Tonight we are going to learn something about LeBron. He's clearly underperformed this series. No question. Had the most irrelevant triple double in basketball since Ricky Davis grabbed an inbound pass and intentionally threw the ball off his own basket so he could get to 10 rebounds. No really, that happened. It was like the Watergate scandal on SportsCenter at the time.
But anyways, Lebron! He's floated through this series. He has yet to score in the last five minutes of a game when the two teams are within 5 points of each other. Dirk is out-scoring Bron 44-13 in the 4th quarter. It's been a sh*t show for him. He's even deferring to Wade when it comes to making fun of his opponents.
Look, I'm far from a Lebron apologist. I've taken every shot at him I could this season. His clutchness, his game, his mother, his hairline. I got into an argument at a pickup game that lead to several hard fouls later in the game because a kid on the other team tried to justify the Lebron > MJ argument. No. Just no. Won't go into this.
But back to my point, I'm not Lebron's biggest fan. With that being said, I still can't believe that he's going to choke this bad. I can't imagine him going out this quietly. I'm not predicting he's going to turn the series around with two 40-15-15 games and redeem himself, but I can't imagine him going out this weakly. Remember 2007? Cavs-Detroit Game 5? The spectacular 48? He singled handedly willed his team from the 4th quarter through the end of the second overtime to overcome the Pistons, scoring something like 115% of the Cavs points through that stretch.
Look, it's not like he hasn't had some very bad games before, most notably Game 5 in Cleveland against Boston last spring and Game 4 in Dallas just last week. He's not MJ. But he also has games like that Detroit Game 5, Game 5 against Chicago this year, and his legendary duel with Paul Pierce in Game 7 in 2008. He's not Vince Carter, he's not MJ, he's somewhere in between. He's capable of the incredible unlike anyone else in the league. He's also capable of disappearing from games and floating through quarters like no other all time great I've ever witnessed.
Here's what we know for sure, this season has been his best chance at a ring. And now for the first time in this playoff his back is against a wall. Will he take over MJ style? Will he play Pippen to Wade's Jordan? Will he go into Magic Johnson mode and control the whole flow of the game from the point? Or will he play 4 quarters like he's Karl Malone in the final two minutes of a must win game? This and a million other possibilities are on the table. This is the most crucial game he's ever played in his career. Perhaps even bigger for him then game 5. And one way or another, we will learn from how he plays what type of role Lebron is willing to take on when it matters. As Nike has been telling us since he first made the playoffs in the Spring of '06: We are Witnesses. Now we'll finally know for sure what kind of player we're witnessing.
