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There is time for redemption. Lots of time. But in these NBA Finals — which continue in Miami tomorrow night when the Heat hope to stave off extinction in Game 6 against Dallas — LeBron James, the so-called “King,” has played like a bloody peasant instead of NBA royalty.
This time, James really is expected to win a series. In the past, he was the superstar expected to lift an inferior team. So he formed an alliance with proven champ Dwyane Wade in Miami. With the talent around him, he was expected to deliver. So far, James has melted in the fourth quarter sun.
In Game 5, the game he lived for, dreamed about, admitted was the “biggest game” of his career, he was a boffo 1-of-4 with two meaningless fourth-quarter points which completed a pedestrian triple-double.
In the endgame, when a king was needed, he was more pawn. He missed an 18-footer, charged into Tyson Chandler and misfired on a wide open 3-pointer.
So until he reverses this trend — he is 4-of-16 with 11 points in five fourth quarters — let’s not mention him and Michael Jordan in the same sentence. Or paragraph. Or book.
“We as a team, we played good enough to win again,” James said. “Put ourselves in position to win down the stretch. Everyone, guys made plays. They just made a few more than we did.”
So on the night James supplied the first playoff triple-double in Heat history, he was left insisting The Finals’ glare is not getting to him (“I don’t think so”) in the fourth quarters (“I don’t believe so”).
And despite the 13th Finals triple-double since 1985, the images of James in the fourth quarters are of him hanging on the perimeter in Game 4, and missing and charging in Game 5. They are not of him hitting a jumper over Bryon Russell or falling into Scottie Pippen’s arms in flu-ridden exhaustion or penetrating and kicking to John Paxson or Steve Kerr. Nope, James’ image is one of failure, confusion, searching for a rhythm.
Not the way to erase that check-out image he conjured for himself in Game 5 of the Eastern Finals against Boston last season, huh?
The Heat have been in position to close out the Mavs repeatedly, and have flopped repeatedly.
“We just got to push through it. At this point, we have no choice, honestly,” James said. “We got two games left and we worked hard all year to get homecourt advantage. So we have to take advantage of it.”
Of course, if they do take advantage, if James arises and wipes the smirk off the face of everyone in Cleveland, he’ll get the last laugh — and the ring. History will see him as a guy who struggled for most of the Finals but came through when it mattered most. They’ll remember the win, not the losses — assuming he comes through and just doesn’t just ride Wade’s ailing hip.
So the Heat were left insisting once again that getting James going is a high priority. Not the highest, but darn well up there. Closing out a game is sort of No. 1.
Of course, if James played near expectations, closing games would have been simple.
In Game 4, he was horribly passive, made nuns seem rowdy. In Game 5, he was active and truly played well for three-plus quarters. But when the stage was biggest, he was smallest.
“LeBron was much more aggressive,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Obviously, he had a triple-double and he had an impact on the game.”
Not in the last 2:55, though.
Maybe it is what the Mavs are doing. Maybe all the national bashing has gotten into James’ head. Whatever. The King has two games to lift himself to the level so many expected when he told the world he was taking his talents to South Beach.