Post#30 » by Bel » Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:44 am
Lebron fanatics provide the best comedy in basketball. It's irreplaceable. Any criticism is instantly met by searching for the nearest lexcuse. Which is particularly hilarious because all during 2009-2010 the talk was 'there are no excuses this year, the Cavs have everything they need to win.'
Instead of taking Lebron's PR narrative at face value, let's look at Shaq's autobiography, who was actually there. He has always been partial towards Lebron, is quite gentle overall in the book, (and specifically ends this section with 'I wouldn't bet against Lebron, which is quite sagely written in 2011), so he can't be dismissed as a hater.
"The year we played together with the Cavaliers, I really believed we were going to win the championship. I thought we were good enough.
The Celtics were just smarter. They knocked us out of the 2010 Eastern Conference Finals and they did it by doing a great job of loading up. I was trying to tell LeBron, “Hey, if you get the ball do something fast, so they can’t get into position.” But when he got the ball and did the Jordan stare, now Kendrick Perkins can come over and meet him at the baseline. Then Paul Pierce has time to rotate. If we had moved the ball a little more, we would have had more success. You’ll never beat any team that’s standing there waiting on you.
I know everybody wants to know what really happened in those 2010 playoffs...There’s no question in Game 5 LeBron was kind of out of it. He didn’t even score a basket until late in the third quarter and was something like 1 for 11 from the perimeter. But that’s not as unusual as people think. I’ve seen plenty of superstars have a bad shooting game and get into a funk. I can remember that happening to Dominique and even Larry Bird. Shooters get rattled sometimes when they don’t shoot well. Scorers get frustrated when they don’t score.
Now some of my teammates told me later they were trying to talk to LeBron on the bench and he wasn’t responding. He was, said one of the guys, almost catatonic.
...Only LeBron knows what was bugging him. Maybe it was personal problems, maybe it was his sore elbow, maybe it was all that pressure and expectations. Hard to say. He kind of checked out for part of the 2011 NBA Finals against Dallas, too.
I always believed he could turn it on at any moment, but for some reason he didn’t. Not against the Celtics in 2010 and not against the Mavericks in 2011.
It was weird. It’s one thing to be a passer, but you are supposed to be the One. I’m watching him play against Dallas, and they’re swinging the ball and they get him a perfect open look—and he’s kicking it to Mario Chalmers. Makes no sense. I told people, “It’s like Michael Jordan told me. Before you succeed, you must first fail.”
A phantom or minor elbow injury that does not show up on MRIs or medical exams nor in earlier series wins does not make someone become "almost catatonic." Shaq is saying that the loss wasn't from misplay, it was something in his head. The Cavs didn't lose so embarrassingly because Lebron's play was say 10% worse due to injury: they lost because they were lost on the court. The leader is there to set an example, and when you have such a one-person centric team, if the leader mentally shuts down then what do you think will happen to the team who has been made to be dependent on that person? There's no excuse that can make up for the entire Cavs team getting outscored by freaking Glen Davis the first half of the 4th, losing by 32 at the Q, or any number of other absurdities that game.
Lebron needed to grow to get past these hurdles, and he's really done so after he exploded in 2012. That he has now done so doesn't erase his past failures.
It's fine to have a bad game: Lebron went 2-18 with 10 turnovers in g1 of the 2008 Celtics series, but the Cavs only lost by 4 points. They still played hard, Lebron tried, and the team played like a team instead of a defective 1-man show. Lebron's box score may have been worse in that 2008 game but he was far more impactful. In the end who cares about the stats, it's about what you propel your overall team to do. The Cavs aimlessly passing the ball around without care or concern for trying to win, on the verge of elimination in g6, is simply due to an utter failure in leadership. The body language of Lebron and the Cavs in games 5 and 6 is so blatant that it makes a very nice litmus test of who actually watched the games and who's part of the PR squad here to save the day.
As for the topic at hand, I actually like Lebron's 2010 RS more despite the worse performance mainly due to his defense. The 2009->2010 transition was a big defense for offense tradeoff besides Anderson Varejao and Delonte West getting closer to their peak years, yet Lebron filled in the holes seamlessly with his ridiculous motor and better iq. The Cavs drtg dropped off a lot less than I thought it would have with those trades and with Lebron missing those final games. Lebron was constantly helping all around and covering openings. After rewatching some of 2010 last year, imo he was way better defensively in 2010 than in 2013, where he received way more media attention for defense. The Celtics defended him much 'better' than the Magic did (given they didn't scheme against Lebron specifically) so naturally he'd have better numbers, all mental or quitting issues aside. But overall as said Lebron's jumper was on fire for the 2009 playoffs and he had a lot of good games.
