LeBron James went into his first conference finals last week as the next Michael Jordan, the biggest and most exciting individual star left in the NBA playoffs, with the promise of the series being a stage to mark his coming of age.
James came out of the Cavaliers’ Game 1 loss to the Pistons as maybe the next Magic Johnson, an unselfish star willing to accede to teammates. That was because he passed up a last shot to pass to Donyell Marshall for a potential winner that missed.
Then at the end of Game 2, James fumbled a potential winning last shot after yet another missed free throw down the stretch and spent the end of the game lecturing referees for declining to hand him a foul call.
There was no magic there.
So as the Eastern Conference finals move to Cleveland on Sunday for Game 3 with the Cavs looking for their first victory, the biggest question may be whether James is really Vince Carter, a spectacular individual performer ill-equipped to seize the moment.
“It’s about winning,” James says. “It’s not about me.”
That’s what the Eastern Conference finals must be about. Otherwise, observers — and they are in historically diminishing numbers — would have to be talking about some of the most brutal, least appealing basketball ever played in the NBA playoffs.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the viewing public, which is tuning out this year’s conference finals like never before.
Game 1 of Pistons-Cavs was seen in 1 million fewer homes than Game 1 of last year’s Heat-Pistons conference finals, with both games on cable. Game 1 of Spurs-Jazz about equaled regular-season interleague baseball, and last year’s Game 1 of the Western Conference finals on cable had better ratings than this year’s on network TV, which is available in 20 million more homes.
Some of this is likely a backlash from the NBA deciding the outcome of Spurs-Suns in the league’s back rooms rather than on the court.
More Top Picks Ratings
Call us next season.
And so trudge on two series headed toward the apparent ratings oblivion of a Spurs-Pistons NBA Finals for the second time in three years. It would mark the third time for each the Pistons and Spurs in the Finals in the last five seasons.
Good for them. Bad for you?
This has been a lousy few weeks for the NBA with the Suns’ suspension controversy and the draft lottery awarding the top picks to small Pacific Northwest markets while the teams with the three poorest records dropped down. The lottery would appear to further strengthen the Western Conference and increase the imbalance between the conferences.
That disparity is on display now in the playoffs, where the West games are far better and more interesting than the East’s even though the Spurs have a 2-1 edge.
Utah’s best players are power forward Carlos Boozer and point guard Deron Williams. It so happens the Spurs’ best players have been power forward Tim Duncan and point guard Tony Parker. In fact, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan calls Duncan the best ever at that position even though Sloan had Karl Malone.
Parker has befriended Williams, the former Illinois star, and much was made about how the two had dinner before Game 1.
Since then, though Williams has scored impressively, Parker has, metaphorically, had Williams for lunch. He constantly has beaten Williams into the lane and was torching the Jazz for layups in Game 1. When the Jazz collapsed on Parker in Game 2 to protect Williams, Parker pitched out for wide-open jumpers.
Before the Jazz’s win Saturday, it seemed only a matter of when for the Spurs.
In the East, observers are wondering when James will do something more.
To be fair, he has the burden of playing for perhaps the league’s most conservative and least innovative coach in Mike Brown.
Not that he doesn’t know the game, but Brown is a control-freak coach. He has the Cavs walking the ball up and slowing down the game, which plays to the Pistons’ strengths and often leaves James facing the Pistons’ set defense one-against-four. One wonders if that was at the heart of what appeared to be a heated discussion between general manager Danny Ferry and Brown after the Game 2 loss.
The first two games have been slogging 79-76 mud-walks in which James ended up with last-second decisions that both failed to win games. Thus you could say Brown’s plan is working, with the Cavs almost stealing two games on the road. Nevertheless, it has been awful to watch, bad for the NBA game and a waste of James’ great open-court talents.
You would think it would be obvious for the Cavs to spread the floor with shooters and quicken the pace, but Brown has pulled shooters who have been scoring if they miss a defensive switch. The Cavs are averaging 94.9 points in their playoffs wins and 77.3 in their losses. Without more flow, the games have become referendums on James’ talent level that several years of monotonous hype have raised to idol level.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the Cavs have yet to win a playoff game against a team that had a winning record this season.
Figure them soon to be another American idle.
———-