The 2015 NBA finals should be remembered for who lost them.
LeBron James put on one of the great performances in a championship series: he led all players in scoring (35.8 points per game), rebounds (13.3) and assists (8.8), an unprecedented achievement.
He scored 38.3 per cent of his team’s points in the finals, 0.10 off the NBA record, set by Michael Jordan. He ran himself ragged, playing 274 of a possible 288 minutes in the series, 19 minutes more than anyone else, and did it at age 30, when basketball players should be slowing down and getting more and longer breaks in play.
He took the ambivalent expression “hero ball”, often associated with self-impressed ball-hogs, and turned it into “superhero ball” as it became clear his Cleveland Cavaliers would go only as far as he carried them. Quite some distance, it turned out.
That he and his remaining ambulatory teammates pushed the Golden State Warriors to a finals Game 6 tells us, along with his monstrous numbers, that James was the best player in the series, even in a losing cause.
MORE FROM THE NBA FINALS
Complete and beautiful, NBA champions Golden State Warriors take basketball into the future
LeBron James would ‘rather not make the playoffs’ than suffer more NBA Finals heartbreak
Golden State Warriors defeat Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 6 to end 40-year NBA title drought
Seven of 11 voters for the finals MVP award preferred Andre Iguodala, a Warriors reserve when the series began, an outcome that shows the award should be renamed “Most Valuable Player — on the Winning Team” because James was so clearly the best player in the series.
His doomed effort came with the backdrop of his return this season to Cleveland, his home town and also the most benighted sports city in North America. That’s 51 years now since a Cleveland team (the NFL Browns, in 1964) won a major championship.
It would have been nice if James had come to the gunfight with a few sidekicks who could shoot straight, but his two most valuable teammates watched the season’s end from the sidelines, Kevin Love done in by shoulder surgery in April, Kyrie Irving by a broken knee cap in the opener of the finals.
James allowed himself a moment of self-pity, after the Warriors’ clinching 105-97 victory on Tuesday night. Asked if the results were worth the effort, he paused before he said: “I always look at would I rather not make the play-offs or lose in the final? I don’t know. I’ve missed the play-offs twice; I’ve lost in the finals four times. I’m about starting to be, like, I’d rather not make the play-offs than to lose in the finals. It would hurt a lot easier.”
But then his competitiveness regained the ascendancy. “Then I start thinking about how much fun it is to compete in the first round, the second round, the conference finals …”
James has been part of two championship teams, with Miami in 2012 and 2013. He lost with Miami in 2011 and 2014, and with Cleveland in 2007 and this year.
Even after watching his six rousing performance against the Warriors, some might suggest he is not a winner of the calibre of Jordan or even Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O’Neal because of his 2-4 record in the finals. But he was part of the clearly inferior team at least twice, in the two appearances with the Cavaliers, and his insistence on going down fighting on Tuesday was the sort of effort that moves sports fans.
Now, it is time for decisions. James’s Cleveland contract allows him to become a free agent on July 1, and he is thought likely to take that path. It is expected he eventually will re-sign with Cleveland, but he likely also will be watching to see what sort of supporting cast club officials put around him.
It was moving to see the game’s greatest player also produce the game’s greatest effort, but he deserves more help. Seeing if the Cavaliers find him some, over the next few months, will be telling.
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
