Love him or hate him, LeBron James hits new heights
Here’s LeBron James, greatest basketball player/biggest ham on earth, advancing to his fifth straight NBA Finals after his Cleveland Cavaliers completed a sweep of the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference Finals Tuesday night. It feels like it was a foregone conclusion since James told his coach David Blatt, nope, I’m not running your play, I’m running my play, and then drilled a 3-pointer at the buzzer to beat the Bulls in Game 4 of the Eastern semis.
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And over here are the Hawks, winners of 60 games during the regular season, including 19 in a row in January. The Hawks had four All-Stars, their entire starting lineup was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month in January, their coach – Gregg Popovich disciple Mike Budenholzer – won Coach of the Year, and the team ran away with the East, taking the top seed in the East by seven games.
The Hawks peaked back before we were buried by 100 inches of snow, but because LeBron took the first two-plus months of the season off while Cleveland first surveyed then retooled its roster on the fly, they were able to survive finishing the season 20-14 after a 40-8 start. Meanwhile, LeBron flipped the switch when he was ready, with the Cavs floundering at 19-20, when he had in place a supporting cast he deemed worthy of his undivided attention.
Now, as the Cavs prepare to make their second-ever Finals appearance (first since LeBron dragged them there as a 22-year-old to get swept by the Spurs in 2007), it’s perfectly reasonable to shrug at the fact that LeBron is there once again matching names like Russell, Cousy and Heinsohn in the category of five consecutive Finals appearances. But how he did it, especially against a machine as once well-oiled as Atlanta’s, warrants some serious appreciation.
Love LeBron or hate him, it’s impossible to not marvel at what he just accomplished. Kevin Love is out with a case of the Kelly Olynyk dirties. Kyrie Irving, who looked poised to take a major step in Round 1 against the Celtics, has been in and out of the Cavs lineup with knee and ankle issues. That left the likes of J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and Timofey Mozgov, aka the 2010-2011 Knicks, to join Tristan Thompson, Matthew Dellavadova (is he a basketball player or an algebra tutor?) and career Friend of LeBron James Jones in holding down the fort while the King took over.
James averaged 30.3 points, 11 rebounds, 9.3 assists and 1.5 steals over the course of the four games. In Game 3, the Hawks’ last chance to make the series competitive, he went for 37-18-13, and while his theatrics and hamminess and look-at-me behavior were both ridiculous and completely unnecessary (his doubling over in pain/exhaustion followed by a howler of a postgame interview were the latest examples of how little self-awareness he possesses), his ability to make the most out of less than ideal teammates under less than ideal circumstances was as apparent as ever.
It was enough to blow the unhealthy Hawks apart. Trying to beat LeBron at Bradley Cooper in Limitless/Scarlett Johansson in Lucy mode with Paul Millsap (shoulder), Al Horford (knee), DeMarre Carroll (knee), Kyle Korver (ankle) and Thabo Sefolosha (broken leg) would have been tough enough, but Atlanta, already operating at less than peak efficiency, put up very little resistance. The Hawks led by six at the end of the first quarter of Game 1 before proceeding to lose six straight frames en route to the sweep. In the end, placing team over go-to guy only got the well-balanced Hawks so far once they ran into the greatest go-to guy in the game.
It’s OK to wonder how the Hawks, who had serious problems with Brooklyn in the first round and didn’t take over their semifinal series against Washington until the Wizards’ best player, John Wall, broke his wrist, would have handled the Celtics. Boston played the Cavs tighter and tougher than Atlanta did and that was before Cleveland lost Love and Kyrie. In retrospect, it feels as though the Celtics, given their will and makeup, which contributed to giving LeBron and company the occasional fit during that first round series, could have given the Hawks a real run had the seedings worked out differently.
But this is about LeBron, who is now in his 30s yet keeps on climbing the mountain. The Cavs haven’t faced much adversity during these playoffs – the closest they’ve been to trouble was right before LeBron hit that Game 4 buzzer beater in Chicago that saved them from a 3-1 deficit. Should the West Finals go to form, Cleveland will get the 67-win Golden State Warriors and their astonishingly potent offense, led by league MVP Stephen Curry. For all his skill in reaching the Finals (this will be his sixth trip overall), LeBron has lost there more than he’s won.
“I guarantee that we will play our asses off,’’ he said during the postgame activities on Tuesday night when discussing The Finals. “At the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for.’’
Whether J.R. and the rest of the ex-Knicks follow suit and get to take another group cold tub with the King is anyone’s guess. But LeBron will. He guarantees it. And if you don’t believe him, just ask the Atlanta Hawks.
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