Tonight, it ends. Oh, sure, LeBron James obviously will go on, the Miami Heat obviously will go on, the drama will go on, the daily speculation about coach Erik Spoelstra's job will go on, the calls for Pat Riley to come back will go on, the boos, the complaints about the boos, the over-analysis of the boos, the on-the-record sniping, the anonymous sniping, the marveling about how lousy a team the Heat are, the expectation that the Heat will still come together, the parade of daily stories and reports by the 987 writers and broadcasters embedded with the team ... all of it will go on.
But it seems to me that tonight, the story really ends. Tonight LeBron James returns to Cleveland. Tonight my hometown will unload whatever emotions are left over from James' callous (The) Decision (Powered By ESPN) to leave Cleveland and take his talents to South Beach. Tonight will be a charged night.
And Saturday the Miami Heat play at home against Atlanta -- and are infinitely less interesting.
I guess this is the part that surprises me: The Miami Heat are boring. I didn't expect that. When LeBron James announced that he would join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, I did not know exactly what to expect but I expected something electrifying. Maybe the Heat would be great, a new kind of superpower, designed by three players who decided it might be kinda fun to get together and change the world. Maybe the Heat would spectacularly crash into itself like a black hole of egos. Maybe the Heat would come together to give us a kind of basketball we only see in the rarest of moments, like when Michael Jordan's Bulls were at their height or when the various Dream Teams played at their most inspired. The possibilities seemed endless.
And, I don't know, for me, the possibilities no longer seem endless. The Heat play boring basketball. They win games in boring fashion and lose them in boring ways. They have no inside presence. They do not move the ball around well. They generally beat bad teams. They generally lose to good ones. They play pretty well at home. They play pretty lousy on the road. They may yet come together, but I don't think it's inevitable, and I don't think it's even likely. James and Wade are great players, two of the five best in the world, and the expectation is that they would make magic together. But it turns out they are the same kind of player, and when they are on the floor together the result is less magic and more like a dance-off.
Anyway, it seems that way to me. The Heat may yet rip off 10 or 15 wins in a row, I don't know. They may yet lift their games into the heavens, I don't know. But I don't think so. I think they are a puffed up superband, like Asia*, destined for a few hits and a lot of nights where people wonder why so much musical talent doesn't make great music.
*'Cause it's the heat of the moment! The heat of the moment! The heat of the moment showed in your eyes!
But it's off the court that the Heat are especially boring. We live in a Reality TV culture. As a nation we have been peppered with survivors and amazing races and and top chefs and dancing stars and big brothers and bachelors and bachelorettes and real housewives and a million other reality situations, and it seems to me that one consequence of this is that a story has to be REALLY interesting or provocative or ridiculous to capture our attention. And I don't think the Heat saga is any of those things. The dramatic effects surround this team aren't good enough for an old Batman TV show.
-- Will the Heat stick with their young coach Erik Spoelstra?
-- Did LeBron purposely bump his coach or was it an accident?
-- Will LeBron get serious about winning a championship?
-- Will Dwyane Wade, who seemed to age two years this offseason, look like his younger self again?
-- Will Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley come out from the shadows and coach again?
-- Will Chris Bosh ... well, actually there's nothing even faintly interesting about Chris Bosh (and I actually mean this in a good way).
Who cares? Really. The Heat are 12-9. They are an OK basketball team with a couple of big names. There are a lot of teams like that. They are viewed as underachievers and everybody waits for them to click and start winning. There are a lot of teams like that. They are generally too good to lose to below average teams -- I fully expect them to beat Cleveland tonight -- and they have no answer against the best teams. There are a lot of teams like that. They have coaching drama -- hell, who doesn't?
And still, they are being covered like they are important, like these stories are unique, like THEY are unique. And if there's one thing they have proven in just 21 games ... they are not unique. LeBron is a great player who doesn't like being told what to do. Heard that one before. Wade is a great player who doesn't seem entirely sure how to handle the LeBron zaniness. Fascinating. Bosh seems to me just a guy who seems interested in playing basketball without all the drama. Yawn. This reality TV story would never make it to network television.
And Pat Riley? I know people keep waiting for him to jump in the fray and become head coach, but my guess is that he wants no part of this mess. The Heat's problems as a team are very real. They are weak inside. They are one dimensional offensively. There's no percentage in actually coming back and coaching this team to a bland 45-to-55 win season and a second-round playoff loss and inevitable disappointment. Better to keep standing on the outside as the savior while Erik Spoelstra keeps coaching this overhyped mess and taking a beating from inside and outside. Maybe something can be done in the offseason to fix some of this team's problems -- maybe then it would be worth jumping in.
As for LeBron ... after years of building up a lovable reputation featuring Nike puppets and flying rosin, I would say he has done very little right for LeBron James Inc.. The decision to do a show about The Decision was obviously a public relations nightmare -- they will be teaching classes in universities about that for years to come. He then came to Miami with the obvious belief that this would be easy based on the formula:
((James * Wade) + (Bosh))/(Hype + Spoelstra) = Championship.
But it's not easy. It's not remotely easy. It wasn't easy for Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or Bill Russell or Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or anyone else. This is the NBA, the best basketball league on earth. The Cleveland Cavaliers spoiled LeBron James any and every way they knew how. They invented special rules for him. They tried to get players who fit him. They never seemed to tell him no. These things had their rewards -- James carried the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals in 2007, and he twice was league MVP as he led the Cavaliers to the best regular season record.
But these things had their price too ... James clearly started to resent the expectations that went along with the special treatment. He made a statement last year after his worst playoff performance that even at the time sounded ridiculous but in the ensuing months have come to sound like a philosophy: "I spoil people with my play." At the moment it just felt like a narcissistic statement by someone who was feeling sorry for himself -- which can be understood in the heat of the moment (the heat of the moment showed in your eyes!). But pretty much everything James has done since then suggests that's how he really feels. He's taking HIS TALENTS to South Beach. He's asking "What Should I Do?" in a bizarre Nike commercial. He's talking about how he's playing too many minutes, and the offense isn't exactly right for him, and someone -- someone anonymous, of course -- is saying that Erik Spoelstra is being too hard on him.
See, he's not living up to his great potential as a basketball star, no, he's spoiling people with his play. And I think he came to Miami to escape some of those expectations, to be in a crowd of talent, to win a championship the easy way. And apparently nobody told him it just doesn't work that way.
Many people have asked me how I feel about LeBron James coming back to Cleveland tonight. I don't really have many feelings about it. All those feelings were emptied out back when he made (The) Decision (powered by ESPN). I wish he had treasured his connection to Cleveland. I wish he had seen not only what he meant to the city but what the city meant for him. I wish he had left with more class.
But if wishes were horses and all that ... LeBron is now part of what seems to me a flawed team and a cliche-infested soap opera and a media circus filled with people who will wonder more and more what they're doing there. Tonight, it's still a story. Tonight everyone will attempt to measure the emotions of my hometown, and LeBron James will try to show that he's made of sterner stuff, and it will be moderately interesting I suppose.
But an NBA season pounds at the senses. Saturday, the Heat play at home at Atlanta. Monday, they're off to Milwaukee. Wednesday's they're at Utah. Then they're at Golden State. And so on ... and so on ... and, in the end, who beside for some people in Miami will care about a pretty good, star-laden, self-indulgent NBA team that plays boring basketball? There are so many star-laden NBA teams that play wonderful basketball. If I were one of those poor shleps forced to follow around this Heat team, I'd beg to be reassigned to Oklahoma City.
Joe, you're the best. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnd now you find yourself in 82 ... largely meaningless NBA regular season games.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWe always gave Lebron too much credit- maturity levelwise. It was just never there but we all overlooked it. He showed signs of his ignorance way before last year's "I spoil my teammates.." quote.
ReplyDeleteIf he had even a drop of understanding/awareness of who he was and what his role was in Cleveland, he simply can not show up at a crucial Cleveland Indians home playoff game with a Yankees hat.
71 - 63
ReplyDeleteHe shoulda gone to Chicago.
ReplyDeleteNice post. But it really comes as no surprise, to find that you planned it all along.
ReplyDelete"I wish he had seen not only what he meant to the city but what the city meant for him."
ReplyDeleteHow do you know what the city meant for LeBron? Why isn't that for him to decide?
the nba playoffs ended??? and a new season started?
ReplyDeleteThe Heat are (is?) currently in 5th place in the conference. You know what would make this story interesting? If 5th place meant missing the playoffs. That would give the regular season the urgency that's missing here. That would make the Heat compelling. Instead, there's no reason to care. There's no real reason to watch (unless you enjoy the sport for its own sake, which is reasonable). There's no competition in the regular season.
ReplyDeleteIn the NBA, a quarter of the team are awful, likely to lose three games for each one they win and thus lacking any chance at all of making the playoffs. Another quarter are pretty terrific. And the whole darn regular season -- 82 games! -- is played to figure our which half of the middle half are good enough to make the playoffs so that they can lose by the second round.
Why anyone would want to expand the playoffs in baseball utterly confounds me.
wow.
ReplyDeletegreat line:
And I think he came to Miami to escape some of those expectations, to be in a crowd of talent, to win a championship the easy way. And apparently nobody told him it just doesn't work that way.
Josh: Heat "is." I know, it's a stupid grammatical rule, but "Heat" is singular, not plural. Same with Wild, Thunder, Jazz... One of those things that, as a writer, I wish would change. English is defined by odd rules, special rules, too many words meaning the same thing and too many words meaning different things in different situations. The easy thing to do? "The Heat WILL lose in the first round of the NBA playoffs."
ReplyDeleteGiven that the Cavs were quite literally the Clippers of the East (4 playoff series victories in 33 years!) before he arrived, has anyone considered giving LeBron a standing "O" tonight?
ReplyDeleteMr. Anonymous: Heat and your other examples are collective nouns and can go either singular or plural, depending on how you want to use them in a sentence.
ReplyDeleteFor instance: "The Heat is missing many of their shots tonight" would be wrong. You can't treat the Heat as both singular (is) and plural (their) in the same sentence. Same for other collective nouns like family, couple, and so on.
You are right that Americans tend to use collective nouns as singular.
I vote for Heat "are." English as spoken in England used the plural verb forms for collective nouns. I'm not suggesting we use stuff like "The audience are" since that's definitely NOT the American practice, but team names seem to me a more reasonable place to apply that rule - most of them are plural nouns (Giants, Cardinals, Kings, etc) anyway, so to say "the Heat are" or "the Jazz are" keeps the usage consistant.
ReplyDeleteSo what do you call ONE Jazz or Heat player? A Note? A Therm? THAT'S the big question.
The comparison to Asia is spot on. I honestly did not think the Heat could have any glaring weakness. I thought the combined talents of their superstars would be enough to make up for any shortcomings. I hope they don't because you are right. This is a boring team. I want this team to lose because I'm sick of hearing about them. He should have gone to Chicago. I can't even fathom how good they'd be, especially if Bosh followed him. It's great to have two top-5 players on the same team but the last time that worked (Shaq and Kobe) was because they DIDN'T PLAY THE SAME POSITION. It's like having two star runningbacks; obviously your running game is going to rule, but you would probably trade one of them for say, a star QB or pass rusher if you could.
ReplyDeleteFantastic post (as always) Joe. It's funny how LeBron receives so much criticism when he really didn't do that much wrong, and yet, having said that, I hate him too. I'm guessing he's not feeling good right now. In the last six months he has just done everything wrong...I can't wait till tonight.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that the Bullets/Wizards are the Clippers of the East.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if at any point during Lebron's 'Where Am I Taking My Talents?' brainstorming process with his inner circle, Maverick or one of the other homies stood up and said, "Has anyone considered the potential for this to not work out? Should we have a plan B?"
ReplyDeleteMy guess is no.
I love calling one Jazz player a Note. Beautiful. In that vein, can we call a Heat player a Calorie?
ReplyDeleteWhat has suprised me is that the Heat have been unable to fill the roster with glue guys who are willing to take less money to play with a contender and play for a championship. It seemed like Boston got a half-dozen of them when Garnett joined them.
It just doesn't seem like a ton of thought was put into the complementary pieces. Maybe that will happen. Bottom line is that Miami was right to get Lebron if they could - you don't pass up opportunities to get franchise players. And maybe as the trade deadline approaches, they'll be able to make a couple of moves. But if they stay too ordinary for too long, maybe those glue guys focus on Orlando, Boston, LA, and SA.
And an Avalanche player is a Flake.
ReplyDeleteA single Heat player should be a Degree, as in temperature.
ReplyDeleteI believe when the Heat get Mike Miller integrated into the team (for their sake by the playoffs) they'll be pretty tremendous. And nothing matters until the playoffs.
Spot on last paragraph, Joe.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand (well, I do but it seems stupid to me) why people in Cleveland would waste their time and energy in venting their spleen against a basketball player that decided to play somewhere else. I understand fan passion and so forth, but can't these people see how sick it is to burn LeBron jerseys and froth at the mouth because he left their team? To me it would be more interesting if the fans simply ignored LeBron and showed him just how (to paraphrase "Casablanca") just how little the problems of one basketball player matter in this crazy world. It's sad to me that so many people think this is so important to their lives that the team needs extra security to prevent some sort of violence toward this guy.
ReplyDeleteActually, if you follow the AP style guide, "Heat" is treated as a plural noun. So "Heat are ..." would be correct, not "is." As Casey Stengel would say, "You could look it up."
ReplyDeleteWatch enough international football (or soccer, as those crazy Americans call it) and "are" will become second nature. They even use it when referring to the city without the team name, as in "Chelsea are giving too much space in midfield."
ReplyDeleteJoe, have you seen any info or data regarding how much damage, in actaul dollars, has been done to the "LeBJ brand?" His marketability is down, right? Are his endorsement deals down as well? Is there a sports/economist blog out there that has posted on that?
ReplyDeleteLove it, I agree they're boring. But this is a playoff team. As soon as the trade was announced I felt an already overlong, largely uninteresting season was even more pointless. I mean if the Celtics can coast 17-17 after the break last tear and make the finals, come one quarter from a ring?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the point of having so many games?
The HEAT will be formidable in the playoffs. If they can somehow find ANY inside threat - just someone who commands a post defender - they will get to the finals.
But frankly, you can put Dwight Howard on the Heat and I think the Lakers would still beat them. The Pau for Kwame trade was the beginning of the end of the regular season. Now it's for real. Kobe and Pau are arguably #1 and #2 in the league. Certainly the best 2 and 4 in the game. And more importantly, they are complimentary.
With a healthy Bynum and the rest of that All-Star team - done deal.
A couple of rsndom thoughts:
ReplyDelete"Is" vs. "are": If you can say "the team is," why can't you say "the Heat is?"
I always think it sounds weird to call a Red Sox player a Red Sock.
You're a dumbass. If anything the Heat hype has been building, from the spoelstra bump burning up youtube, to tonights clash, and it will go on to Dec 25 when they face LA.
ReplyDeleteYou're just another Heat hater, like so many in the media, and it will be delicious to prove you wrong.
I also find it freakin hilarious the media darling Lakers, are a whopping two games better than Miami at this point (1.5 if Miami wins tonight), when if you went by media coverage, the Lakers are the best team in NBA history and Miami is the worst.
One thing is for sure, Miami has a better chance of winning a championship this season then LA. Though I doubt LA is better than 3rd in the West right now, so they wont make the finals anyway. Kobe is old, declining, and was always overrated, he'll never win anything without Phil Jackson.
And hey I just checked the standings. Know where LA sits in the Western conference?
ReplyDeleteTied for 5th place. Just like Heat. Mediocre. But the Heat have tons more talent than LA.
One thing I find interesting about the Heat is that their point differential is one of the highest in the league despite a so-so record. They tend to lose very close games, but dominate others like last nights 97-72 destruction. I think that shows the flashes of dominance they are capable of.
The NBA is boring, imagine that.
ReplyDeleteBosh seems to me just a guy who seems interested in playing basketball without all the drama.
ReplyDeleteWell, there was a place for him to do that. It's called Toronto...
Anonymous @ 4:24 pm: Please do not call other people names here. You can make your points without insulting others.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
"Anonymous" is right. The Heat's point differential is the story. If this were a baseball team with a similar run differential, we'd all be talking about how they're poised to start kicking some serious butt pretty soon. Everyone wants to see the Heat fail, so they're quick to jump on them, but look, as you said, Joe, we're 21 games in. It doesn't take very many tight losses for that record to look a whole lot worse than they really are. I hate the Heat, but let's be realistic. This team is A LOT better than their record, and personally, I think they may go the distance.
ReplyDeleteI think I already know what the results would be, but can we get a click-on poll that goes like this?
ReplyDeleteI would rather spend eight hours in the car driving to St. Louis and back with:
o Lebron James
o Bill James
Oh Joe. You're too close to this, your eloquence shadowed by smoldering bitterness. Miami wasn't boring tonight and these players are no more selfish than the average NBA player (that is to say, pretty selfish).
ReplyDeleteComing from a Cleveland native who spent many wonderful years in Miami I must tell you - WOW, well said, man. Well said. Really, the whole thing.....What made it all come back around to being OK in the end for me was this part -- "I wish he had seen not only what he meant to the city but what the city meant for him. I wish he had left with more class."
ReplyDeleteYep, yep.
The Heat will be much better come playoff time. It's inevitable. They'll figure some things out. They may be able to add a key piece along the way. The fact that James and Wade interfere with each others game too much will be worked out in time. It'll have to be. The potential embarrassment will be too great for it not to happen. I don't know if that'll be enough to win it all, but they'll be a lot closer to a championship team than they look right now, and they have several years to get it right.
ReplyDeleteAs for Cleveland, what is to be said? Yeah, they took it in the cajones. They may never turn the page from this one, as they never have with the original Browns moving to Baltimore, but everyone else will move on in time, after a couple of years of games and playoff wins and losses build a narrative.
As for LeBron, the same people (not from Cleveland, of course) calling him immature and a traitor will be singing his praises again...IF he wins. And then all of his sponsors will be right back at his side. Again.
From a purely cold-blooded point of view, although I think "The Decision" was pathetically laughable, the decision to leave was not. He gave up money to go to a place where he thought he'd have a better chance to win a championship, multiple championships. How can that be rationally criticized. Did he miscalculate the difficulty of winning it all, even so? Perhaps. But he still has a better chance in Miami.
There's no law that says LeBron James has to win the toughest way possible; no law that says he had to win one for Cleveland in order to be validated. If he wins a title or two or more, that'll be validation enough that his decision was right. And I think he eventually will.
Re: Asia: "...people wonder why so much musical talent doesn't make great music."
ReplyDeleteEXCUSE me?? People wonder why Asia doesn't make great music??
/looks up Asia
//realizes that what I thought were Asia songs were actually Toto songs
Oh, well...Carry on, then...
//realizes that what I thought were Asia songs were actually Toto songs
ReplyDeleteActually, the idea that "Africa" was performed by Asia is pretty darned cool.
Europe gets the most play at sporting events with "The Final Countdown". Is this evidence of continued bias against people from the other continents?
ReplyDeleteRosanna, I'll meet you all the way on that one.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, anonymous. One player from the Heat would not be a degree.
ReplyDeleteHe would be a joule.
From the Asimov guide to science for dumbasses like myself.
The Queen's all punk.
ReplyDeleteAlways was. Always will be.
The problem is that as an "average" sports fan, we have to endure the same hype in a lot of different settings. We have a lot of nationally televised Heat games despite the fact that they are an average team.
ReplyDeleteLook at the NFL, we have to endure a bunch of Vikings and Cowboys games despite the fact that they just are not good.
"You're just another Heat hater, like so many in the media, and it will be delicious to prove you wrong."
ReplyDeleteOh, are you on the team then?
Interesting the in the past six months Michael Vick and LeBron James have literally switched roles... Three years ago, who was a bigger villian in the world of professional sports than Michael Vick? At the same time LeBron was the beloved, up-and-coming NBA superstar who had the talent to be the next (or even greater) Jordan...
ReplyDeleteNow? Michael Vick is being praised for turning his life around while LeBron is being crucified for wanting to go play ball with his best friends down in Miami...
I don't get it... What faults can we find in LeBron's life, outside of getting some really bad advice on several levels and deciding that it would be more fun to play with his buddies than stay with his hometown team...
Meanwhile, Michael Vick has a past that includes connections to drugs (two friends picked up in a truck registered to him with marijuana) and steroids (2010 accusation by David Jacobs), theft (two members of his group stealing a watch from an airport security guard in Atlanta) and STDs (hello, Ron Mexico!)... Who is to say he's really changed? Sure, dogfighting is in the past, but has he changed the people with whom he hangs out? Has he hired financial advisors based on more than a friend's recommendation? Is he an honest and upstanding father and fiance?
My point is--LeBron is villified despite not having anything more than bad judgement, while Vick is being hailed as a hero when we have no reason to know that he actually changed in his time away from the NFL...
Interesting, very interesting...