I To Have or Not to Have?
So much attention has been paid to the Miami Heat—including myriad analyses of the nature of offenses revolving around a number of stars vs. one or two, what role players are all about, and how much experience/stature a contemporary coach hired (and presumably tutored) by Pat Riley must have—that it’s hard to have any new thoughts (feelings come easier) about Miami and LeBron James, who is becoming an enigma nearly as impenetrable as his thick tattooed arms.
I don’t have an absolutely original line on Lebron, but I’m tempted to apply literary critic Harold Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory to the star’s dilemma of being like or not like Mike (Jordan). Might that be the burning question?
Anxiety of influence? Bloom’s thesis is that in creating their art, poets constantly struggle to break free from the influence of their precursors, but in some profound way never quite do. Poets get inspiration and authority from earlier poets, but inevitably produce what Bloom calls “weak” (derivative) work before forging an original aesthetic identity and a lasting place in the canon of “strong” (original) poets. Their struggles with the past generate anxiety, sometimes crippling, at other times a spark that leads to transcendent works of art.
So, as per Bloom, you can’t really take off with the ball in one hand from much further out than Michael did (and how can you top that story about Wilt raising the ball rim-ward to dunk, unmindful of the opposing defender who’d tried to tie him up until that player sensed he might be going through the hoop along with the ball). Yet Lebron already looked plenty transcendent at age 22 when he single-handedly destroyed the Detroit Pistons by scoring his team’s last 25 straight points, taking over the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals against a proven contender and former champion.
Next theory: psychoanalysis has long trafficked in a notion of “parallel process,” which it uses to illuminate otherwise-mystifying interactions that nonetheless reek more of meaning than of random happenstance. The idea is that interactions between a patient and someone in his/her life may appear through a glass darkly and then become illuminated by the interaction in the consultation room.
But, wait, I don’t just try to keep separate my analytic impulse and my basketball instinct: I really feel them as separate. Plus, I need them to be separate. Is LeBron James, whom I once thought of as a sort of “integrationist”—“uniquely capable of bringing together the usually disparate archetypes of Strongest Player and Best All-Court player”—now serving to make me think that my analytic background is needed to explain what my basketball sense cannot fathom?
Or is LeBron James inducing in me the same uneasy feeling that’s being expressed among the seemingly infinitely expanding throng of consumers that demand he fulfill their expectations and validate their perceptions?
Whatever James does feeds an inexorable publicity machine, which insures that his “impact” grows equally with positive and negative moves. His—“and Miami’s—“bitter defeat have allowed for the possibility of redemption and set up the next chapter in LJB’s dramatic narrative.
“Creating a legacy” is a frequent trope invoked by today’s wealthy athletes when discussing their goals, but we know little about what James truly values, especially those among us who insist he behave as they feel they would. Imagine Oscar Robertson’s commentary on “creating a legacy.” He would surely see it as a diversion from the true game, which he considered–and made–an art form. Walt Frazier likes to talk about the game within the game of basketball, but that game has so radically changed that whereas once it was insightful to notice how corporate business interests had swallowed the NBA, the marketing beast is now also inside: swallowed and extant inside the bellies of our strongest and most graceful avatars.
Championship rings are generally invoked as a measure of a career’s true worth, and indeed the prospect of one, two, many rings was a substantial motivating factor in James’s “decision” to send his talents South. Whoops, he said take. But send may be more apt, given his mysterious disappearance in the Finals against Dirk Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks–a real team orchestrated by the great leadership of Jason Kidd and the solid guidance of Coach Rick Carlisle. Was Lebron about winning titles, creating a legacy, or playing with his friends?
Confused? Maybe you should be if you are LeBron. There’s no template for carrying two disparate lines of development in your young rippling two-time MVP steel-laminated body. And it’s especially hard to play the role of the sport’s strongest man with much joie de vive. Just ask Wilt.
But we are not due a single or simple rationale, however much we want it from our heroes, whom we wish to control and admire simultaneously.
Lebron James’s image was carefully managed from early in high school. James showed humility, joy, charisma, and an obvious work ethic that silenced and disarmed possible critics. The sudden appearance of a new Hummer in his mother’s driveway resulted in only a brief suspension leading to exoneration, and that seemed to settle matters: forget that Hummer, the image of a steel locomotive coming straight at all previous notions of athletic greatness, fused with an unselfish mentality that seemed to take equal joy in passing and scoring seemed to leave the past in the dust.
Still, there were chinks in the armor, and inexplicable moments, like James being a non-factor on the losing 2008 Olympic team and the anomalous cluelessness of giving up number “23” in supposed deference to basketball royalty and history, while blithely appropriating Bill Russell’s number “6”. Then “The Decision” alienated many previous admirers, but legacy grows both from positive and negative news. Twitter rules!
Measuring players by their “impact” dates back to the Patrick Ewing/ Michael Jordan led merger of worth and market share, fuelled by Nike marketing “genius.” From them on, commodification grew inexorably, through Shaq, intermittently Kobe Bryant, and then LeBron.
Comparisons beget other comparisons: we’re talking Oscar and Michael here. What about Oscar’s passion for social justice? If James was to be equally special, as Michael wasn’t, he would have to somehow match up (combining archetypes) with the Big O’s record as a person/advocate; social justice would need to be massively served. Oscar spearheaded the labor negotiations that were critical in making the then-struggling game and league lucrative beyond anyone’s dreams or expectations. Labor/management is where the comparisons stop. Jordan, Shaq, and LeBron all managed their personas carefully, but James, with “The Decision,” suddenly undercut his own image. The backlash came and it had a racist tinge. No matter that he had done nothing for human rights like Robertson (or Russell who courageously upheld standards of conduct and pride).
There was a time, after all, when “credit to his race” was possible to say with neither a snicker nor a knowing nod to irony. That was what impact meant before the days when you could, like Goldman Sacks, short on housing and tell everyone at the end of the day, well…get fucked.
Which seemed to be what James and his buddies were telling the basketball world after emerging from their strange odyssey of a season as the league’s reigning villain; a season opening loss to Boston and an early four game losing streak had seemed to put Coach Erik Spoelstra’s job in jeopardy, leading many to infer a premeditated take-over plan on the part of owner Pat Riley.
Yet Miami stayed the course, kept the faith, and gradually James’s scoring average was, along with Dwayne Wade’s in the league’s top three, with only Kevin Durant significantly ahead. With his and his buddies’ sterling clutch performances, which they seemed to be able to be able to turn on at will against formidable Boston and Chicago playoff teams, it seemed Miami’s dominance had at last–and perhaps for the coming decade–been established. The roller coaster season ride that Miami endured (or better, orchestrated) seemed set to climax with both Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem returning from injuries to flesh out a line-up that would provide requisite endgame injections to back-up the steady scoring of their millionaire superstar buddies.
By this time, we knew what the freakishly disciplined engine that could be called Bronster Monster could do: his ten consecutive point assassination of Boston, single-handedly taking a tied game at 87 to a 97-87 victory, followed by his apparent ease in handling Derrick Rose, whom he ironically referred to as “MVP” in the post-game interviews after clearly establishing his continuing superiority over the man who had just captured the trophy that LeBron had brought to Cleveland the past two years, before devastating the Cavs’ franchise by his departure to such a degree that they established a new record for consecutive losses.
The Heat were 8-0 at home, and had put close games away when needed with spurts of 22-1 and 27-6. Game One seemed simply to continue the superiority of a Miami team that had jelled to the point of being able to carry Dwayne Wade through a decidedly sub-par Eastern Finals, and Dallas, despite their impressive wins over the Lakers and Kevin Durant’s Thunder, was a team those who had not studied carefully or revisited recently could easily dismiss as clutch losers, given their ignominious 2007 loss to eighth place Golden State. In the booth, Mark Jackson seemed to clean that one up decisively, citing Dallas’ bench strength, newly acquired inside presence in Tyson Chandler, and veteran leadership of the beloved Jason Kidd.
The long-awaited Finals began with both teams taking such terrible shots it seemed like we were back two months earlier in April watching Butler and Uconn destroy rims and backboards alike in their ferocious assault on all bottom-dwelling field-goal percentage records. Then James and Kidd started shooting threes, two for each, and Dallas led at the quarter by a barely respectable 17-16. 1951 was never like this!
By half-time, Nowitzki, whose uncanny efficiency against the Oklahoma City Thunder had enabled him to post 48 points in one playoff game on just 15 shots—“he’d hit 12 field goals (all two’s, but all kinds) and made all 24 of his free throws, had managed 13 points in a 44-43 game. Spoelstra told his charges to forget aesthetics and “get into the grind.” We never thought it would be the defense, Stupid!
Miami let Dallas go up eight, but went on a run to take the lead back 60-59 on James’s third three. He hadn’t missed one either! Up only 4 points after three, Miami was soon on the way to a decisive win in what was, though since obscured and forgotten, an outrageously dominant fourth quarter punctuated by…emphatic power dunks by both Wade and James…a great block by Wade and another three-pointer from James…a great inside block by Wade, which he quickly followed with a three. The two wing-men were playing in the same key in which they had mastered Boston and Chicago.
II About Face
Before recapping what happened the rest of the way, I have to ask, in truly naïve befuddlement: why doesn’t LeBron James simply abuse Jason Kidd given he’s 12 years younger, four inches taller, and god knows how much stronger? Trying to answer this question is like trying to decide why Hamlet didn’t finish off his incestuous murderer of an uncle the King when time was ripe.
It is beyond my comprehension why James didn’t simply rule this series. But it all stopped seven or eight minutes from the end of Game 2, which really was the crucial game. (Dallas’ only service break before coming into Miami on a 3-1 roll.) Here is where my basketball sense deserts me. The only cause I can come up with is that James could not get his mind around his friendship/co-authorship with Wade and his team’s need for him to assert his god-given ability to dominate games. The god is Nike, a pagan god, but James shone supernally nonetheless; until the music stopped late in Game Two.
And I do need a theory here. Or many theories, to explain (unconscious?) conflicts generated by the need to act as the best player and also be a good team-mate. Lebron might be able to use Rick Barry’s help, since Barry’s perhaps the only star who won a title as his team’s sole great player. Barry’s contribution to the four game Finals sweep in 1875 stands as a notable exception to the popular dictum that at least two stars are necessary to win a title. Nowitzki was about to come as close as possible to this feat. Oddly, it was as if Jason Kidd’s status was standing more in his way than LeBron James’ play.
Charcot once told Freud that theory was good, but didn’t prevent actual things from happening. From fifteen points behind, Nowitzki led a seven minute 22-5 run in which he tallied Dallas’s last nine points, including the torturous lefty lay-up with 3.6 seconds remaining that he shot over poor Chris Bosh, the third star in the Heat triumvirate. With that shot, the series was forever changed. Miami’s aura of invincibility and steely business-like capacity to end matters when necessary had evaporated along with home-court advantage: a 95-93 service break, out of nowhere. But still there was LeBron, or so we thought.
Games Three and Four in Dallas also came down to the last shot, with James consistently silent, his newly-adopted deferential stance toward his resurgent buddy Wade seeming to define and cramp his performance, but Miami recaptured home-court advantage, eking out an 88-86 win, and appeared to be back in a commanding position. Wade’s 29 points seemed to indicate he could take up the slack, like Pippen did for Jordan now and then. LeBron had 17. Confirming his unguardability, Nowitzki got 34.
Game Four unfolded uncannily like game Two, except less so; and we’d seen it before. With Nowitzki (6-19, 21 points) battling a fever, Miami led 74-65 with ten left minutes left. Then, James let Jason Terry score, travelled, and got beat again by Terry. Wade seemed left to battle Dallas alone—“both offensively and as a shockingly effective shot blocker—“while Terry ate up James, with six points in the decisive 15-4 run, and eight in the last quarter, when Dallas used a 21-9 run to win 86-83.
While being embarrassed on defense by Terry, on offense, James cruised around the court dispassionately, almost like a referee steering judiciously clear of the action, scoring only eight points, his lowest total in more than four years, on 3-11 shooting. Wade had 32. In trying to explain his unaccountably passive performance, he falsely faded it into the one bad game he’d had in each of the prior series against Boston and Chicago. But in those series, he’d followed up his stinker with a strong game, and those matchups turned out to be 4-1 affairs, whereas James’ Heat now stood 2-2 against a team that had held him to nine fourth quarter points in four games. Before Game Five, acting like a parolee in front of the camera, promising he would try harder and showing due remorse, James dubbed his eight point showing “inacceptable.”
Amazingly, this was no longer James’ team, as it had been against Boston and Chicago, and as it needed to be. Instead, the resurgent and often resplendent Wade was being featured. He had shot 58.8% and sported a career Finals’ average of 29.8 points, the third best in Finals’ history, exceeded only by Michael Jordan and Rick Barry.
III Games Five and Six: Things Fall Apart
Perhaps in reaction to his sudden and unlikely rise from a subpar Chicago series to being The Man, Wade was hurt in the first quarter of a surprisingly high scoring game. It was 31-30 at the quarter and shooting away toward 112-103, the first triple figure totals for either team in the series. James technically had a triple double (17-10-10), but had 15-10-10 with six minutes left and only added two points to that total on a meaningless too little/too late lay-up. I say “technically” because the whole triple double business began as Oscar Robertson, Unlimited, and the points total in the Age of O was over 30. Scoring ten points is no distinction at all. 17-10-10 wasn’t much of a night for Oscar. Way off, actually. You need the figures to total at least 40 for it to mean anything.
Dallas, meanwhile, finally really shot the ball! J.J. Berea had four threes, spearheading Dallas great three point shooting, which had not been in evidence earlier in the series. Down the stretch, there was Nowitzki’s big-time dunk going left, the charge Tyson Chandler drew on James when he seemed to have scored (James then clanked a long and ugly three), Kidd’s big threes (timed like Bob Cousy’s running lefty hooks on rallies), including the one that made it 105-100. Then Chandler blocked Wade’s shot, and Terry drilled a crazy long three. It was 108-101 when LeBron got his harmless lay-up, the only mark on his triple double score-sheet in the decisive last six minutes! Player of the Game and Fourth Quarter Dominator Nowitzki got 29 more, while Kidd and the evangelical Terry, ever citing his faith in God, were equally great.
James began Game Six like it was 2007 again—with two immediate threes and a third by the time it was 14-10—but Dallas was no Detroit to his throwback Cleveland act. They were a real team, and when James began missing, there was never a clearer illustration of “Live by the Jumpshot, Die by the Jumpshot.” The ever-lurking Terry sneaked in eight quick points, and Dallas, having weathered both James’ storm and Nowitzki’s early foul trouble, was up 32-27 at the quarter, and extended its margin to 40-28. More storms: a 14 point Miami run, inspirational play by Wade, a near fight, a 1-12 half by Dirk, but Dallas still led at the half, 53-51, behind Terry’s 19 points on 8-10 shooting in 17 minutes. Whose man was he, again?
Continuing their hot-shooting from beyond the arc, the Mavs stormed to an 89-77 lead, and held on to win decisively 105-95, their second win in three tries in Miami, with Terry getting 27. Most incredibly, the Heat went Minus 24 with LeBron on the floor.
This was the culmination of a string of six consecutive non-takeover-subpar games for the departing two-time MVP who just one series before had reassured anyone who was in the know that Derrick Rose’s well-deserved trophy was on a one year loan. This series could turn out to be a complete aberration, but it would be hard not to react with concern. I wouldn’t rush to trade James for Dwight Howard, as Jeff Van Gundy suggested, but I have to wonder why Pat Riley doesn’t think about hiring Magic Johnson, his crowning point guard four times in Los Angeles, to work with LeBron. Closer to Lebron in size and position—“if not weight room quality strength and sprinter speed—“than anyone ever was, Johnson would seem Riley’s obvious choice to be his personal mentor, and no better PR move is imaginable. Be like Magic: smile. Be all things to all people. Gracefully accept monikers. LBJ, Bronster Monster…
LeBron’s radical failure and sudden disappearance remain impenetrable and enigmatic. His parting speech that so many people, like fervent disciples of Pirandello’s typically nosy neighbors, felt was hostile and uncalled for (New York Times reporter William Rhoden (6/20/11) called LeBron’s comments “poorly expressed”; “misinterpreted”; who sez?) seemed in part a protest against what we have made of him. No wonder he didn’t choose the Knicks!
Having previously opined that James was destined and poised to surpass Michael and perhaps even Oscar, I don’t take whatever happened easily. My awe of his physical gifts led me to make what now seem to have been exaggerated claims for his place in basketball history. He made the pro game worth watching again for me, because it seemed that at any time, he could delight a grizzled old fan by doing something never before seen or done, and now when it mattered most, here he was standing around, stuck in a turn-taking no-movement offense, fallen from King to one of a group of clueless kids running around an island like in Lord of the Flies.
Now he’s sending me back to my profession to seek answers, whereas I have always preferred to see great athletes, protypically Big Men like Wilt Chamberlain and Nate Thurmond, as somehow ‘beyond psychology,” rhythmically primal, like Bernard King and Earl Monroe. These were impact players! Influence without anxiety. James’ failure and withdrawal hurt deeply because of what I had tried to make of him, and needed him for my leading-edge Aryan-tinged DNA domination theories.
Maybe LeBron is looking in the wrong places for models. A straight-up brother from Akron should have no anxiety about being influenced by a German, but when Wade mocked Dirk’s cough, LeBron joined right in. I wish I could say to LeBron, or that Riley would hire Magic to tell him for me: you have a right to be different, to march to your own drummer. You’re even allowed to have a quirk. If you dare to think you’re good enough, that’s right, be like Dirk.
From June, 2011