Heat over Mavs in 5 or maybe 6

[Bull Dozer]

The Heat will still win the series, and my bet is Lebron goes for close to 40 in game 6

Jordan would throw up 50-60 in this next one...just sayin...

40 in game 6?  its becoming more and more clear you never watched the nba. 

do you watch these games?  hes lucky he score 25.

He should have scored 30+ last game, you know, the one where Jason Kidd was guarding him......

[Bruce Blingstein]

The Heat will still win the series, and my bet is Lebron goes for close to 40 in game 6

Jordan would throw up 50-60 in this next one...just sayin...

40 in game 6?  its becoming more and more clear you never watched the nba. 

do you watch these games?  hes lucky he score 25.

He should have scored 30+ last game, you know, the one where Jason Kidd was guarding him......

funny thing is if we pull up threads from last year I was saying the same thing about Lebron on the Cavs.  He is great in November vs Golden State.  No defense, scores 50 on fast breaks, throws 10 assists, and showboats.  He did it in Cleveland.  The minute the games count and teams turn up the high intensity defense, he just isnt that good.  Take away his drive and he is an average to good player. 

[Bruce Blingstein]

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/nba/news/story?id=6648286

so funny and then they lose. 

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

Still don't understand why everyone is on Lebron. If you've watched the heat all year, you know their MO for winning games is with a hyper-agressive rotating defense that forces turnovers and results in fast break points. The heat win low scoring defensive battles, which is why its a **** shame they lost games 2 and 4.

This is not a halfcourt team, evidenced by the fact that their best jump shooter is Chris Bosh. Would it be nice if Lebron could knock down a jumper in the 4th quarter? Certainly, but thats not what he does in this offense. If the heat need somebody to be on the floor as a shooter, I want it to be Bosh, Miller or Jones. Lebron's role on this team is to create off the dribble, find cutters and open shooters, lock down on smaller guards and finish on the break. He's been doing all of these things fairly well thus far, with my one complaint being some lack of agressiveness driving to the hoop in half court sets, but in fairness, he is constantly double teamed.

[Triple B]

Still don't understand why everyone is on Lebron.

Here's a little insight into some of the vitiriol aimed at him:

LeBron James show: a one-hour ticket to his fabulous universe

LeBron James can send shivers through the stock market and destroy Cleveland singlehandedly, it would seem. With his ESPN special Thursday, LeBron James is now taking athlete worship to a new level.

King LeBron James will decree his will at last.

From Tiger Woods's mea culpa to the rise of the NFL draft as national drama, the worship of bulky duffers and tattooed dudes with a knack for the ball is set to dial up another notch Thursday night. Mr. James, the most coveted and closely watched basketball free agent since the advent of cable television, will announce on ESPN where he'll deliver his dunks for the next few years.

Will it be Chicago, New York, Miami, or will the two-time MVP stay with the Cleveland Cavaliers?

What is known is that James's announcement will come shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time as part of an hour-long TV special – "The Decision" – cooked up by James, which will be broadcast from the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, Conn. What is also known – or at least strongly suspected – is that the statement upon which the sporting world hangs will take about as much time to say as, "Man, I'm really in the mood for some chicken wings tonight."

To fill out the remaining 59-plus minutes, there will be interviews with journalists Jim Gray and Michael Wilbon, as well as a cavalcade of others. In short, the world is kindly being allowed a one-hour visitor's pass to LeBron James's fabulous universe.

It is, in some respects, a fitting conclusion to James's coy dance across the constellation of NBA cities. By placing himself at the nexus of sports and entertainment so ostentatiously, he has certainly driven up his own price. A move to New York could net him $1 billion in salary and endorsements, potentially making him the second athlete, behind Woods, to achieve that landmark.

James's cross-country tour has sparked unprecedented speculation in what has already been an blockbuster summer for free agents – one that will strain the NBA's ability to pay all those salaries and keep a modicum of equity through its salary cap.

Even the Leader of the Free World will be watching. "The president still believes that [James] would look quite good in a [Chicago] Bulls uniform," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

But the James free agency courtship also has a troubling side, both for the sport and the media.

For basketball, reports that he may choose to join friends Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami could tilt the sport toward the "power entourage" – where athletes, not general managers and coaches, move the chess pieces around the league.

Moreover, "The Decision" is another enormous lurch toward players becoming bigger than the teams they play for, certainly, and perhaps even than the game itself. While there is no doubting James's talent, there is also no doubting the fact that the hype surrounding him far exceeds his sporting accomplishments.

Indeed, Thursday's hour-long TV special speaks to how James has partnered with and used the media to amplify his public image. His marketing team sold the ads for the program and will receive the proceeds from them – though James has said those proceeds will go to the Boys and Girls Clubs.

In any case, the program on ESPN will be a product wholly packaged by Team LeBron – from the venue to the format to the ads to the hand-picked journalists to interview him. To some critics, this is worrying.

"I find this to be a bastardization of the role of the media insofar as in a democratic society we view the media as an independent source to report on news, but here the subject of the news is controlling the presentation of the media," says Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College. "So in that way I find it absurd, but [in this context] it's also harmless."

Not harmless to the cities and clubs involved, however. Madison Square Garden's stock price shot up 6 percent after a recent visit from James, and the city of Cleveland could stand to lose $48 million a season if James leaves, according to one recent analysis by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

But for all the interest, James' gambit could also invite hard questions about his character.

"I thought he was a good player, but this takes it a little too far for me," says Mr. Zimbalist. "Standing up on the mountain and saying, 'I'm great, pay attention to me,' it's a turn-off."

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0708/LeBron-James-show-a-one-hour-ticket-to-his-fabulous-universe

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

Don't let that keep you from looking objectively at his body of work this post season (which still is not over).

[Bruce Blingstein]

http://www.cbssports.com/#!/nba/story/15223821/wade-lebron-excuse-for-mocking-dirk-worse-than-act-itself

ignorant.  Lebron is def rubbing off on Wade.  Never knew him to be an idiot too. 

real smart to piss off the most unguardable and best player left in the finals. 

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

I don't usually agree with much Mike Wilbon says (especially the nonsense he was spouting during the East Finals), but I think he makes some great points in this article. Shortsightedness is a *****:

Four years ago, Dirk Nowitzki was considered by a whole lot of people who make a living in and around professional basketball to be a player you simply couldn't count on. Couldn't hold a two-game lead when an NBA championship was within his reach in 2006. Couldn't, as the MVP and leader of the No. 1 seed, beat eighth-seeded Golden State the very next season. Dirk, the conclusion went, was a stereotypically soft European big man. Big talent, but no guts. Not tough enough. Not determined enough down the stretch. Would never break through against a team of ballers.

Now, of course, Dirk is on the verge of being a conquering hero, as if 2006 and 2007 didn't exist. Now, Dirk is clutch, a fourth-quarter stud, one of the best shooters ever, one of the all-time greats, a leader, a hard-rock who plays through injuries, a player whose determination is difficult to match, even a baller.

Just a reminder, folks: Dirk Nowitzki was a great player before these Finals, too.

Probably, the rise and fall and rise again of Dirk Nowitzki's career ought to warn us off from rushing to judgment. It ought to serve as our great cautionary tale.

But it won't.

Because just as we collectively eat a huge plate of crow for judging Dirk wrongly, we're sprinting full speed to judge LeBron James in much the same way. We can barely even enjoy one of the closest and more entertaining Finals series ever played, for the need to decide LeBron's place in the universe based off something that happens when he's 26 years old. As we flip-flop on everything we believe about Dirk, is there no irony that the same people find it necessary to come to these conclusions about LeBron?

Dirk was 27 year old when he and the Mavericks lost to Miami in the 2006 Finals, 28 when he won the league MVP the next season; now it looks as if he's not going to retire as a bum. Even if Dallas loses these next two games in Miami, it seems Dirk at least will have elevated himself into the discussion of "best players to never win," along with the likes of Baylor, Barkley, Stockton, Malone and Ewing. By any sane account, there's a resilience, perseverance and sensibility about Dirk that have made him somewhere between sympathetic and admirable as a professional athlete.

LeBron, apparently, will have to wait his turn. Obviously, he hasn't played up to his own standard in the most recent games of this championship series, Games 4 and 5, much less the standard set by the standard-bearers, Michael Jordan, Earvin Johnson and Larry Bird. The notion that LeBron could still be a work in progress at 26 years old seems to have dawned on practically nobody. Why do people feel the need to project his legacy when at least half his career remains to be played? And why decide what he will "never" be if he fails this year, and even again next year, but wins four championships between 28 and 35? Chances are he'll be hailed as an all-time great anyway.

Sadly, it's the culture we live in, one in which ridiculous expectations have become the norm, particularly in a sports world where Monopoly salaries and ticket prices have led to a certain resentment from the patrons that can be quelled only with superhuman performances. Dirk himself gave voice to this Saturday in Miami when he told reporters inquiring about the difference between him now and in 2006, "If you lose, you get hammered. I got hammered the last 13 years; so hopefully if we win this year, I can make the hammering go away for just one year."

And remember this: LeBron is only 26 years old. His career won't end with this series.

How damning of the culture is that. OK, maybe Dirk is overstating things a bit, but not much. LeBron was guilty of even worse hyperbole before Game 5 when he tweeted, "It's now or never & "

No, it actually wasn't. Game 5 never is "now or never" when the series is tied, but LeBron grew up in a world where the rush to judgment is standard fare. Sunday's Game 6, at least for Miami, is "now or never;" and Game 7, if there is one, will be, as well. But that only applies to the 2011 Finals. What, there's no next season for LeBron and the Heat? No 2014 or 2015? No, he didn't do himself and his team any favors by suggesting they'd win "not five, not six, not seven" NBA championships. But **** if anybody is going to convince me he is somehow unworthy if Miami loses Sunday night, which is what I'm starting to expect after picking the Heat to win before the Finals started.

Don't get me wrong. LeBron is a great and flawed player, like most great athletes. This fourth-quarter disengagement is baffling. I've had conversations with nine former players since Thursday night's Game 5, three of them Hall of Famers, and all say flat-out that they do not understand why LeBron has been so ineffective in back-to-back games in the fourth quarter, which is when great players separate themselves from the merely pretty good. One player, a veteran who has played in two NBA Finals, attended Game 5 in Dallas with the specific purpose of figuring out what the hell is going on with LeBron; and after the game, he was annoyed to be leaving with no clue.

One theory you hear is that LeBron is afraid of failure. Another is that he's physically exhausted (I'm down with this) from playing too many minutes. The absence of an apprenticeship at the college level (Bingo!) is the one advanced by all three Hall of Famers (11 championships), all three of whom played in the NCAA Final Four and two of whom left college early.

"Anybody who doesn't think you gain a tremendous amount by doing this on the biggest stage under the greatest pressure is a fool," one said.

Anyway, discussing what's going on with LeBron is not only fair but is also the exact reason people gravitate to sports. It's subjective, and so many things are possible. The juxtaposition of Dirk and LeBron, or the examination of their play in the Finals so far, is irresistible. But coming to the conclusion that LeBron is doomed to some ring of hellish failure is, well, stupid.

Bottom line: The outcome of the Finals isn't all-or-nothing for the legacies of either one of these superstars.

It's as dumb as judging John Elway on those three Super Bowl losses early in his career and leaving no room for the possibility that Elway might evolve into an even greater quarterback or one day have more worthy teammates. Nobody wants to remember this now; but six years into his career, the judgment was that Michael Jordan was never going to be anything more than a great scorer, that he lacked what it took to lead a team to a championship, that he could never be a great teammate because he was too impatient, too demanding.

How'd that reasoning work out in the long run?

Of course, we're a culture that doesn't consider the long run much anymore. The only thing that seems to matter is whether you're No. 1 on tonight's podcast or top plays. As somebody who is both old and old-school, it's increasingly ruining my enjoyment of sports.

Can we just watch Game 6, even with a critical eye, without assigning LeBron a place in basketball heaven or hell?

Probably not.

Dirk himself said it best Saturday. "I'm not trying to win for my legacy or anything other than being on the best team for that one year," he said.

That's what 13 years of getting hammered will do to a man.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=wilbon/110611

[Bruce Blingstein]

Dirk played well in his losses and didnt disappear in crunchtime. 

This isnt the first time lebron disappeared when it counts, he did it on cleveland too.  that why he left, knowing he cant do it without another superstar. 

funny to read wilbon write the reason i think and said to friends why he disappears.  He is afraid of failure.  he talks the talk but thats it and he is scared to take the big shot or face a challenge he feels he will fail at, so the next best thing to do is sit in the corner and run away from it.  reminds me exactly of mayweather running from pacquiao.  same type of guy too.  guys who are great and in their mind the best at their trait, but fact is they are not the best and are afraid for it to be proven.  Its like when you lose to your buddy in basketball and at the end say "i wasnt really trying". 

i think i just nailed it.

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

The point is that the rest of the story remains to be told with lebron. We're halfway there and already writing his legacy.