What’s the matter with… the Miami Heat?

87 Comments

1. Thanks for the opportunity, JB! I hope the commentariat have as much fun discussing, debating, and dissecting this as I did writing it.

   To the extent that this column affirms my status as the jock of the LoOG, I’ll try not to kick sand in anyone’s face… :-p

   • Thank you for writing it! I’m sorry that I am the type to have to google “basketball” before being able to come up with a meaningful comment.

     I hope that people who don’t have to google it first will be able to argue with you in a way that I cannot.

     • JB-

       How do tags get created? Joel Anthony is a tag for this! BWAHAHAHA!

       • There is automatic tag making software that I have little control over. Tell me what tags you want and those are the tags I’ll give.

         • Oh, I don’t really care. I assumed it was something automatic. This might double the number of times Joel Anthony has been tagged in a blog post.

2. Beyond what you mentioned it also doesn’t help that Chris Bosh has revealed himself to be overrated. It’s more like the Big Two-and-a-half.

   • While I agree that Bosh is not quite on the level of Wade and LeBron, I think much of what we see has to do with scheme. Bosh had some truly great seasons in Toronto. Maybe he’s simply not cut out to be a 3rd banana, which is understandable.

     Personally, if I was coaching the Heat, I’d run pick-and-rolls with Wade and LeBron all game long with Bosh spotting up at the elbow extended. Actually, I’d avoid having all three on the court at the same time except for the beginning and end of games. That would bolster the second unit. All three guys on the court reduces their effectiveness since there is just one ball. Why have Bosh stand around in the corner while Wade and LBJ go one-on-one and then trot out a bunch of stiffs while they’re on the bench?

     • This gave me a thought, free subsitution in basketball like they have in hockey would be awesome.

       • You’d have to have an offsides rule, though, or a really really tight too many men rule (tighter than hockey’s).

         • They really ought to make the court bigger anyway.

         • I’m pretty sure it’s totally impractical (maybe not on offense), especially in a sport without goaltenders and where the ball is pretty much always in a player’s possession. I just love the idea of basketball coaches rolling lines and having a lot more freedom to try and exploit matchups.

         • Both the NBA court and NFL field should be embiggened.

           The boards also serve as a bit of an obstacle to a too-quick line change in hockey. A guy has to get himself up and over them and steadied on the ice. If you are just jumping off a chair onto the court, a guy could go from sitting down to under the opposite basket in about 2 seconds.

3. > Their second unit is weak. Their coach can’t seem to figure
   > out an offense that utilizes three of the best offensive
   > players on the planet.

   I wouldn’t call that “not much”. That first thing is a killer in the playoffs. You can beat anybody on any given night on raw talent, but in a series the bench is like special teams in football: if they don’t show up, you’re in a heap of trouble.

   The coach thing is resolvable, but I gotta say from (the little) watching I’ve done of the Heat, I don’t know who you’re going to fix that problem *with*.

   Lebron seems to be that horrible type of a player that seems to shine in all kinds of situations but doesn’t really make anybody around him better. If you were playing 3-3 ball, hell, I might take him over anybody else right now. But I don’t see Lebron contribute to games in a way that makes *other* players heat up.

   • I’d argue the opposite regarding the bench. Playoff rotations tend to tighten… Coaches don’t want to leave huge games in the hands of their 8th, 9th, or 10th best guys. Bench was extremely important this refular season in particular because of the condensed schedule, but starters tend to pick up more minites in the playoffs. I have not seen the playoff schedule, but they tend to drag that out, often with multiple days off between games (which is why the playoffs seem to take for-ev-er).

     The coach issue is real. I don’t know who is out there that is better (D’Antoni would NOT work).

     In saying “not much”, my point was that this team is not the utter failure some have made it out to be. They are indeed flawed with flaws that might prove fatal (in terms of not winning it all).

     • Re: the bench.

       Sorry, my old curmudgeon helped type that comment. Yes, the extended playoff format has provided benefits for the shallower teams. And yeah, the rotations are tighter… but this means that in the swingtime, it’s all that more important that the bench guys pull weight. You can’t play 5 starters for 48 minutes, and if you want your big guns to really be in sync – for most players – you kinda need to bench them all around the same time*.

       The coach issue *is* real, but… well, there are only so many types of coaches. I don’t know that I’ve been impressed with more than a couple, really. Many of the people who get a lot of credit for being great coaches, I look at them and I see them as good fits for the teams that made them great, but by and large limited outside that wheelhouse. There are of course exceptions to the rule.

       * there are exceptions to this, but it requires a really smart bench.

       • “You can’t play 5 starters for 48 minutes, and if you want your big guns to really be in sync – for most players – you kinda need to bench them all around the same time*.”

         Both valid points. The problem isn’t so much that Miami has a weak bench… they have NO bench. Juwan Howard? Seriously? Dude is like 39 years old. He was one of the Fab 5, for crying out loud!

   • The “doesn’t really make anybody around him better” argument is a tricky one. I don’t know that any player can make another player “better” unless they are practicing with them off the court. Kobe is often credited with helping LeBron make a leap after the 2008 Olympics by modeling how to work off the court… LBJ saw Kobe busting his ass in a way that he never did and incorporated that into his preparation.

     Often times, players get credited for things that are really beyond their control. Steve Nash is a great player, no doubt, but got undue credit for making his Suns teammates better. Many of their numbers went up when he arrived, but that was largely due to pace. If you run an uptempo offense, you are going to score more points. Everyone’s average will go up. But most of these guys saw little to no impact on their per-minute or rate stats, meaning they weren’t actually playing better, just getting volume. This isn’t a knock, perse, on Nash… just an acknowledgement of what was actually going on.

     That being said, guys can get their numbers in a way detrimental to the team. Stephon Marbury put up All-Star numbers, but every team he left got better immediately after his departure and every team he went to got worse. He dribbled the air out of the ball and couldn’t run an offense that didn’t revolve around him shooting every other time down the court.

     So does LeBron make his teammates better? It’s hard to say. He took incredibly weak and shallow Cavs teams quite far in the playoffs. His court vision and passing means he hits guys with passes in spots where they can score, something not many guys can do in the way that he does.

     Generally speaking, I think such “intangible” arguments are more about constructing narrative than actually analyzing what is happening on the court. If LeBron had 2 or 3 rings by now, few people would argue he doesn’t make his teammates better. Because he hasn’t, he gets criticized. Likewise, you don’t often here that criticism levied at Kobe since the man has 5 rings. Yet I’d argue it is probably more true of him than LeBron… case in point the Laker’s 4-1 run without him as Bynum has become a truly dominant force.

     • The problem with this, which I readily grant, is that it moves into Nth Dimensional Chess territory.

       I used to watch a *lot* of basketball. Now it seems like any night I have free to plunk down in front of the TV (usually about 2 a month) just happen to be the nights when there’s no Laker game on. So I’m admittedly talking a bit out of my ass about LeBron.

       But, to dip my toe in the Nth Dimensional Chess pool: basketball isn’t like baseball. (A sabermetrics approach doesn’t work anywhere near as well here.) There’s a subtle difference between a 3-3 game and a 5-5 game, and it takes a certain type of brain to handle the switch.

       There’s lots of different ways to make another player better. The Kobe-LeBron practice ethic is a big one (see also: Jerry Rice), probably the biggest. There’s the ability to work in the offense/defense optimally, but this is as much everybody’s job plus a huge slice of the coach when it comes to getting the most out of the players.

       There’s court vision, by which *I* mean the ability to accurately project, based upon the players that you can see right in front of you, what the remainder of the players are doing. Magic was good at this, so was Bird and John Stockton. By noticing where the visible players are standing and how they’re moving and where they’re looking, you can tell usually within a few inches where the players are that you can’t see -> the guys outside of your immediate field of vision -> because their actions, which you can’t see, are projected in the reactions of the players that you *can* see. Now, in Stockton’s case, a huge part of that might be because Jerry ran the same goddamn offense for 20 years and so of course you know where everybody is, because you’ve run every play in practice 30000 times. But John could tell when the play was busted… behind him… so I give him the credit. Sir Charles could do this. Early Jordan couldn’t. Later Jordan could, but never as good as any of these other guys I’m talking about here. Bill Russell yes; Wilt Chamberlain never figured it out.

       The best players… the ones I really think of as elite, are not only good at *THAT* (which is already hugely rare), but they’re also good at keeping that in context with their feel for the other players on the team. They know not just where everybody is, but they know who’s hot and who’s not and where their spots are and… for the guys who aren’t hot… when to get them the ball when they’re near their spot vs. not to give them the ball when they’re NOT near their spot even if they’re open… because they’re not hot and they’re just going to brick unless you give them one of their gimmie shots.

       Now, that last talent… heck, oddly enough, that last talent isn’t as rare as court vision OR basic basketball talent or physical skills, but the entire package is pretty dagum rare. Longtime veterans get some version of that last talent even though it is often limited to just the players they play with all the time (good players not only do that for their own team, they add one more N+1 and can do it for the other team, too).

       Me, from what little I’ve watched LeBron, I don’t think he’s particularly good at either of those last two abilities. But goddamn, the guy can freakin’ ball otherwise.

       • You might say it’s the difference between playing the ball and playing the game. All kinds of guys can play good ball, and there’s probably a bunch who can play good game, but the player who are actually worth 100% of what they’re paid can do both.

         • That’s a good way to put it, Duck.

         • Loving what you’re bringing to the convo, DD.

           (Which is not to say I’m not loving what everyone else is bringing. I emailed JB earlier about how great this has been! But DD seems to have broken character a bit and has really added to the conversation.)

       • That seems a fair assessment, though admittedly is so meta I don’t know how qualified I am to speak on it.

         You are dead on that basketball is not baseball and, as such, sabremetrics do not apply the same way. Baseball is a serious of individual interactions. Basketball is fluid. While the positioning of the CF can impact whether a particular batted ball is an out or a hit, it does not impact how the pitcher throws his pitch or how the batter swings and what happened when the thrown pitch contact the swung bat, etc. In basketball, if an off-ball player is two steps to close to the lane, drawing his defender into the paint, suddenly a slashing guard has no clear alley.

         One of the big criticisms of James is that he too often passes at the end of close games. He was famously called out for hitting Donyell Marshall in the corner for a three early in his Cleveland career and more recently was knocked for making a pass at the end of this year’s All-Star game (forgot who it was to). This is used to justify his non-clutchness, which is quite silly given that he has hit PLENTY of big shots late in games in his career (including two amazing 3 pointers in that same All-Star game and a huge 3 pointer for the win at the buzzer with his team on the verge of going down 0-2 versus Orlando in the playoffs a few years back). LeBron’s justification has always been better to let an open guy take a shot from his spot than for him to jack up a contested shot out of position. I suppose the question is… was LeBron actually putting his teammates in a spot to succeed? Was that corner shot a good shot for Marshall? Was a spotup from the free throw line extended a good shot for his AS game teammate? Did LeBron know this about these guys? These questions matter for all the reasons you listed as they get right to the heart of LeBron’s justification for this approach.

         • > I suppose the question is… was LeBron actually putting
           > his teammates in a spot to succeed?

           You have to watch a *lot* of a particular team to have a guess at this. I watched almost the entire season of Laker basketball from the 95-96 season to the 99-00 season (missed less than ten games each year). My gut from the little of LeBron I’ve seen is that he’s not good at it. Heck, early Kobe was HORRIBLE at it. Lots of early superstars are really bad at this; I think Bird and Magic were two examples of guys who came into the league with this skill above average.

           I think it was about halfway through year two that I started noticing these sorts of mistakes. It helped a lot that Chick was a phenomenal basketball announcer and that I watched a lot of pregame and listened to a lot of talk radio. You’d hear a ton of noise on that last (large numbers of fans are silly), but the signal was great when it came through.

           It also helps when somebody on the bench is a great spot shooter. Anthony Peeler was a good Lakers for this, he couldn’t really make his own shot and he was limited as to where on the court he was effective, but he knew how to get to those spots and Nick Van Exel had pretty dang good court vision and was great at getting AP the ball where AP could get hot. This is why Utah always kicked our butts: the guards were both great at opposing team court vision and Stockton and Hornacek would not only run those guys to death through screens on the offensive end, they would work to keep the guards on the other team away from their spots when they were playing defense.

         • On the defensive end, this is supposedly what makes (made?) Shane Battier such a good defender. He would learn his opponent’s spots and do just enough to keep them off it. He’d nudge them a foot this way or a step that way and get them just far enough that an automatic shot suddenly wasn’t.

           I never thought of this so much on the offensive end, as I presumed the onus was more on the finisher to get to his spot, but you are absolutely right that the setup is integral. If AP had to take an extra step or dribble to get to his spot, that allows a closeout and turns an open shot into a contested one. I would compare it to a QB who can his his receiver in stride, allowing him to run after the catch versus one who forces his WR to adjust to the ball in flight and lose all momentum (COUGH*Tebow*COUGH).

         • Shane Battier is indeed good at this. There’s a long laundry list of guys who are good at it, but you typically don’t get a lot of press for it because the guys who get press for defense are the guys who can guard Kobe 1-1 or stuff like that.

           Whenever you see a guy that can’t dunk and gets a lot of rebounds? He’s usually one of those guys.

         • What’s interesting about Battier is that he does it so subtly, without spectacle, that even a lot of opposing players don’t realize he’s doing it to them. They just think they didn’t have a particularly good night. He never totally shuts them down–because he’s asked to guard guys you can’t totally shut down–but they all shoot at the low end of their PPG average. I’d like to see the actual figures on how many standard deviations he knocks off guy’s games. It’s probably less than 1, but he does it all the time, and in close games it can make all the difference to have the star score 8 fewer points than usual.

         • Houston, which is ahead of the curve with advanced statistical analysis, targetted Battier for just these reasons. I believe they gave up the rights to Rudy Gay to get him, which many people scoffed at. As was pointed out, advanced statistical analysis does not translate to basketball as it does to baseball, but the work they are doing on the defensive side of the ball is most interesting to me. Until recently, we only had blocks and steals to judge defense, with both being pretty crappy at actually determining what a good defender was. Lots of guys could get tons of both without actually being a good defender (and often times sacrificied team defense to chase numbers). But they do have some numbers that measure an individual defender’s impact, with the caveat being that their is still a large team component. Battier always rated very highly. I’m not sure if he still does. And, of course, he is on the Heat.

     • > Stephon Marbury

       Poster child for this: Glenn Rice.

4. this article is trash, Failures? They joined together and made it to the NBA finals the 1st year. A year later they are still favorites. Get a life Heat haters and Patrick you have no idea about basketball if your saying Lebron, “doesn’t really make anybody around him better.” Lebron is a play maker, go sort yourself out and look at his career so far and then give me a Small Forward or even Shooting Guard with his passing ability today and then see if you can say he “doesn’t make anybody around him better.” You all seem to think 3 allstars instantaneously give you a championship , no, it takes a team to win and chemistry has too develop around the talent. If you want failure look at the Knicks. Carmelo and A’mare are not players that make others better and thats why they are terrible even with their offensive guns and amount of talent.

   • Did you even read the article?

5. I recently changed jobs to work with a bunch of people I thought it would be fun to work with. If athletes presume to do this, it makes people hate them.

   • Great point. LeBron’s a bad dude because he took a paycut to play with his best friend in a super fun city? Really?

     • I do not think it is as much that he went to play with his best friend, but more how he went to play with his best friend. He could have said, “Sorry Cleveland, I want to move on and have the opportunity to play with my best friend.” Instead he held that live lottery thing and drove the knife home for the Cleveland fans and showed how classless he could be. Some would still be upset if he had chosen the former way, but it would not have left the lasting hate for many NBA fans and dislike for the more casual observer, like me.

       • I agree the way he went about it was poor. But many people said it was wrong for the two of them to team up at all, regardless of how it was done.

         Many former NBA stars said they would never do what he did (including Barkley, ignoring that he joined Olajuwon and Drexler at the end of his career in Houston). They said he should want to go it alone. Blah blah blah. That really bothered me. Does LeBron have the drive that Kobe or MJ have/had? Probably not. Is that the worst thing in the world?

         How many of us kill ourselves to be the absolute best at what we do? Not many, I’d guess. How many of us are martyrs to our professional causes? Again, probably not many of us. Does that make us flawed, weak human beings? Certainly not. So why is that the standard we apply to athletes? I suspect it is because we like to think that if we were athletes, we would be all those things. Not buying it. Part of the reason most of us our armchair quarterbacks instead of real quarterbacks is precisely because we did not kill ourselves to be the latter. I would never be Peyton Manning. But if I had killed myself growing up, I probably could have had a chance at a shot in the pros. But I didn’t. And I don’t in my job now, even though I am deeply passionate about what I do. For me to expect and demand that of athletes is unfair.

         • Does LeBron have the drive that Kobe or MJ have/had? Probably not. Is that the worst thing in the world?

           And that, my old friend, is why the experiment was a failure. LeBron is the most insanely talented person to ever play the game, and he does make his teammates better. But he wouldn’t cut the heart out of his own mother to win, and until he would he’s not in the same class as Kobe, MJ, Byrd, or Magic.

         • But if that is our standard of success, 99% of the league are failures. If this configuration of the Heat goes on to win 2 or 3 championships, is it still a failure? What would they need to do to be considered a success? What would LeBron need to do to be considered a success?

           FWIW, both Kobe and MJ had serious personal life problems that were likely a result of their intense drive. MJ got himself hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt because he couldn’t walk away from a bet as a loser. He could afford it, obviously, but his compulsive personality had negative consequences. Both guys had extramarital affairs (with Kobe’s leading to accusations of rape), which might just be a result of being a big time athlete with a penis, but might also be related to settling for nothing less than everything.

         • Kazzy,

           I didn’t say LeBron is a failure; just that the experiment was. Because LeBron was/is not what people thought he was.

           LeBron could only be classified as a loser if his goal is to be measured on the same drive and championship scale as these other guys. He may never be, but then he also won’t give as gratuitously nasty a Hall of Fame speech as MJ did.

         • Fair enough. But didn’t we know that about him before he went to Miami? He didn’t exactly hoodwink us into thinking he was a cold blooded killer.

           The experiment is also only in year two, which might end in a championship.

           I do think the results thus far show that a team needs to be more than a collection of parts… three studs and a bunch of has-beens/never-weres led by a coach who can’t maximize the talents of those studs probably isn’t the best way to go about winning a championship. If Miami did indeed believe (as has been suspected) that veteran role players would take less money to play with the Big Three, that was foolish. And if they really thought Spoelstra, a defense-minded coach in his first gig as a head coach was the best way to manage both the personalities and the talents, that was also foolish.

       • To reiterate, since I only mentioned it briefly, “The Decision” should be used in PR 101 courses on what NOT to do. What a debacle. The only good that came of it was the fundraising, but surely that could have been achieved without turning one of the most liked athletes into a self-centered, oblivious jerk.

       • The wacky thing is that if he had done the exact same thing, the same news programs, etc, and chosen Cleveland? It’d be PR101 under “stuff that works really well”.

         • True. But it’s not like he didn’t know he was going to choose Miami. Did he not have a single competent handler? No one said, “Um… LeBron… that might work if you are staying. But you’re not. You know that that makes a difference, right?”

         • I get the feeling that quite a few sports celebrities do not, in fact, have a single competent handler.

         • For a while, all of LBJ’s inner circle handlers were friends he grew up with. Stand up guys, supposedly (unlike some of the legit trouble makers other stars surround themselves with), but I don’t know that any of them had any acumen, business or otherwise. I don’t know what he has now, but hopefully it’s more. You’d think his agent might insist on a legit PR person or two but who knows how it all shakes down in real life.

     • Can we please stop with the pay cut fiction? When you factor in things like state income taxes and local endorsements, Lebron is easily taking home more now than he did in Cleveland.

       • But he could have gotten a far larger deal than he did. Staying with a hometown team means a higher salary and an extra year on the contract. Even though it was ultimately a sign-and-trade, there is no denying that he left money on the table. I’ll leave it to the accountants to tell us how much.

         There is a certain amount of damned-if-do, damned-if-don’t for athletes in this regard. Chase the big bucks and you’re a sell out. Take a cut to play with other stars and you’re a coward.

         • He took about $2 million/year pay cut. Ohio taxes are 6%, so that’s down to a ~$1.1 million cut*. Miami metro is about 2.8x bigger than Cleveland, so the difference in local endorsements will be worth more than enough to make up for it. The extra year only matters if he has a career debilitating injury before he reups, since he will be a max player in his next contract as well. But as you say, because it was a sign and trade, he doesn’t lose that year.

           I will note that the Heat have yet to get as good a regular season record as Lebron got with inferior talent in Cleveland.

           I think people are generally cool with stars chasing a ring elsewhere if you’re in the twilight of your career (see: Bourque, Payton, etc.). Your reputation takes a hit when you go and defer your top dog status to play second fiddle to someone else. Especially in a sport like basketball, where there are only 5 players on each side at a time. Throw in Lebron’s self-proclaimed “King” status and it’s interesting that he would go to play second fiddle to a rival. It would be as if Jordan’s response after losing to the Pistons (again) in 1990 was to go play for the 76ers.

           * Not really because of the jock tax, but let’s just keep things simple

         • Jock tax? Can you elaborate?

         • Income earned by professional athletes is deemed to be earned on a pro-rated basis in the state where the sporting events occur – so LBJ only gets half of his income paid in Florida, the rest is subject to the state income taxes wherever the away games are held.

         • Oh yea! I think I heard about athletes getting themselves into trouble because they didn’t realize they had to file returns in those states.

         • It also applies to the coaching staff. I would hope it’s just the head coaches because it would really suck to be the team video guy pulling down $60K a year and doing 20 state income taxes.

         • By the way… this? The jock tax?

           This is freakin’ crazy. Like, outlandishly crazy.

         • PC-

           I wonder if it is indeed a “jock tax” unique to athletics. Do traveling performers of other stripes (like a circus) have to pay in each state?

           And can you elaborate on what makes it outlandishly crazy? I could see arguments to both sides, but I’m far from an expert on taxes, so I’m curious to hear what you think makes it such…

         • Oh, I just mean it is outlandishly crazy to have to file a return in… what, 21 different states, plus Canada?

           It surprises me not at all that states encode this and that the NBA supports it because it helps reduce the disparity between the teams.

         • Imagine what Deion Sanders’s and Bo Jackson’s tax accountant must of thought of this little arrangement…

         • > Imagine what Deion Sanders’s and Bo Jackson’s
           > tax accountant must of thought of this little
           > arrangement…

           “I can charge this guy an arm and a leg until they retire”.

6. I think too much of what’s written about Miami comes from a Fantasy League mentality, and not enough from a more holistic point of view. I’ve said this before on the main page, but I think they are an *AWESOME* regular season team that is hugely fun to watch. And while I agree their bench is weak, that should matter less come playoff time – partially because rotations are slimmed down, and partially because, especially for the Heat, they’ll be on some kind of Tues, Fri, Sun schedule each week to maximize ratings, which will give them a lot of time to rest after playing big minutes.

   But I don’t count on them to win more than maybe (maybe!) one championship at this point, because of their problem at that key position for championship teams: “The Man.” Almost every championship team (and strike the “almost” for dynasties) needs to have a player that is The Man, and The Man must not only be the all round best player, they must be so mentally tough that the whole team feeds off that toughness and becomes tougher itself. The Heat already had The Man in Wade, and then they added a more popular, better player that Wade himself acquiesced to in LBJ.

   But LBJ just isn’t The Man material. He’s by far the best all round player on the planet, but he lacks that mental edge that the Kobes, Birds, Magics, MJs and (yes) Wades all have. I still remember the last Olympics, when Team USA – while playing agains scrub teams – allowed the games to essentially be The LeBron James Highlight Show. And then they played Spain, and the game was close down the stretch, and then… LBJ just kind of wilted, and waited for Kobe and Wade to bail him out. Each playoff series, save that run that ended in San Antonio when it looked like he might really be the next #23, has looked remarkably similar to that Team USA run in ’08; he either pastes the scrubs, or looks frightened against the big dogs in the waning moments.

   I know this will be considered sacrilege, but I think the Heat would be a dynasty contender if they traded James for a handful of good to great players and let Wade go back to being The Man. Imagine if you will, a Heat Team that lost James, but added Noah, Deng, and Watson from the Bulls, or maybe Bynum, Barnes and Sessions for the Lake show. How scary would those teams be come playoff time?

   (I’ll note here that I think if they’re going to win a championship with the current team concept, it’s going to be this year. The shortened lockout season with the screwy schedule favors, I think, teams that have star power over teams that better utilize role players that use the normally long regular season to hone themselves into working machines.)

   • These are fair points. I return to a point I made earlier… has LeBron ever said or done anything to make us believe that he is or wants to be the man? He was the guy taking pretend pictures with his Cleveland teammates before games… NOT the guy banging his head against the basket support like uber-intense KG. How much of our disappointment in LeBron is because we wanted him to be something he never really seemed interested in being? I think so much of our response to him says more about us than it does him…

     • Oh, I do not believe he wants to be the man. But I hunk everyone (including Wade) keeps looking for him to be that, because he’s so freaking great.

     • Eh.

       He’s willing to take “The Man” pay. That means (to me) he ought to be willing to do “The Man” work.

       To be fair, lots of players don’t dish this up. Even some of the ones that do don’t do it for their whole career. Shaq, the three years he really busted his ass working? He was crazy insane those three years. Monstrous. It was like watching The Hulk play people with Normal Human Strength.

       But Shaq never really wanted to be “The Man”, all the time. He’s too much of a big kid, God bless him.

       Some other guys live and breathe that stuff, but they’re not good enough to be “The Man” (Latrell Spreewell, Shaun Kemp, I’m looking at you, here). They are actually worse than they might otherwise be, because they want so desperately to be “The Man”, and they ain’t that guy.

       I look at LeBron James and I see somebody who has more physical ability than Grant Hill and less drive than Grant. He’s still way better than most guys in the league, but I don’t see him ever being what he could be.

       Unless maybe somebody brings Phil out of retirement.

       • Shaq is a great comparison. I believe he won either one or zero rebounding titles, which is criminal given his gifts, especially during the first half of his career.

         However, TONS of guys take “The Man” pay and are far further from being The Man than LeBron. Vince Carter anyone? Part of that has to do with the pay structure of the NBA, which is much more structured than the other major sports. And LeBron and Bosh actually have identical salaries with Wade a tick (less than $1M/season) below them.

         PC, as a Laker fan, did Magic have the same drive as Bird and MJ? I always got the impression that he wasn’t the “take the game over and drive a stake through your heart” guy, but I only really saw him at the tail end, combined with his very playful personality on TV, so I might be misjudging him. Many people have always said, “LBJ is more Magic than MJ… more Showtime than GOAT.” None of this is a knock on Magic, who clearly had a ton of individual and team success. But as a PG, he was someone dependent on his teammates in a way that MJ wasn’t AND he always had greats around him (not a fault of his). Where does Magic stand on “The Man” spectrum (if we put MJ at the extreme end) and where is LeBron in relation?

         Sometimes, though, we just have to let these guys be. Like I said before, no one is going on talk radio calling me out for not wanting to be “The Man” of teaching. Why do we talk about squandered gifts in only certain areas? These aren’t rhetoical questions, mind you. Maybe there are good answers to them, but I think they are worth exploring as we consider the pscyhology of both the athlete and the fan.

         • ith Wade a tick (less than $1M/season) below them.

           Damn, don’t we all with $1M was just a “tick” in our salary!

         • “Showtime” was always a misnomer. Those Lakers were an extremely hard-working bunch; a lot more physical and blue-collar than that moniker ever suggested. Magic’s performance as 20 year old rookie point guard who started at center in an NBA finals game, scoring 42 points, grabbing 15 rebounds, and handing out 7 assists, is–in my mind–definitive proof that he had the killer instinct.

         • Vince Carter, bwahhahaha. Yeah.

           Okay, I became a Laker fan after the Magic years, so I’m a bad guy to ask (I rooted for the Celtics in the 80s, because I grew up in Northern California and nobody in their right mind roots for the Warriors and we all hated the Lakers).

           Magic wasn’t a stone-cold killer the way MJ was. He wanted to win plenty, though, and was certainly capable of taking over a game. Even as a rook.

           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYNDWaEmqto

           Usually the job of being the ice man was on Big Game James or Kareem. It’s kind of hard to compare the Showtime Lakers to anybody except Boston of the same era since so few teams since (or before) then have the incredible amount of badassery on them that those two teams had.

           I think of LeBron as a Shaq. If he gets the right coach, who can really light a fire under his ass, he can really give everything for a season or three. But I don’t see him having that fire on his own. Note: those three years when Shaq busted his ass off? Yeah, that was good enough for me to call him one of the greats. LeBron could do it, too.

           I’d put Jordan and Kobe and Bird and West and the like at the extreme end. The guys who are seriously probably more than a little bit unbalanced when it comes to competition. Magic is right below that, but not by much if at all.

           Towards the other end, you’ve got somebody like Lamar Odom, who seriously I don’t understand how anybody can play that game at that level and be so lacking in self-identity when it comes to competing.

           It’s hard for anybody to stay at either extreme all the way through their career, which makes it tougher to peg anybody with a simple rating.

         • Thanks. That seems to jive with what I’m thinking. While I think he has more talent than him, LBJ might be to Kobe what ‘Nique was to MJ.

           LeBron has never really had a great coach. It’d be really interesting if Riley did take over coaching duties (again!), though I’m not sure if he still has it anymore. Doc would be good for LeBron… who else? Larry Brown? Popovich? Egads… is this the best we can do for NBA coaches?!?!

         • I think a point guard that’s willing to play center in the finals, because that’s what the team needs, is pretty much the definition of “The Man”. Contrast that with LeBron who has said, he’s not a PG and he’s not a 4.

         • few teams since (or before) then have the incredible amount of badassery on them that those two teams had.

           More badass than the late 80s/early 90s Pistons? More talented, sure, but no tougher.

         • > More badass than the late 80s/early 90s Pistons?
           > More talented, sure, but no tougher.

           The late 80s/early 90s Pistons, whoo Lord. Take the mid-80s Celtics, remove all humanity and half the talent and replace them with extra guts and viciousness. There’s your Pistons.

       • He’s willing to take “The Man” pay. That means (to me) he ought to be willing to do “The Man” work.

         Bingo. If he wants to be the greatest #2 on a team ever, that’s fantastic. Then be that guy. As it is, he’s neither fish nor fowl.

         • How much of that is on LeBron, how much on Wade, and how much on the organization (primarily Spoelstra and Riley)?

     • He gave himself the nickname “King James”.

       • Did he give that to himself? My rule growing up was that you were NOT allowed to nickname yourself… doing so immediately got you something along the lines of “Dick Cream”.

         By the way… you’re not Mo WILLIAMS, are you???

         • Supposedly, the origin of the name is that he had the propensity to yell “King James” when he dunked on people in high school.

           I wish I was Mo Williams, my paycheck would be a lot bigger.

         • I would yell “King James” if I was ever able to dunk on someone. I dunked a tennis ball once. But if I threw it down on someone in a game, who knows how nuts I’d go.

           Which isn’t to excuse such an absurdly arrogant name.

         • Oh who knows what crazy thing I would shout if I dunked at someone in the game. However, if I scored a touchdown in an NFL game, I would do the most embarrassingly elaborate end zone dance the world has ever seen. OTOH, if it’s your job, act like you’ve been there before.

       • It ain’t a nickname until someone else calls you that.

7. To some extent the issue with the Eagles is that Andy Reid keeps coming up with perfect plans for how the team is going to play, and then the owners go out and buy all these guys who are completely wrong for Reid’s plan, and Reid’s response is to stick to his plan and jam square pegs into round holes in the hope that by dint of sheer effort he can make them fit. McNabb was never going to be the kind of out-of-the-pocket quarterback that Reid clearly wanted him to be; right from the start, as soon as he was pressured outside his blockers he threw the ball away. (Gunning the ball as hard as you can towards a vaguely-glimpsed green helmet can’t really be considered a “pass”, and I can’t blame him, because six or seven 300+-pound guys running towards me as hard as they could would rattle me pretty good too.) McNabb could throw if he wasn’t pressured hard, and he could scramble, but he couldn’t scramble then throw, and that’s what Reid (and everyone else in Philadelphia) wanted.

   • Spot on. This past year, the Eagles had three of the best cover corners in the game… and proceeded to put them all in zone coverage schemes. Seriously!?!?!?!?! I guess that is what happens when your defensive coordinator is a former OL coach. (I’m an Eagle fan, so this still boils my blood.)

   • +1 to Kazzy’s Spot On.

     This is to some extent a mish-mash of problems. If the coach and the front office aren’t talking straight, things are always going to go to hell. If the coach can’t stop using his default playbook when his default playbook isn’t working, that’s a related problem.

     Example from baseball: Dusty Baker. From basketball: Del Harris.

8. > Doc would be good for LeBron… who else? Larry Brown?
   > Popovich? Egads… is this the best we can do for NBA
   > coaches?!?!

   This is a whole ‘nuther post.

   Doc would probably be good for LBJ. Larry Brown, maybe. I think of Brown’s biggest talent as getting more out of marginal players than the most out of good players who can be great. Pop is fine for what he is, but I never saw him as all that and a bag of chips; whenever his teams have big injury problems his compensation for it kind of sucks.

   The biggest problem here is that there are a limited number of NBA coaching gigs and the NCAA is a hooooooorible training ground for NBA coaches. The dynamics for coaching and general managering in the NBA are truly one of the greatest examples of limited sample size and huge risk producing crappy outcomes.

   Generally, I think there’s a slew of players who could potentially be good coaches out there. From the Lakers, Fisher immediately springs to mind. He seems to have both the ability to grok the game that a coach needs to have and the ability to manage egos, which is something special in and of itself. They also have to really want the job; I suspect Stockton would make a great frickin’ coach but I don’t think he’d toss his hat in the ring for anything. The problem is that there’s no low- to- medium-risk way to try out a non-established coach.

   You hire a bad coach, your team does poorly, and you’re in trouble. The Lakers actually had a huge opportunity here as they were going to have two down years anyway and they could have picked a coach who maybe could be the next big coach with little downside risk. Instead they went with Brown who seems to be (to me) a placeholder coach who can just run enough uptempo pick and roll offense to let the talent guys decide who to keep on the roster in year three.

   • I disagree about Doc. The trades to get Allen and Garnett salvaged his reputation and boosted his stock across the league. I think Garnett, as much as I despise him, is more responsible for the attitude and effort from the Celtics.

     I think Phil would be a great coach to get the most out of James, as would Riley (if he decided to come back). SVG is a pretty underrated coach, though he’s not well-liked by his players. I would liked to have seen Shaw as the coach in LA.

     • Phil’s a given, though I question how dedicated he’d be at this stage in the game.

       Doc wouldn’t be where he is without those guys, but I think he has become a better coach as he’s worked through the decline of the three stars and the ascent of Rondo. I don’t think he is a great X-and-O’s guy, but he seems to have a certain resonance with the players. Even opponents hold great respect for him and as a former player who played in many of these guys’ lifetimes, he might be able to reach a guy like LeBron in a way that someone like Spoelstra, who worked his way up from a video guy, simply can’t.

       I don’t know that SVG is enough of a player’s coach to connect with big stars. See: Dwight Howard. Both Van Gundy’s were great X-and-O’s guys.

       On the other hand, David Thorpe, who does scouting for ESPN and runs a private development camp down in Floriad, insists you can teach things like “heart”, “drive”, and “motor”. He says these are a skill like any other, that can be developed, but can’t be formed out of nothing and for which each individual player has limits. I don’t know that LeBron necessarily lacks these or has a low ceiling for them… he is simply not on the level of the all-time greats with regard to these skills, though certainly in others.

9. “This is a whole ‘nuther post.”
   Care to join me on this foray into sports blogging here at the LoOG?

   • Sure.

     Coaching, hm. I think I can make a Thursday post about coaching.

10. There was much talk in the comments here about LeBron not being “The Man”. There are obvious a myriad of ways to define one’s “The Man”-ness, with many of them being subjective and unmeasurable. However, this objective study seems to touch on the issue: http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7820540/nba-kyrie-irving-carmelo-anthony-chris-paul-top-closers

    In a nutshell, they looked at which players increased their possession usage rate (defined as possessions that end in FG attempts, FT attempts, or TO… basically, the guy was the last player to touch the ball for his team on a given possession) in “clutch” situations (defined as a score differential of 5 or fewer and 5 or fewer minutes left in the game). LeBron’s usage rate went up 3.1 percentage points, from 31.4 to 34.5; Wade’s went up just 1.2 points, from 31 to 32.2. So, to the extent that LeBron shrinks at the end of close games… these numbers don’t bear that out. He at least attempts to do more with the ball at the end of the game than during the rest of it.
    Now, this study says nothing to effectiveness. All of LeBron’s additional possessions might have resulted in dribbling the ball off his foot or jacking up a bad shot. But they do challenge the notion that he disappears at the end of games… at least this season. There are other players whose usage rates go up MUCH higher in clutch situations… rookie Kyrie Irving leads the league with a jump of over 19 % points (!!!) and Carmelo Anthony not only has a larger jump than LeBron, but takes a far higher absolute percentage than him (16 point jump, 47.2% of all team possession). So, LeBron doesn’t take over the end of games the way these two players do… but he also doesn’t play hot potato with the ball as is so often claimed.
    Kobe ranked 15th in total difference, though they didn’t give his specific numbers and I don’t see a link to the full rankings (only top 10 are offered in the article).

    Thoughts???

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