I. Tim’s Late Spring
A summer’s worth of blockbuster trades has radically shifted the traditional power axes in the NBA, as franchises move either to rebuild (Lakers and Celtics) or to weld together groups of superstars, some of them aging (New Jersey’s Nets, the LA Clippers) to challenge the budding Miami Heat dynasty. It could be a time of upheaval, with outgoing NBA Commissioner David Stern preparing to ride into the sunset in darkest February, after his thirty year reign—wearing a baseball cap, of course, and smiling, of course. With the smell of beer suds now washed from living room rugs after the thrilling Miami-San Antonio Finals, it’s an apt time to look at the state of the league, now LeBron’s League, it appears; inevitably, inexorably, but how justifiably?
In June of 2007, after James’ first NBA Final (a four-game summary dismissal of James’ Cleveland Cavaliers by Tim Duncan’s Spurs, Duncan consoled James as best he could. It was Tim’s fourth NBA title in his fourth and last previous trip to the NBA Finals before this year’s Finals rematch with James. “It’ll be your league in a few years,” the older man—now 37—remarked, and all this year, that seemed unquestionably to be already the case: James had come through the storm of envy, hatred and widespread censure that had resulted from his nationally televised “Decision” to forsake Cleveland and “take my talents to South Beach.” On that nasty storm’s other side, he piled Olympic and NBA crowns upon his two new MVP trophies, giving him four MVP’s in the last five years.
Springtime was supposed to see a rematch between the Heat and Kevin Durant’s Oklahoma City Thunder, but an injury to Durant’s co-star Russell Westbrook left it open for San Antonio to win the Western Conference Finals. Suddenly, Duncan, having become the oldest player (37) ever to be named to the NBA All-Star first team, was in the limelight again.
With his Spurs ahead 3-2, in Game Six, it seemed that Duncan was not at all ready- six years later—to cede hegemony to James and the Heat: in this pivotal game, Duncan so completely dominated the first half (11-13 shooting for 25 points and eight rebounds) as to be reminiscent of Bill Walton’s incandescent 21-22 shooting performance in the NCAA Final of 1973.
In that half, Duncan showed himself to be—in effect—the Answer to Small Ball, the newest thing in the NBA, playing without a real center. With both a seven-foot frame and a forward’s agility, Duncan both is and is not a true center, as this amazing half showed. Even at 37, he is big enough to dominate a team that tries to play without one. Though he tired visibly in the second half (to the point of having his shot blocked on consecutive possessions, by smaller players), and then had the agonizing misfortune to see his near lay-up that would have tied Game Seven with less than a minute remaining somehow carom off the rim, Duncan gave an historically great performance in Game Six that highlighted his overall long-term significance, obvious but under-appreciated, despite his having won three NBA Finals MVP’s.
Why aren’t more people talking about whether Duncan belongs in the conversation of greatest player of all time? This is a note that I have struck since his first title, in the strike-shortened season of 1998-1999, his second year in the league. A Duncan Era may have begun, I then thought: his size made him a power forward who—much as Bob Pettit before him—could have excelled at center, but at “the four,” was even more able to use his size to dominate. Like Pettit, he had ascended to the heights by the end of just his second season in the league.
In his prime, Duncan was an impossible match-up for any power forward; only he, with his unique combination of power and agility could overpower Karl Malone, who had at long last had made me question whether I could still hold that Pettit, my childhood hero, was the best ever at the position he both invented and perfected, a thesis I was able to maintain throughout the playing days of Kevin McHale. (Charles Barkley was a problem I thought better left to Elgin Baylor acolytes.)
Duncan has many kinship lineages, not only to Pettit and Walton. Like Hakeem Olajuwon (and Pettit), he came into the league immediately posting averages of over twenty points and ten rebounds, and like Hakeem, he did it despite the stat-diluting presence of another dominant big man (Ralph Sampson for Hakeem; David Robinson for Duncan) in the line-up with him. Like Bill Russell, up until this last go-round, he had won every Final series (four) in which he played.
Duncan averaged least twenty points and ten rebounds (the true big man standard requires at least thirty, however distributed among those two categories) for his first eight seasons. With Ginobili and Parker emerging as supporting stars, Duncan was later content to see his numbers dip slightly. The Spurs remained formidable, and Duncan’s body could last longer with his decreased scoring demands.
Perhaps it’s the difficulty in classifying him—his “apositionality”—that has led to a low-balling of his stock among the NBA’s all-time greats, a reluctance to grasp how dominating he has been for so long. Or then again it may be his lack of perceived charisma (for shame; your Islander mentality is to blame!). But let’s consider that we may have witnessed something like a “Duncan Era” (1) which may have ended—before we acknowledged it had existed—in Game Seven with the missed near lay-up that sealed San Antonio’s doom, in a series that the Spurs had seemingly wrapped up late in Game Six, but let get away.
Notwithstanding a career span that includes four championships and three Finals MVP’s, to call the last sixteen years “the Duncan Era” will not fly smoothly, but doesn’t Duncan represent the perfect antinomy to James, and why not think of them as representing the essence of their successive periods?
II. The Series Denouement
Game Six was one for the ages, complete with critical missed free throws, bad decisions by universally revered Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, and a classic game-tying bail-out three-pointer by aging veteran Ray Allen to force overtime. With some hyperbole—but not a great deal—James called it “by far, the greatest game I’ve ever been a part of.” It contained an egregious number of reversals permitted by San Antonio. They had the game won on at least three and maybe five different occasions. It took desperate defensive scrambling, along with missed San Antonio free throws, even to put Ray Allen is a position to bail out his new teammates with a corner three-pointer, and force overtime. LeBron had acquiesced too often before the fourth quarter. Any sober evaluation of the series and of James’s putative domination, must take into account that the outcome of Game Six, and even Game Seven, was beyond his control.
Though now popularly credited with having an off-the-charts basketball IQ, James often makes inexplicably bad decisions, such as the insouciant three-point attempt he hoisted up on his team’s last first-half possession, when the Spurs’ lead had been cut to 48-44. On that shot, unlike those he successfully launched in Game Seven, there was that old torso sway, which, when unchecked, reduces his percentage drastically.
With James continuing his poor first half play in the critical third quarter, San Antonio again spurted, taking a 68-56 lead, on an 11-0 run, with Duncan’s perfect three-point follow standing in glowing contrast to James’ ill-chosen late first half flip-ups.
The Other James showed up for the fourth quarter: his Heat trimmed the lead to 82-80, with James rejecting Duncan’s shot and following with an aggressive drive through Duncan, who was showing the fatigue one might expect from his playing more than accustomed minutes: 44, with overtime. Mike Miller had blocked Duncan’s shot just one play before James’s rejection.
LeBron wound up with 32 points, ten rebounds, and eleven assists, playing fifty minutes, and was credited with sparking the Heat’s comeback, but he missed a lot of shots, and botched several key possessions down the stretch, in both regulation and overtime, shooting only 11-26 overall. Tony Parker’s long three over James, followed by a close-in floater sparked an 8-0 run that should’ve decided the game, as James bungled three critical possessions, the last of which he salvaged with a second shot.
To be taken seriously in a conversation comparing him with Michael Jordan, James needs to make those mid-range shots. They are about character, whereas the threes are all about charisma.
III. Legacy and Reality
The overlooked reality in the series’ aftermath was that, whatever happened in Game Seven, James and his fans could never truly count this as a season in which he had triumphed without having backed—or been let—in. What will be remembered, though, is that his Game Seven was exemplary in all ways: five three-point shots, on which he concentrated fully and eliminated the sway he must control, in order for his percentages to rise.
The shadow of Game Six’s having rightfully belonged to San Antonio will fade with time, and continuing demonstrations of power and dominance, which we can confidently expect from Lebron in the future, as his phenomenal strength should ensure him a long plateau at his peak level. Whereas Duncan may well never get back to the Finals again: Oklahoma City, with Westbrook returning, will be the favorite again in the West, and age has to catch up soon with Duncan and his international buddies: Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
When Duncan missed that point blank shot and then the easy follow up tip in Game Seven’s final minute, San Antonio was doomed. Duncan’s agonized feelings about his miss were piled on top of the anguish of losing a Game Six that his Spurs had in effect already won, but failed to save. He allows he’ll likely be haunted by that miss forever.
In response to ABC’s Doris Burke’s Game Three half-time query: “LeBron, why do you look so different than you did in Games One and Two?” James replied, with studied nonchalance: “I’m just playing my game.” Yes, but! James took as his task to be the Best. Maybe there shouldn’t be only One, arguably not an improvement on the bifurcated categories of Best Big Man and Best All-Court Player that shaped the game’s pre-Jamesian history. But James has undertaken to unify these archetypes. And he’s succeeding. To be in the conversation with Jordan, though, you can’t let a series slip away and then get saved by an incredible shot that even Ray Allen wouldn’t make more than two or three times out of ten.
James is gonna get there. He’s gonna throw it down. But at least contest the lob. This year’s repeat proved nothing. The Spurs series, and the Indiana one before it, showed that the notion that James has a phenomenal basketball IQ is only half true. James’ sense of timing and knack for making other players better is founded on physical domination. When Finals play tightens the screws to the point that no single superstar can rule the flow of an entire game, James becomes a genius with hit-or-miss mind, always in rhythm, always “just playing my game, Doris,” but not always ascendant.
The torch has been passed—from Duncan’s generation—to James alone. The prospect of his being favorably compared to Michael (some include Magic Johnson here) depends on a sustained period where he avoids blowing big opportunities and provides us all with triumphant stretches of play (such as that statistically great fourth quarter in Game Six). James has such a surfeit of talent that, over time, it surfaces, like cream rising ever upwards. But even better must come in the future.
Like James told Doris Burke, he’s just playing his game. Yet Doris was right: James is different from game to game; not true of Magic or Michael
From August, 2013