The Accelerated Growth Curve of LeBron James
LeBron James is a on a fast track to greatness that is unparalleled in NBA history. There have been younger players who led teams to the NBA Finals and there have been players who led teams to the NBA Finals prior to their fourth season but no one who is this young and has only been in the NBA for four years has led a team to the NBA Finals without the benefit of playing alongside at least one future Hall of Famer. Bill Russell won a championship as a rookie, but he played alongside several Hall of Famers; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won a championship in his second season but he had Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson at point guard; Magic Johnson won a championship as a rookie but he teamed up with Abdul-Jabbar, the regular season MVP that year; Larry Bird won a championship in his second season but he was paired with future Hall of Famers Nate Archibald, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.
I discuss James' stunningly quick ascent to NBA glory in my newest article for NBCSports.com:
The Accelerated Growth Curve of LeBron JamesJames has distinguished himself not only with his skills but also with his poise. Consider this telling sequence from Game Six versus the Pistons. Rasheed Wallace committed his sixth foul by throwing James to the floor. James calmly stood up and for a moment the players were right next to each other but looking in different directions—-literally and figuratively. Wallace promptly lost control of his emotions, wildly yelling at the officials and getting ejected, earning his seventh technical foul of the playoffs and ensuring that if Detroit made it to Game Seven that he would be unable to play due to a mandatory suspension. Meanwhile, James assembled his teammates and told them to stay calm and not get caught up in the emotion of the moment. The great tennis champion Bjorn Borg was known for his ability to stay poised during tough matches and to remain calm while volatile opponents like Ilie Nastase and John McEnroe had Rasheed Wallace-like temper tantrums. When I spoke with Cavaliers General Manager Danny Ferry prior to Game Six, he rejected a James-Borg comparison, telling me that James is "far more vocal and demonstrative than Bjorn Borg." That is true but it is also true that basketball, which has more physical contact than tennis, lends itself more to emotional expression. This season we saw Carmelo Anthony lose his cool and get suspended for 15 games and we saw Amare Stoudemire get suspended for a playoff game because he could not control his emotions. James did not overreact to Wallace’s foul, nor did he lose control in previous playoff games when Antonio McDyess and Mikki Moore committed hard fouls against his teammates. I agree with Ferry that James’ demeanor is not totally emotionless like Borg’s but James has great poise and self-control, both in terms of rallying his team from a 2-0 deficit against the heavily favored Pistons and in terms of not letting himself get caught up in the emotions of hard fouls. By the way, Borg was a prodigy in his own right, one who never lost a match to a younger player until he had been a professional for many years. It does not seem likely that a team led by a superstar who is younger than James will beat Cleveland any time soon, either.
What impresses Hall of Famer Hubie Brown the most about James is how successfully he deals with any kind of defensive pressure that is placed against him, especially considering that, in Brown's opinion, Cleveland's roster is not that much better than it was last year (I spoke with Brown before Daniel Gibson's outstanding Game Six performance): "Their first unit is not that much better than it was a year ago. But what has happened now is this young man has taken his game to a whole new level again, taking that next step. What he has done in Games Three, Four and Five, with the 35 points (per game) and the eight or nine rebounds and then the nine assists, is incredible...You have to give him a lot of credit for not only the scoring but the fact that he is going against three guys: the trap and then the rotating big guy below the trap, five to ten feet behind the trap, ready in case he turns the corner. He’s really playing, on every possession, one against three, whether it is on the side or whether it is at the top."
posted by David Friedman @ 4:54 PM
San Antonio Versus Cleveland Preview
NBA FinalsSan Antonio (58-24) vs. Cleveland (50-32)
Cleveland can win if…LeBron James plays at a Michael Jordan level, the Cavaliers hold their own on the boards and someone--perhaps Daniel Gibson or Sasha Pavlovic--steps up to make open shots whenever James is double-teamed.
San Antonio will win because…winning championships is what the Tim Duncan-era Spurs do. Duncan already owns three rings and three Finals MVPs and the only team that has beaten him more than once in the playoffs when he was fully healthy was the Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant Lakers.
Other things to consider: There is certainly the possibility that we are witnessing--to borrow a phrase--LeBron James' 1991 Michael Jordan moment. That was the year that Jordan's Bulls finally knocked off the Pistons and then beat Magic Johnson's Lakers in the Finals. Johnson was of course the dominant ring bearer of that era--winning five championships--but those 1991 Lakers were hardly in the same class as the title winning editions. James and the Cavaliers face a Spurs team that is arguably playing as well as any of the three San Antonio championship teams. It is asking a lot of James to lead this Cleveland team to a series win over this San Antonio team but if he does it will certainly be the stuff of which legends are made. This series has some intriguing subplots. Cleveland is basically "San Antonio East"; Cleveland General Manager Danny Ferry started his front office career with the Spurs and Assistant General Manager Lance Blanks, Coach Mike Brown and Assistant Coach Hank Egan all previously worked for the Spurs as well. Bruce Bowen will obviously draw the assignment of guarding James but Bowen has not had great success against James recently: Cleveland has beaten San Antonio three games in a row and James averaged 32.7 ppg in those contests. It is important to understand that the outcome of this series does not necessarily depend on Bowen holding down James' scoring; his job is to make James work hard for his points and to enable the other four Spurs to guard their men one on one without having to provide help. The Spurs survived some big scoring games from Amare Stoudemire and Carlos Boozer in previous rounds; they never worry too much about one man beating them as long as they are able to corral the spot up three point shooters and prevent any kind of dribble penetration that leads to easy points in the paint. The Spurs' nightmare is not a 40 point night by James but a 25 point, 10 assist night during which Gibson, Pavlovic and others shoot a high percentage from the three point line and/or get a lot of fast break layups off of turnovers.
posted by David Friedman @ 12:44 AM
Deconstructing Detroit's Playoff Demise
The NBA Finals do not begin until Thursday, so before turning our attention completely to the Spurs-Cavs matchup--which will be a better, more closely contested series than some might think--let's take a look at what happened to the Detroit Pistons, who were the fashionable pick to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals this year. Regular visitors to this site know that I never bought into that. This is what I wrote about the Pistons in
my 2006-07 Eastern Conference Preview:
Reasons for hope: Detroit has All-Stars Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace, plus Tayshaun Prince, who certainly can play at an All-Star level. This team has won a championship and advanced to the NBA Finals, so they know what it takes to win playoff series. Reasons to mope: Ben Wallace was the heart and soul of this team and personified the team’s identity as a hardworking group that focused on defense and played with a chip on its shoulder because so many players on the roster had been let go by other teams. Supposedly, the absence of Wallace will allow Flip Saunders’ “liberation offense” to reach new heights of efficiency. We heard that same story all throughout last season—how much better off Detroit was with Saunders at the helm instead of Larry Brown—but the “liberation offense” was less than impressive during the postseason. Critics say that Wallace can be easily replaced on offense but that ignores the extra possessions he created with his offensive rebounding. Bottom line: That crashing sound you just heard was Detroit’s window of opportunity to win a championship slamming shut.
People who picked Detroit to win the Eastern Conference fell for the same smoke and mirrors that fooled observers into believing that Muhammad Ali did not have a chance against George Foreman in the fight that became known as "The Rumble in the Jungle." Supposedly, Foreman was an unbeatable giant while Ali was a smaller, aging underdog. Look at the
"tale of the tape": Foreman checked in at 6-3, 217 and Ali measured 6-3, 210--they were basically the same size. Now look at the "tale of the tape" for Detroit and Cleveland. Strip away talk of Detroit's championship pedigree (how long can you live off of the 2004 championship?) and championship swagger and you have a 53 win Detroit team facing a 50 win Cleveland team that extended the Pistons to seven games in last year's playoffs. Sure enough, the teams proved to be as evenly matched as their records suggested, with the first five games going down to the wire; in that type of series, one would expect that the team that has the single biggest star would have a greater opportunity to win--and that is exactly what happened, as LeBron James either made the shots or created open opportunities for his teammates by drawing double-teams.
The Detroit Pistons never backed up their sense of championship entitlement by actually playing championship level basketball for a sustained period of time in the 2007 playoffs. As Mitch Albom
wrote after the Cavaliers eliminated the Pistons, "There is no royal cloak on this team. They weren't robbed. They weren't exiled. They lost four straight to a young, hungry franchise and left the arena as second runner-up in the NBA playoffs. So long, swagger. By the time the Pistons boarded the bus, the shadow they thought they cast had disappeared permanently into the dark sky of another unhappy ending." In
another article, he delivered some pointed criticism toward the Pistons:
Either Flip Saunders or the players. Somebody is going to go. Joe Dumars is rightfully proud of the team he has assembled, and he has bucked the NBA trend of "superstar first," but results are results, and Dumars isn't in this to keep watching the Finals on TV...Either these Pistons, as a unit, can no longer deliver the big victories, or Saunders was simply ineffective in making adjustments and rallying their talent. Either way, standing pat is not an option. Remember, hunger was what got the Pistons their one championship this era: the hunger of players discarded from other teams, the hunger of a coach (Larry Brown) who'd never won the big crown.
Hunger roared the Pistons past a supposedly unbeatable team -- the star-studded L.A. Lakers -- in just five games in the 2004 Finals.
But since that championship year, hunger has been replaced by hubris, an attitude that nobody beats the Pistons, they just, on occasion, beat themselves. Instead of surprising teams, they get surprised. They struggle where they shouldn't. And near the end of the rainbow, they fall off.
Honestly, since the Lakers went down, can you remember any series -- beyond the perfunctory first rounds -- that wasn't a struggle for these Pistons? They let weaker teams get off the mat. They give back most early advantages they have. Doing things the hard way became their mantra. Flip Saunders knows a lot about basketball. He can design a million beautiful inbounds plays and he loves to tinker with various wrinkles in his zone defenses--but what he has shown that he cannot do is lead a very talented team in a manner that helps it to maximize its potential at the highest levels of postseason play. In 2006, the Pistons had four All-Stars and made a run at 70 wins but they didn't even make it to the Finals, let alone win a title. This year, Saunders supposedly flipped the script (pardon the pun), using the regular season to develop his bench and not worrying about chasing 65-70 wins. His team responded by sleepwalking through most of the playoffs, only playing hard or with focus for short stretches, before losing four straight to a Cavaliers team that has little overall playoff experience and exactly one All-Star. Not only is Saunders not the right coach to lead Detroit but--and this is just as important--his players don't think that he is the right coach. That is why at every step of the way when things get tough they start talking back to him and questioning his strategies. We saw that last year with Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace and it has been well documented that there was a lot of dissension in the ranks during the Cleveland series this year.
Saunders does not deserve all of the blame, of course. The players must be held responsible for not performing at their usual levels. Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Chris Webber did not distinguish themselves against Cleveland. Richard Hamilton had his moments--and seemed like the only Piston who showed up from beginning to end in Game Six--but also went through some bad stretches. The elephant in the room, though, is Ben Wallace, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year who the Pistons did not re-sign. The Pistons can say that they intentionally sacrificed regular season wins this year in order to be better prepared for the playoffs but the bottom line is (1) that did not work, because they went out in the same round that they did last year and (2) there is no getting around the reality that Wallace's new team, the Chicago Bulls, won more games than they did in 2006 and advanced a round further in the playoffs while his old team won fewer games than they did in 2006 and did not do any better in the postseason. Wallace's first replacement, Nazr Mohammed, sank so far on the Pistons' bench that he collected barnacles and his second replacement, Webber--who was not part of the Pistons' original 2007 plans and simply fell into Detroit's hands by a stroke of good fortune--helped to salvage the regular season but did not have a big impact in the playoffs. TNT's microphones captured a very telling sequence during a Cleveland timeout in Game Six. James implored his teammates to "lock down" on defense because they could then go to the other end of the court and "get whatever we want." Kenny Smith noted the significance of that statement: who would have ever thought that the Pistons' defense would fall to a level where their opponent would have such confidence playing against them? Look at how many highlight reel dunks James had in this series. Look at how many defenders Detroit had to shadow him with to slow him down, which enabled Daniel Gibson to shoot wide open jumpers or blow by rotating defenders to get into the lane. Those things did not happen to the Pistons when Ben Wallace was patrolling the paint. Contrast last year's dominant Game Seven performance by Detroit with any game from this year's series and the difference is clear and striking.
posted by David Friedman @ 5:46 PM
LeBron Rewards Long-Suffering Cleveland Fans
Cleveland sports teams have frequently and famously disappointed their fans in most excruciating fashion, which makes the Cavaliers' Eastern Conference Championship even more sweet. Here is a link to an article that I wrote for NBCSports.com about this subject:
LeBron Rewards Long-Suffering Cleveland Fans
posted by David Friedman @ 12:46 PM
Daniel Gibson's Uncanny Shooting Carries Cleveland to the NBA Finals
Rookie guard Daniel Gibson set playoff career-highs in scoring (31 points) and rebounds (six) as the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Detroit Pistons 98-82 to win the Eastern Conference Finals 4-2. Gibson shot 7-9 from the field--including 5-5 from three point range--and 12-15 from the free throw line. His 19 fourth quarter points set a franchise record for points in one quarter of a playoff game and played a major role in breaking open what had been a close contest. It is no coincidence that Gibson's outburst came on the heels of LeBron James' epochal Game Five performance. The Pistons were determined to not let James beat them single-handedly with his scoring, so they swarmed him constantly, limiting him to 11 field goal attempts and just three field goals made--but they could not stop James from continuing to attack the basket aggressively (he shot 14-19 from the free throw line) and their zeal to trap James repeatedly left Gibson open. This game is a perfect example of the synergistic relationship between a superstar and his teammates that I discussed in my recent post titled
"Making Your Teammates Better": James' presence forces double-teams that break down the opposing team's defense and create open shots but it is up to his teammates to capitalize on those opportunities; if Gibson does not make those shots that would not make James any less of a player but it would have meant that the Cavaliers would not have won this game or the series. James showed confidence in all of his teammates throughout the series, from his much discussed pass to Donyell Marshall at the end of Game One all the way through his reliance on Gibson in Game Six. After Game Six, James told the assembled media what he had said to Gibson prior to the game--and it sounded a lot like a veteran Michael Jordan talking to Steve Kerr in the timeout near the end of Game Six of the 1997 NBA Finals, right before Jordan passed to Kerr for the game-winning shot: "I told Daniel before the game, 'I believe Detroit is going to double-team me, triple-team me before I cross halfcourt, so get that gun and get it locked and loaded and just shoot it, don't second guess yourself, just shoot it.'" Gibson added, "From day one Lebron has been in my corner. He told me from day one he was going to make me something special, he was going to do whatever he could to make me better...when I took shots, he told me to keep shooting, don't hesitate, don't worry about anything else. When a guy like that tells you that, you step to it with a lot of confidence and knock it down for him."
James completely rejected the idea that he is a one man team: "There is no way we would be here in the Eastern Conference Finals or winning the Eastern Conference Finals if it was a one man show. It's never happened in NBA history, it would never happen in the NBA where a team has one guy and he does it all. My teammates are my family. I'm with them more than I am with my own family, honestly. And every time these guys come to the gym, we believe and we made it happen."
James finished with 20 points, a game-high 14 rebounds (tying his playoff career-high) and a game-high eight assists while only resting for 1:38. Zydrunas Ilgauskas was the only other Cavalier to score in double figures (11 points, 12 rebounds). Cleveland shot just .389 from the field but that was still better than Detroit's .359 mark. The only Pistons who played well were Richard Hamilton, who scored 29 points on 10-20 shooting before fouling out, and Chris Webber, who scored 13 points on 5-8 shooting. The rest of the Pistons' vaunted starting lineup was largely missing in action: Tayshaun Prince (five points) shot 1-10 from the field, Rasheed Wallace (11 points) shot 5-14 from the field and Chauncey Billups (nine points) shot 3-7 from the field. Billups had no turnovers but also only passed for one assist.
This game had a very disjointed rhythm to it. Detroit started off with a 6-0 run. The Pistons clearly took the Cavaliers lightly in the early part of this series but the prospect of elimination has a way of sobering a team up and increasing its collective concentration level. The Pistons spent this whole postseason acting like they thought that playing three or four minutes of good basketball should be enough to make their opponents fold--but instead of giving in, the Cavaliers answered with a 6-0 run of their own. Obviously, it cannot literally be said that the game was over at that point but I really believe that to a degree it was, because it slowly started to dawn on the Pistons that even their best might not be good enough to beat the Cavaliers and that realization seemed to throw them off of their game. There was a lot of chippy play from the Pistons throughout Game Six, starting with a technical foul on Webber and a double technical foul involving Hamilton and Cleveland's Sasha Pavlovic. You could almost see the Pistons struggling for answers, vainly hoping that if they could not outplay the Cavaliers then maybe they could intimidate them or get them to lose focus. That did not work, though, and Cleveland led 27-21 by the end of the quarter.
Then things took a very strange turn. The scoreboard and shot clocks malfunctioned, necessitating a 21 minute delay. This basically destroyed any momentum that the Cavaliers had built and an arena that had been loud and raucous got much quieter. The players actually had to warm up again and when play resumed the public address announcer did a countdown in place of the shot clocks, which were not repaired until halftime. The Cavaliers seemed to sleepwalk through the second quarter, shooting just 4-18 from the field (.222) as Detroit tied the score at 48 by halftime. The star-crossed nature of Cleveland's sports teams is a frequently discussed subject in the city and in the media room at halftime there was already talk that this game might go down in history as "The Clock" (to go along with "The Drive," "The Fumble" and "Red Right 88," three of the Cleveland Browns' infamous failures). James did not make a field goal in the first half and attempted a playoff career-low two shots--but that is misleading because he shot 9-11 from the free throw line and most of those attempts came as a direct result of aggressively driving to the basket. He also played a good floor game (seven rebounds, five assists). James and Hughes tied for the team scoring lead with nine points, while Hamilton led all scorers with 16.
The third quarter brought the grind it out, trench warfare that we have come to expect from these two teams. Cleveland scored 19 points on 6-19 shooting (.316), while Detroit scored 18 points on 6-22 shooting (.273). So, with one quarter to go the Cavaliers clung to a 67-66 lead. Detroit Coach Flip Saunders tried to buy a couple minutes of rest for starting guards Billups and Hamilton but, as he conceded after the game, that decision "did us in." Gibson nailed two three pointers and James converted a steal into a three point play as the Cavaliers opened the quarter with a 9-1 run. The Pistons trailed 76-67 when Billups and Hamilton returned but another Gibson three pointer promptly made the score 79-67. Remarkably, though nearly 10 minutes remained in the game, the Pistons never got closer than 10 points the rest of the way. Wallace seemed to be on the edge of losing control for much of the night and he boiled over with a little less than eight minutes left. First he committed an offensive foul and then right after that he basically threw the driving James to the ground. That was Wallace's sixth foul but he was not satisfied with merely fouling out or even getting just one technical foul. No, he completely lost his mind, charged at the referees and received two technical fouls, which means an automatic ejection (a player who fouls out can still sit on the bench but an ejected player must leave the court). Those technicals are Wallace's sixth and seventh of the playoffs and the seventh technical is supposed to mean an automatic suspension for the next playoff game. Since the Pistons don't have another playoff game, I assume that the suspension will be enforced in the first game of next season; it is also possible that his over the top conduct will earn him a multiple game suspension and a hefty fine. Cleveland did not fully capitalize on Wallace's implosion, making just two of the four resulting free throws, but by that point the Cavaliers already led by 14 and Hamilton was the only Detroit player who showed any sign of life. He soon fouled out and then even nervous Cleveland fans, used to crushing disappointments, could begin to celebrate.
*****************************
Notes From Courtside:
Bill Russell presented the Eastern Conference Championship trophy to the Cavaliers after the game. He noted that James is one year younger than he was when he took the Boston Celtics to the NBA Finals for the first time. Russell also said that now James is representing not just a city or a team but an entire conference.
***
James was almost giddy with joy when he spoke with reporters after the game, saying, "If I could put into words what's going on in my head right now we would be up here for another three hours. But this is special, the guys were really mentally prepared." He also reminded everyone what he had promised right after the Cavaliers drafted him: "I said I was going to light it up like Vegas in Cleveland."
A few minutes later, someone asked James if Wallace's ejection was a turning point in the game. James started reminiscing about winning a championship in his freshman year in high school and then said, "I'm lost for words right now, I'm not even answering your question." He chuckled before adding, "I'm so excited, I'm not answering your question at all, but you guys know how I feel right now." James paused and then concluded, "Yeah, it was a turning point when Rasheed got a technical, I guess." James' unfettered joy and his earnest attempt to eventually answer the original question brought smiles to the faces of everyone in the room.
***
Larry Hughes' numbers don't stand out (nine points, four assists, three rebounds) but he played 28 minutes despite a very painful foot injury, enabling the Cavaliers to maintain their normal substitution pattern. He deserves a lot of credit for gutting it out. By the time the triumphant Cavaliers walked off of the court and to the locker room, Hughes was limping pretty badly.
***
After the game, Donyell Marshall explained how this year's Cavaliers squad differs from last year's team that lost to Detroit in seven games in the second round: "We've definitely grown. Last year we were learning defense. This year we put in a whole new offense, so we put them both together."
posted by David Friedman @ 8:11 AM
Get the 411 About the NBA and More at 411Mania.com
411Mania.com is a website that covers a variety of subjects ranging from sports to politics to pop culture. I will be contributing an article there each Friday about the NBA, plus eventually participating in some of the site's forums and discussions; my first 411Mania submission should be familiar to regular 20 Second Timeout readers: it is a reprint of my article titled
"Making Your Teammates Better".
posted by David Friedman @ 6:03 AM
Instant Classic: LeBron's 48 Points Lift Cavs to Thrilling Double Overtime Win
LeBron James had the signature performance of his young and already impressive playoff career, scoring a franchise playoff-record 48 points to carry the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 109-107 double overtime win versus the Detroit Pistons. He tied Allen Iverson and Jerry West for the third most points scored in a road game in the Conference Finals or NBA Finals (Elgin Baylor holds that mark with 61 points, while Chamberlain ranks second with 50 points). James scored the Cavaliers' last 25 points--and 29 of their final 30--in an amazing 16 minute stretch; he shot 11-14 from the field and 5-9 from the free throw line during that period. He scored all 18 of Cleveland's points in the two overtimes, capped off by the game-winning layup with two seconds remaining. James also had a game-high seven assists and tied for the game-high with nine rebounds while shooting 18-33 from the field and 10-14 from the free throw line. He committed just two turnovers in 50 minutes of action. Only two other Cavaliers scored in double figures, Zydrunas Ilgauskas (16 points) and Daniel Gibson (11 points), both of whom fouled out. Larry Hughes started despite his foot injury and provided a boost with nine points in 29 minutes, including a team-high eight first quarter points. That kind of contribution is important because it means that James can save some energy for crunch time instead of having to do so much that he has nothing left in the tank late in the game; it was also significant that the Cavaliers were able to rest James for the first few minutes of the fourth quarter and actually go from being tied at 70 to being up 75-74. Superstars don't always need a lot of help to win a game; just being able to rest briefly can provide enough of a recharge for them to do incredible things. For example, contrast what the Cavaliers did in this game while James sat to what the Lakers did in the first round when Kobe Bryant was not on the court.
Each Detroit starter scored in double figures and three of them had at least 20 points apiece but the Pistons could neither stop James nor get the ball out of his hands during the most crucial phase of the game. Richard Hamilton led the Pistons with 26 points and five assists and Chauncey Billups had his best all around game of the series, contributing 21 points, seven rebounds and four assists while only having one turnover in 53 minutes. Chris Webber also had his best game of the series, scoring 20 points on 9-13 shooting.
The biggest story of the night after James' amazing performance is the type two flagrant foul committed by Antonio McDyess on Anderson Varejao with 28 seconds remaining in the first quarter and the Pistons leading 28-22. Type two flagrant fouls carry an automatic ejection and considering the amount of contact to the head/neck area that occurred on the play it is certainly possible that McDyess will be suspended for Game Six. James received a technical foul on the play for his demonstrative reaction after Varejao went down. It is very significant to note that James, unlike Carmelo Anthony versus the New York Knicks in December, did not throw a punch and that not one player from either team left the bench area, proving that it is indeed possible even in an emotional situation to not completely lose one's mind. James delivered some choice words to McDyess but did not do anything that could cost his team his services.
Detroit led for most of the first half, including a 37-29 advantage with 8:00 remaining in the second quarter. That is the biggest lead that the Pistons have enjoyed at any point in the first five games of this series, an indication of how close this series has been, which surely must come as a surprise to people who assumed that the Pistons would easily beat the Cavaliers. The reality, as TNT's Charles Barkley said before Game Five, is that Cleveland outplayed Detroit in the first four games and could very well have swept the Pistons, though he later softened his stance by adding that the margins have been so small that you could also make the case that Detroit could have won the first four games, too. Barkley got it right the first time: Detroit is supposed to be the class of the Eastern Conference but what we have seen during the first five games is that the Pistons cannot simply turn it on and win versus Cleveland the way that they did against Orlando and Chicago. Cleveland has the best player on either team and is an excellent defensive squad. The Pistons have no answer for what Cleveland is doing or they would have shown it by now; each game has followed the same pattern, with James having the ball in his hands at the end with a chance to win. Detroit is not able to gain separation early in the game and is reduced to hoping and praying at the end of the game that James does not do something great.
Cleveland cut Detroit's lead to 52-51 by halftime. During the first half, TNT's Craig Sager noted that the Cavaliers planned to change their halftime routine in an attempt to prevent the third quarter doldrums that have plagued them throughout the series. He said that the team's video coordinators were putting together clips of key first half plays that the coaching staff would review while the players had a brief players only meeting. Then the coaches would present to the players what they found on the video, in essence turning the halftime into an accelerated pregame meeting. Despite a rough stretch early in the quarter, Cleveland outscored Detroit 19-18 in the third period, making the score 70-70 with 12 minutes left in regulation.
Ilgauskas' layup at the 7:48 mark of the fourth quarter put Cleveland ahead 79-76. That was the last field goal made by a Cavalier other than James. Detroit promptly went on a 12-2 run to seemingly take control of the game with just 3:15 left. James' layup cut the margin to 88-83, though he missed a free throw to complete the three point play. Cleveland got a stop and then Drew Gooden split a pair of free throws with 2:49 remaining. That was the last point scored by a Cavalier other than James. The only points scored by either team in the next 2:18 were a three pointer and a dunk by James, putting Cleveland ahead 89-88. Billups then nailed a cold-blooded three pointer but James tied the game with another dunk. Billups missed a three pointer to end regulation.
Cleveland took a 100-96 lead in the first overtime but Wallace and Billups each made a pair of free throws in the last :30 to tie the game. TNT's Doug Collins pointed out that Cleveland made some strategic mistakes near the end of the period, the main one being that the Cavaliers ran out of timeouts (a problem that also happened in Games One and Two). That meant that after Billups' free throws they could not call a timeout and advance the ball and could only inbound the ball and throw a desperation heave at the hoop.
James opened the second overtime by draining a fadeaway jumper but Webber's three point play at the 1:28 mark not only fouled out Ilgauskas but also gave the Pistons a 107-104 lead. James calmly responded with a three pointer on the next possession. "This is Jordanesque," said TNT's Steve Kerr, who would certainly know since he played alongside Michael Jordan on three championship teams. When Wallace missed a turnaround jump shot with :13 remaining, Collins said, "We've gone from having a winner in this game to having a survivor." Neither team scored for over a minute until James won the game by driving through the Pistons' defense to score a layup with :02 left.
************
Notes:
***Before the game, TNT's Reggie Miller made the interesting point that James' much criticized decision to pass to Donyell Marshall at the end of Game One had a positive effect even though Cleveland lost that game: Miller believes that it infused the other Cleveland players with confidence because James showed that he trusts them and thinks that they can help to beat Detroit. Barkley and Kenny Smith reiterated that they never meant to suggest that passing the ball is bad but rather that James should not have passed on that particular occasion because he had a clear lane to score himself. James certainly availed himself of such opportunities many times late in Game Five, providing several eye-popping dunks plus the game-winning layup.
***After the game, the Inside the NBA studio crew heatedly debated Detroit's late game defensive strategy (or lack thereof) versus James. Barkley and Smith argued that you simply cannot let one player score 25 straight points and said that Detroit should have double-teamed him before he went into his move, forcing James to pass. Miller said that it was a situation of "good defense, better offense" and that there was nothing that Detroit could have done. Barkley and Smith cited the numerous dunks and inside points that James scored as proof that Detroit's double-teams either never arrived or came too late, while Miller countered that James also made fadeaway jump shots. Miller asked why they were criticizing James for shooting when they previously said that he should shoot more but they answered that they were not criticizing James for shooting but rather they were criticizing Detroit for not forcing him to pass the ball.
***As for the McDyess foul on Varejao, during the telecast Kerr immediately said that he thought that it should have been a type one flagrant foul, not a type two, and that McDyess should not have been ejected. After the game, Miller said that he thought that McDyess would be suspended but Barkley said that McDyess is a good guy who does not have a reputation of making such plays and that this will enable him to avoid suspension. Barkley added that since McDyess missed virtually the entire game he has, in essence, already served a suspension.
posted by David Friedman @ 2:34 AM
