MAN WITHOUT A TEAM: LeBron James walks off the court — and into free agency — after the Cavaliers lost 94-85 to the Celtics in Game 6 last night in Boston.
BOSTON — As the final seconds finally melted off the clock, as the reality of the moment finally struck, LeBron James ruefully shook his head and untucked his jersey. Rasheed Wallace swallowed him in a bear hug, and Ray Allen followed, and the final buzzer sounded somewhere underneath the raucous rancor of 18,624 locked and loaded Celtics fans.
James took a look at the scoreboard: Celtics 94, Cavaliers 85. Zero seconds left on the clock, zero time left in this most calamitous of Cleveland seasons.
Zero hour. He was officially on the clock.
“I want to win,” he would say later. “And I’ve given myself some options.”
He’d walked off the court and taken off his jersey, an act he probably didn’t mean to be symbolic but most certainly was. Afterward, he had lowered his feet into a large metal ice bucket, wiping his face periodically, accepting handshakes and half-hugs from teammates and team officials, and it was hard not to remember all the long, losing nights that Patrick Ewing struck a similar pose; all that was missing was the blue terrycloth robe.
He had played indifferently for most of the first three quarters of this now-or-never night at TD Garden, but when the fourth quarter arrived, so had he. Into the teeth of a vicious verbal assault he had drained a pair of 3s that sliced a 10-point lead to four, and quieted the Garden to a whisper. After a Boston miss the ball was in his hands again, and the Garden was hushed, and he laid a perfect no-look pass on Anderson Varejao’s fingers for what should’ve been a lay-up and a two-point game, and . . .
And here, maybe — just maybe — was where the Knicks’ place as a long shot in the coming LeBron LeLottery may have strengthened: Varejao missed the layup.
It was only the latest eye-opening moment when it may have dawned on James — as it has many in New York — that the Cavaliers haven’t exactly surrounded him with the Showtime Lakers.
The notion that he would be walking away from a surefire champion never looked sillier than when you watched Anthony Parker disappear, or Antawn Jamison shrink, or Varejao miss one chip shot after another. The notion that the Knicks would offer him a black hole compared to this, especially with the inclusion of a second max player?
Suddenly, not so silly.
And suddenly, neither was the notion. Forty-seven days now separate James from free agency, and there will be other suitors. The Bulls look like an interesting possibility, especially if Phil Jackson leaves Los Angeles, as is expected, and seeks one last pantheon project, adding LeBron to Kobe and Shaq and Michael on the list of one-named icons he converted from showmen to champions.
“Winning is my only concern,” he said.
But it is telling that when he referred to his “team” afterward, the one that will help him shape his life July 1 and beyond, he most certainly was not referring to the Cavaliers, but to his agent and his entourage, the only team that truly matters now.
“I can honestly say I didn’t spend any part of this season worrying about where I would be next season,” he said, but now that’s all he needs to think about, and all that will consume basketball fans in New York City for each of the next 47 days.
And why not? The Knicks are in play. They are on the clock every bit as much as James is. Even Celtics fans admitted as much, using James’ impending free agency as a rallying cry, several times chanting “New! York! Knicks!” as he tried to shoot free throws. The Knicks are in play, and James is on the clock, and for one of the first times after an empty decade of basketball at Madison Square Garden, Knicks fans had a reason to care about the fourth quarter of a basketball game in May.
And there was James, filling his stat line, 27 points and 19 rebounds and 10 assists, falling one turnover shy of the rare quadruple double. There was James leading the charge back. Then watching the Celtics take over, watching another Cleveland season crumble to dust, watching one clock run down to zero, zero, zero.
With another one fully wound and ready to go.