for more than 20 years on radio and TV, is back with a team after spending the last few years working for ESPN Radio. He’s one of my all-time favorite announcers; I so loved listening to his calls during the Gary Payton-Shawn Kemp years in Seattle. The Blazers made an outstanding hire.
Send your questions, comments, criticisms and a new nurse’s station that has WD40 in stock to daldridgetnt@gmail.com. If your e-mail is sufficiently funny, thought-provoking, well-written or snarky, we just might publish it!
MVP WATCH
(last week’s averages in parentheses)
1) LeBron James (36.3 ppg, 11.7 rpg, 9.7 apg, .506 FG, .731 FT): An incredible three games by a great player, who now has to be considered one of the greatest in league history, on the short, short list of the all-time best.
2) Stephen Curry (24 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, .361 FG, .929 FT): Whether or not he was still not right after the first-round knee injury in The Finals, Chef didn’t play well in Game 7. Not at all. It wasn’t just the missed shots; it was the terrible decisions he made passing, and the reaches and other bad decisions on defense that again led to foul trouble. He may have wanted this a little too much.
3) Kevin Durant: Season complete.
4) Russell Westbrook: Season complete.
5) Kawhi Leonard: Season complete.
I’M FEELIN’…
1) Sager, at The Finals. Long overdue. It was so great to see Craig get to work Game 6 on Thursday in Cleveland, after so many years. A very nice gesture from ESPN/ABC, and kudos to my Turner folk for helping to make it happen.
2) Praise for the Four-Letter, part II: “O.J.: Made in America,” its seven-hour doc on the life and times of O.J. Simpson — the most famous person in the world ever put on trial for murder — is astonishing in its breadth and depth. It takes a subject that everyone of a certain age believes has been exhausted, and finds new context and information surrounding the 1994 trial of Simpson for killing his ex-wife, Nicole Simpson Brown, and Ron Goldman, a restaurant waiter who was, tragically, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Director Ezra Edelman makes the trial the horrible nexus of race, class, wealth, celebrity, privilege, and the history of police misconduct in Los Angeles. There are very few who come out looking virtuous, and Simpson is correctly portrayed as an utterly vacuous and vicious person. And it is impossible to conclude anything other than he slaughtered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
3) Getting the Pelicans’ ownership situation settled, at long last, gives New Orleans a chance to really go forward now and make long-term roster decisions on how to best surround superstar Anthony Davis. And that’s a good thing. Both the city and the player deserve a real chance to see how far they can go together. (And, the raise in the projected cap for next year from the expected $92 million to $94 million puts another $600,000 or so in Davis’s pocket.)
4) If I wasn’t at Game 7 yesterday, I would so be doing this with my sleeping children. Oh, and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.
NOT FEELIN’ …
1) That was a devastated Warriors locker room Sunday night. They will face a lot of tough questions, internally and externally, in the coming days. It will take a very tough team mentally to come back from this. It’s possible — see the 2013-14 Spurs — but it’s going to be very difficult.
2) This is a terrific read, but so sad to think about. We all miss Flip, but his family carries a special burden today, the day after Father’s Day.
3) Hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Len Bias died. Thirty years. He’s frozen in time, his potential in front of him. The cruelty of his death still stings.
4) Tough week for the Australian national men’s team. First, Andrew Bogut suffers a knee injury in Game 5 of the Finals that not only put him out for that series, but puts his status for playing in the Olympics for his native country in peril. Then, the Jazz announced Saturday that guard Dante Exum will not play for Australia this summer in order to finalize his rehab for the torn ACL he suffered last August.
BY THE NUMBERS
50 — Years since a team down 3-1 in The Finals even forced a Game 7, which the Cavs did by routing the Warriors in Games 5 and 6. The last team to get to Game 7 in the Finals after trailing 3-1 was the 1966 Lakers, who forced a Game 7 against Boston — which they lost. No team trailing 3-1 in The Finals had ever come back to win the series before Cleveland pulled it off Sunday.
714,000 — Square footage of the Bucks’ new arena in downtown Milwaukee, which is scheduled to anchor a sports and entertainment district featuring shops and restaurants as well as what is currently called the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center. The official groundbreaking for the building, set to open for the 2018-19 season, was last Saturday in Milwaukee.
9 Teams — Brooklyn, New York, Washington, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Miami, Cleveland and Oklahoma City — without a first-round pick in Thursday’s Draft.
Q&A: Karl-Anthony Towns
The young man is so polished for his age. That was the case when Karl-Anthony Towns lived up to all the hype of being the number one pick in last year’s Draft, winning unanimous Rookie of the Year honors in a unanimous vote. Towns led all rookies in scoring (18.3) and rebounds (10.5), and gave Minnesota reason to believe a quick turnaround next season under new Coach Tom Thibodeau and fast rising teammates Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine is possible.
Towns was in Cleveland for Game 6 of The Finals after spending a week in China for Nike, and came to The Finals with Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell, one of his best friends (he told the L.A. Daily News that Russell was someone “I would let my daughter date if I had one.” Perhaps we’ll just leave this over here.) But Towns clearly has a leg up on his friend when it comes to team building.
Me: Why did you want to come to The Finals?
Karl-Anthony Towns: I wanted to learn. All this energy, and this atmosphere, it’s unmatched. I just wanted to come and learn how and what it takes to be in The Finals and how it is to be in The Finals. I want to bring this to Minnesota. This is what I want to bring, this playoff atmosphere. Especially in The Finals.
Me: I’m sure you’ve looked at a lot of Bulls tapes already, and you see how Thibs used Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah at the top in a lot of sets. Is that transferrable to your skill set, given your proclivity already with the jumper?
KAT: I work tremendously hard on my game, so anywhere he puts me, I feel comfortable. That’s what my game is built around, versatility. I understand the course of how I play, which is being as versatile as possible. If he needs me to be (like) the Golden State Warriors, Klay (Thompson), Stephen (Curry), Anderson Varejao, all of them. That’s how my game is built.
Me: Now, you know some folks around the league already, and I’m sure you know Thibs’ rep. Have you told him ‘look, we’re young, but that doesn’t mean we need to have three-hour practices all the time’?
KAT: I work on my body tremendously to be able to withstand whatever is thrown my way. And if he’s a grinder like we all hear he is, hopefully I have a big enough cheese roll to make it through the season. He can grind me out the whole year.
Me: What is the next step for your young nucleus up there: yourself and Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine?
KAT: Making the playoffs and learning to win more games than our history shows. And that’s big. Andrew and Zach have had two years of experience; I’ve had one. But I think one thing I can bring is my experience at Kentucky. I know what it feels to be like the Golden State Warriors, be undefeated, have history on the line, make history. For them, it’s all about finishing history. Unfortunately in college I didn’t get a chance to finish history. They have a chance. You never want to look back and say you didn’t do enough. That’s what I bring to Andrew and Zach and the nucleus, and that winning tradition that I’ve built since high school and built in college.
Me: So much was made of the mentorship Kevin Garnett brought to you this year. It’s obviously up to him what he decides to do, but if he doesn’t come back next year, what will you take from your season with him?
KAT: Everything. The Rookie of the Year (award) doesn’t happen without him. He teaches me so much. My rookie year was so much easier, and it was so much shorter than most rookies, due to the fact that I had KG. That changes everything. I was blessed to have the opportunity to play with KG — not only learn, but play with KG. Not many people in the NBA are able to say that.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
— Pacers center Myles Turner (@Original_Turner), Thursday, 10:37 p.m., as Stephen Curry was being ejected from Game 6 after picking up his sixth foul, then uncharacteristically losing it with the referees.
THEY SAID IT
“No matter how you look at it, how you twist it or turn it, whether I think it was right or wrong, whether someone else thinks it was right or wrong, I let my teammates down. And I feel like when you let your teammates down, it’s being a bad teammate.”
— Draymond Green, during a sitdown interview with me following his Game 5 Finals suspension for striking LeBron James in the groin in the waning moments of Game 4.
“Whatever happens, happens. We had a great run, maybe the best ever for a Big Three. We’ll see what happens.”
— Tony Parker, to the San Antonio Express News, on the looming deadlines for both Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili to decide if they’re going to return next season or retire. Ginobili has until Wednesday to opt in for the last year of his contract; Duncan has until June 29 to decide. (Ginobili has committed to playing in Rio for his native Argentina in August, for what that’s worth.) Of course, both players could also work out long-term deals with the Spurs if they so chose.
“It sounds so old-man ridiculous to me. Everything gets better in America except basketball players. I’m telling you … if the stopwatch had never been invented, they would be arguing that Jesse Owens was faster than Usain Bolt. Or that Mark Spitz swam faster than Michael Phelps. And it just doesn’t make any sense.”
— ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, on criticism of today’s NBA game by former players.
Longtime NBA reporter and columnist David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
