Sedale Threatt wrote:ElGee wrote: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.
I'm going to preface everything I say in this post by, "His standards."
Yes, he absolutely did play poorly in four of six games in this series. He might as well have not even shown up for Game 5. He was mediocre at best in Games 2 and 4. Not just statistically, either. The energy and focus in all three outings, especially in Game 5, was noticeably absent.
Indeed, all you heard about during those first two was "elbow, elbow, elbow" until the Game 5 debacle, which left most observers -- including this one -- completely baffled.
I wouldn't call Game 6 awful, either -- but I certainly wouldn't call it good. I'm by no means an advanced-stat geek, but one of the main principles preached by the disciples is the supreme importance of possession and efficiency. If so, it would seem to me that he failed pretty miserably in both categories. I thought he played a lot harder, but I'm not impressed by the pretty numbers he put up.
Again, something intangible was missing, not only in that game but the entire series. I'll let his No. 1 homer, er, fan, (lj4mvp) say it best: "Something clearly went wrong. I'm again not saying it's this rumor (about West banging his mom), but something caused LeBron to suddenly
act and play differently than he's ever done before."
That, to me, says it all. It was just obvious.
Beyond that, I have absolutely no idea why you're bringing Kobe up. I don't see how that has any bearing on the subject at hand, and I certainly couldn't give less of a crap about how the two are compared. In my opinion, LeBron surpassed Kobe for good as early as two years ago. It's not even an argument anymore.
ElGee wrote: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.
Where did I shift ALL of the blame on LeBron? The series underscored two things to me: A. Just how bad a coach Mike "Mr. Potato Head" Brown is; and B. How badly he needs a true wingman.
I highly doubt there was anything Brown could have done to avert the loss, and I am the furthest thing from a coach baiter. It's a player's league. But you'd at least like your coach to bring SOMETHING to the table, and I didn't see much of anything. I don't think he commands any respect from his players, let alone helps from a technical standpoint.
And once again, the rest of the team pretty much cratered in a big series. I drank the Kool Aide this year, and thought they'd turned the corner as a team. But it's pretty clear that this is nothing more than a collection of good role players. He needs more top-end talent.
At the same time, I'm not much interested in excuses. I didn't like it in Nowtzki's case, I didn't like it in Kobe's case, and I don't like it here.
All the defensive contributions are nice, as are the fouls he drew -- probably the one part of his game that improved -- and shining an unflattering light on his coach and supporting cast is definitely valid.
But in the end, it's pretty simple: You either perform, or you don't. In this case, LeBron was pretty well below his admittedly massive standards. He absolutely, 100 percent deserves to be held accountable for that.
ElGee wrote: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.
Some good analysis. I appreciate the effort, if not the snobbery towards "box score stats."
Seriously, I have no idea how we've gotten to the point where those are categorically dismissed like the plague while trumping up other stats which are basically charted in the same fashion.
Does his creation of an extra turnover a game and collection of eight defensive rebounds per game trump the fact his scoring dropped, his assists dropped, his shooting in all three facets dropped, while his turnovers increased? No matter what the stat lords might say, those numbers still have qualitative value, and they paint the picture of a player whose production in some very important areas obviously dropped.
And again, most important of all, that's not even getting into the impossible to ignore drop in attitude and energy, leading his own die-hard fans to conclude that he played differently than he's ever played before.
