Sedale Threatt wrote:ElGee wrote:Of course it has a significant impact on his image, because his image is shaped by the masses who are slaves to team success, What Have You Done For Me Lately disease, inability to analyze the sport beyond basic box stats and suffer from All Or Nothing Syndrome (see: Manning, Peyton, Super Bowl).
OK, then -- give us your analysis of his performance beyond to so-called "basic box score stats." Which is an ironic statement, as you seem to be clinging pretty heavily to his pts/rbs/assts from Game 6 and not much else.
What subtleties, what intangibles that elude basic observation did he bring that can outweigh what occurred?
I'm sure he'll be thrilled to have been "the best player in the series" despite scoring less, shooting worse, committing more turnovers with less assists than he did during the RS, all while playing with noticeably less energy and intensity in more games than not, as his team was eliminated by a team they finished 11 games ahead of in the standings.
First of all, he didn't play poorly for 2/3 of the series. And he wasn't "awful" in game 6 (Bastillon). The 9 turnovers certainly nullified a fantastic game, but that didn't make the game awful. It was better than nearly every Kobe Bryant playoff game in 2010.
Secondly, in the words of Mark Jackson, you're better than that Sedale. The Celtics were 23-5 out of the gates before chemistry and injury severely derailed their season. When healthy, from 2008-2010 that group has played around 65-win basketball, and they brought back elite -- no, super-elite -- defense in the final few games. It's inaccurate to depict this as a JordanBullsian situation of a superior team crumbling against an inferior opponent, when it was quite clear from the opening game of the series that Boston absolutely dominated Cleveland in personnel (players 2-7), on the defensive end and in coaching.
Mike Brown's bizarre rotations -- Shaquille O'Neal logging so many minutes, Anderson Varejao logging so few, West and Z coming and going, leaving Mo Williams on Rondo for so long -- didn't affect how LeBron played as an individual, but they did play a role in Cleveland losing, which everyone seems to want to blame LeBron for. Antwan Jamison and Mo WIlliams, who were guarding arguably the two best Celtics all series, were absolutely horrible defensively. Again, shifting all of this blame to LeBron is bizarre.
As for James, he was one of the best defensive players in the series (and has been one of the best defensive players in the playoffs). Anyone who's done analysis of the ~484 possessions he played in the series would see that his man converts at an extremely low rate, he completely flummoxed Paul Pierce (I think I mentioned this in the 08 thread), he created nearly an extra turnover per game not captured in the box, he committed very few shooting fouls, made a handful of defensive errors, had a number of blocks on layups/close shots, added nearly 8 defensive rebounds per game and over 2 steals per game.
Offensively, outside of the box score numbers, he drew 47 fouls (Rondo was second in the series with 28), he created offense for teammates 40 times -- that is, the number of times the defense collapsed on him and a teammate ended up with an open look because of it. Rondo was second again with 29 occurrences.
Rondo's game 3 was a little better than James game 6, mostly because of turnovers. But the games were quite similar and the fact that Rondo's is lauded as historic while people, including someone in this thread, literally called James' "awful" is flabbergasting, to say the least.
