Late Night Reflections from Game 4 of the NBA Finals

Text exchange between me and my friend, Ron, on Tuesday:

Ron (12:53PM): “That’s My Boy at 6?”

David (12:55PM): “Free Movie Tuesday?”

Ron (12:56PM): “Obviously.”

David (12:57PM): “Down.”

            Perfect, I thought, I’ll watch Adam Sandler bone his teacher, laugh at some awkward Andy Samberg jokes, and make it back just in time to catch the pregame show for Game 4.  Good day.

            I get some lunch, go pick up my prom tux, try on a couple of ties, get the number of the hot cashier (who looks eerily similar to a young Carmen Electra), get in my car, see a huge gorilla charging at me, start honking my horn and screaming, notice that Andy Samberg is sitting next to me, start screaming louder, and just as the huge gorilla is about to smash into my car… I wake up.

            I’m in my bed, sweating.  I look at my phone to see what time it is: 6:47.  No. Fucking. Way.  I SLEPT THROUGH THE MOVIE!  I check my phone and notice that I got another text from Ron:

Ron (6:09PM): “Yo movie’s at 8… my bad.”

            Classic Ron.* 

**Sidenote: why would he text me 9 minutes after he said the movie was supposed to start?  Did he go to the theater, get a ticket, buy some popcorn, sit down, and then nine minutes later realize he was watching Snow White and the Huntsman?  That’s Ron for you.**

            I’m already mad because I’m still dealing with the fact that the hot cashier whose number I got is really just a figment of my imagination, and now I’m not going to be able to watch the most pivotal game of the Finals live!?!??! This is a disaster!

            I felt bad bailing on Ron so late so I told him I’d go to the movie if he swore on his hot sister’s life that he wouldn’t mention anything to me about the game during the movie.  He told me to go fuck myself and reluctantly accepted. 

            I somehow got home at 10:00 without hearing a word about the game, so all in all everything worked out… until I realized that I forgot to tape the show after the game. Anybody who watches sports on TV knows that all sporting events (especially one as important as Game 4) end after they are scheduled to, so when my Game 4 recording inexplicably stopped with five minutes left in the game, I had to spend a good half hour frantically searching YouTube for those last five minutes. 

            After I found a rickety video of the end of the game on a 4x4 TV taken by a Thunder fan that jumped and shook the camera after every big play, it was around 1:00AM, but for some reason I wasn’t tired.  Maybe it was that random 6-hour nap I took in the middle of the day… I don’t know.  Regardless, my insomnia prompted me to lay in my bed awake and meditate over what I had just seen.  Here are those reflections:

Late Night Reflections from Game 4 of the NBA Finals

1.     LeBron James is finally going to get his first ring

            Not meant to be a jinx.  If you read my sappy LeBron column before the Finals, you know that I’m no longer a hater.  He is doing things in these Finals that even Jordan didn’t do.  He’s the first player since Larry Bird in ’86 to record 26 points, 12 assists, and 9 rebounds in a single NBA Finals game. 

            He’s averaging 30 PPG, 9 RPG, 5 APG this post-season.  The only other player to put up numbers like that in a single post-season since the merger: LeBron James (’09).  The only other player to do that in league history was the great Oscar Robertson way back in ’63 when the stereotypical power forward was a tall awkward white guy with a mustache.

            But what’s more impressive about what LeBron is doing is that he’s not just going out onto the floor and saying “Tonight I am going to be scoring LeBron” or “I think I’ll be more of a passing/rebounding LeBron tonight.”  He’s reading the defense and adapting to what he needs to do to help his team win. 

            In the first three games, LeBron attacked the paint to take advantage of his mismatch on the skinnier Durant.  He was 6-38 from outside the paint (as Skip Bayless loves to mention), but, LeBron shot 75% from inside the paint and shot 45% overall.  Most importantly, those numbers helped the Heat split the first two games in OKC and win the first game on their home court.

            In Game 4 the Thunder showed him a different look defensively.  Scott Brooks put Thabo Sefalosha (the Thunder’s best defender) on LeBron right from the start and double-teamed James whenever he entered the paint.  LeBron realized this and took advantage of the scheme by drawing the double in the paint and then dishing it out to an open shooter for the three.  He had 10 assists by the end of the first half.

            The Heat looked like the ’09 Magic (before Dwight Howard quit on his team and turned into a total douche).  Teams didn't have the personnel to combat Howard inside, so they double-teamed him in the paint and Howard passed the ball out to Lewis or Pietrus or Reddick for the three.  But that set-up only works if the shooters can hit their open looks, which is what the Heat shooters couldn’t do until…

2.     NORRIS COLE!!! The Unsung Hero

            Actually “unsung” is an understatement.  “The Ugly Ginger Middle Child with Braces” Hero is a better description of what he was last night.

            The Heat were down 17 points to start the game.  Their offense looked stagnant, Chalmers, Battier, and Miller weren’t hitting shots, and the Thunder looked like they were going to run away with the game. 

            Then Cole hit a layup with 2:14 left in the first quarter to slow the Thunder’s momentum.  He then hit the Heat’s first three pointer of the game with 0:03 left in the first.  Then he hit another three at the 11:19 mark of the second quarter and just like that the Thunder’s lead was cut to single digits. 

            He may not get the publicity that Chalmers got, but without Cole’s spark the Thunder would have put the game out of reach early.

3.     The Chalmander

            Chalmers was straight ballin', as Stephen A. Smith would say, in Game 4.  His 25 points were big, but as Magic Johnson said, “when he scored his 25 points was bigger.”  If we stick with the popular Batman analogy that everybody seems to be using to describe the Heat in Game 4:

LeBron = Batman

Wade = Robin

Chalmers = Bruce Wayne’s butler (Alfred Pennyworth)

Pat Riley = Corpse of Batman’s dead father

Spoelstra = Corpse of Batman's dead mother

Bosh = The Lizard (I know, wrong comic, but it was too perfect)

4.     The Westbrook-Durant Paradox

            It’s an age-old dilemma that’s plagued us since Pterodactyls ruled the skies and Chris Bosh’s roamed the Earth. 

            Initially I thought that Westbrook should pass more to give Durant more touches.  Then I looked at Dean Oliver’s True Hoop Blog and saw these stats:

Thunder By Durant/Westbrook Usage Pct
2011-12 Season Including Playoffs

	Avg Team Off Efficiency<<	W-L
Durant Higher	106.3	22-12
Westbrook Higher	108.8	38-11

            So the Thunder are actually better when Westbrook shoots more?  I thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that Westbrook driving to the basket opens up the floor for KD, and makes it impossible for the defense to focus solely on stopping Durant.  Durant gets open looks and then when he starts hitting it's all over. 

           Westbrook was absolutely off the charts in Game 4 (43 PTS, 7 REB, 5 AST).  When Harden and Durant went cold towards the end of the game, Westbrook drove to the basket and used his freakish athleticism to score 13 straight points, single-handedly keeping his team in the game.  I remember thinking during the game that of all of the players in the league, only Rose and Wall have the same explosiveness and first step to match Westbrook’s. 

            I’ll give him a pass for that last foul he committed on Chalmers after the jump ball because without him, the Thunder wouldn’t have been in it at all. 

            Ultimately, Westbrook can take more shots than Durant when his field goal percentage is good.  When he’s having one of those “here we go again” games like in the first half of Game 2, he needs to distribute more.  He’s not a true point guard, but realistically there are only a handful of “true point guards” in the league.  Westbrook doesn’t have to change his game completely, just pick his spots and know his limits.

            I’m not going to get on Durant too badly for the loss because he still had 28 points.  The reason the Thunder lost is because the rest of the Thunder’s starters (besides Westbrook) scored 13 points combined, and the rest of the Thunder’s team scored 27 points combined. 

5.     Fun Fact

            Thabo Sefalosha’s +/- while he was on the floor was -19… so much for shutting down LeBron.

6.     What does James Harden hide under his beard?

      Seriously though.  A man with a beard that big and that bushy has to be hiding something.  Some theories:

a.)   He has no chin

b.)   He has terrible acne

c.)   He got a really bad tattoo in college

d.)   He keeps snacks hidden there for later

e.)   His can’t shave his beard because it has a mind of its own like the foot in that Courage the Cowardly Dog episode

7.     No more LeBron jokes…?

            Look, I know I’ve been defending LeBron lately, but who doesn’t like a good LeBron joke every now and then?  It’s like a breath of fresh air, reminding you, “Oh yeah, I have just as many rings as LeBron!” feeding your ego if only for a moment.  Now that LeBron is so close to winning his first, I’m not sure what we’re going to do to make ourselves feel better at someone else's expense…  I guess we’ll just have to double up on the Bosh jokes….

            Then again… the series isn’t over...

#DJLR

LePiphany

Welcome to the DJLR Transmogrification Suite.  Here you can become anything or anyone you want with just a push of a button.  Think Lost’s Dharma Initiative Swan Station meets the Star Trek command center, except pimped out with ginormous 24-carat gold Flava Flav clocks hanging everywhere.  Despite the extreme temptation to turn into James Harden’s beard or Metta World Peace’s psychologist, today we are turning back the clocks to become hypothetical writer, Liam Jones, born and raised in Atkins, Iowa.

It’s 1999.

Liam arrives at the University of Iowa as a freshman and is immediately named editor-in-chief of UI’s student newspaper, The Daily Iowan.  It is clear that Liam has an extraordinary ability to write, and under his leadership, The Daily Iowan wins Iowa’s Pepperdine Award for Best College Newspaper. 

The following year Liam’s writing continues to improve and Liam is named Iowa’s “Mr. Publication,” becoming the first sophomore to ever win the award.  In a catfight over who would talk to Liam first, a girl named Tiffany suffers a broken wrist and a second girl named Ashley is sent into a coma and wakes up three months later.

In his junior year, Jones’ popularity transcends to the national scale.  He is again named Iowa’s “Mr. Publication,” and, in addition, Liam wins the Staples Writer of the Year Award, given annually to the nation’s top college writer. 

Now people are starting to take notice of little Liam Jones.  He appears on the cover U.S. News and the Huffington Post that proclaim Jones to be a writing prodigy.  Celebrity writers like Bill Simmons and Michael Wilbon start reading The Daily Iowan, and the Jones’ fame becomes so great that UI has to hire a new printing company to satisfy the rapid increase in demand for The Daily Iowan.  Soon people from across the country are ordering subscriptions to The Daily Iowan, and Jones’ articles begin circulating on the Internet.

In his final year at UI, Jones wins Iowa’s “Mr. Publication” for the unprecedented third consecutive time, attends three national newspaper summits, and graduates from the University of Iowa as one of only three non-douchey English majors at the school.

It’s 2003. 

Jones decides to get a job writing for the newspaper that he grew up reading: The Iowa Gazette.  Jones transforms the Gazette from a newspaper plagued by poor writers and a less than avid readership into a national paper on par with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times within just three short years of his being there.  People start calling him “The Chosen One,” and everyone in Iowa starts to believe that Jones will lead the Gazette to be the world’s number one rated newspaper. 

            It’s 2004. 

Facebook has just been invented and now all of Jones’ fans can talk about him online in one common location. Liam couldn’t be happier. Everybody loves him and his fan base just keeps expanding. With each passing year Jones leads the Iowa Gazette to become more and more successful.  One year the Gazette is even ranked second in readership.  People are drawing comparisons between Liam and the John Peter Zenger, the greatest journalist in history.  But the thing is that people want Liam to surpass Zenger.  They want him to succeed.  They love his loyalty and small town values.  He still hasn’t lead the Gazette to become number one in readership, but everybody knows it’s just a matter of time. 

Jones is so popular that he teams up with Staples to start his own pencil line entitled “Lead Pencil Jones” (or LPJ for short).   They come up with a cool logo and Liam stars in commercials promoting his new brand.  That’s a huge hit and soon every student from kindergarten to college is rockin’ LPJ’s.  Liam is on top of the world.  He’s invincible.

            It’s 2007.

Jones is a national icon and household name.  People from all over the world are reading the Iowa Gazette just to see what Jones has to say.  He’s going to VIP parties in Hollywood and he never has to wait in line.  Swarms of people follow him wherever he goes, and he signs at least 50 autographs a day.

Something called “Twitter” is getting really popular.  It’s basically just a way for Liam to write small statements updating his fans on his everyday happenings.  All the celebrities have one so Liam decides it wouldn’t hurt to follow suit.  Overnight Liam gets 50,000 followers.  His first tweet: “Hey everybody! Kinda new to this Twitter thing, but I’m looking forward to using it!”  BOOM.  10,000 retweets and 4,000 favorites, whatever that means.  His publicist says it’s a good thing so he keeps tweeting.  He discovers something called “replies.”  It’s his fans tweeting back to him saying stuff like “WE LOVE YOU LIAM!” and “You’re the best!” and “HAVE MY BABIES, LIAM!!!”  Liam thinks this is the greatest.  Never has he been so close to his fans, and his love for them grows with each passing day.

It’s 2009.

Liam wins his first Pulitzer.  He’s just been validated as the top journalist in the world.  To top it all off LPJ has just expanded into pens, paper, and whiteout. Liam is making more money than he ever dreamed of, and, more importantly, he is loved.  Jones is a global icon and a role model for kids.  This is what he's always dream of.  He’s done more than just popularize The Iowa Gazette; he’s revitalized an entire state.

It’s 2010.

Liam wins another Pulitzer.  His personal success is enormous, but people are beginning to wonder if Jones will ever be able to lead the Gazette to become number one in readership.  He’s led them to a second place, but never a number one.  Analysts are beginning to question whether or not Jones has the ability to do it in his current situation.  This has led to Jones’ fans questioning his ability to get it done, which has trickled into Jones’ mind, himself wondering if he can get it done at the Gazette. Zenger led his newspaper to SIX number ones and Jones has yet to accomplish one.  How will this affect his legacy?  Will Jones even get one?

To make matters worse, Apple’s iPhone has revolutionized the world of communication.  You can access the Internet on the go and literally communicate with anyone at any time.  Facebook and Twitter are blowing up with “Can Jones lead Gazette to Number 1?” conversations and trending topics.  Analysts start saying that Jones’ supporting writers at the Gazette aren’t good enough to help Jones get a number one.  Jones says he isn’t listening, but the talk is deafening.  With his contract at the Gazette up this summer, Jones is seriously contemplating leaving.

Now it's summer 2010.

The Gazette finishes fourth in readership this year.  Jones’ contract is up.  He thinks he’ll never be able to get a number one at the Gazette.  He panics.  He needs a supporting cast.  It’s not his fault that the Gazette can’t get good writers to put around him.  He has to leave.  All of his family and friends agree.  He’s going to the New York Times.  He talked to a couple of All Star writers that he’s become friends with over the years and they’re moving with him.  It’s the only decision.  He has to do what’s best for him, right?  His fans will understand.  He is Liam Jones.  They’ll have to. 

Liam decides to announce his move on Twitter.  After all, he wants to see the comforting words of his fans, telling him that it’s all right; telling him that he made the right decision.  The only problem is that Jones’ fans don’t understand.  In fact, they couldn’t understand less.  Liam gets millions of replies calling him a “coward,” a “deserter,” and a “fake.”  The CEO of the Gazette writes an open letter to his fans chastising Liam as an “ungrateful traitor,” promising that the Gazette will reach number one before The Times.  People are burning his articles in the streets.  There are Anti-Liam groups on Facebook.  #KILLLIAM is trending on Twitter.  This is not what Liam signed up for.  He was just trying to do what was best for him.  Can’t they see that?  Why are they doing this?  He was their hero.  He was untouchable.  He was Liam Jones.

The Times decides to throw a Welcome Party for Liam and the two other big writers that they signed over the summer.  Liam is couldn’t be more excited.  He goes into the party and finally sees where all of his fans have been hiding.  They’re all here.  All right in front of him.  When he walks into the stadium and they all go crazy.  A whole arena full of them.  This is where they’ve been hiding.  It doesn’t matter that they weren’t defending him on the Internet because they’re here now.  They can’t get enough of him.  Liam gets asked how many number ones they’re going to get.  Liam has high expectations. He wouldn’t have left the Gazette if he didn’t.  Now he has two star writers alongside him where before he had none.  If he got the Gazette up to second in readership all by himself, think of what he could do with some talent.  Not one, not two, not three… The crowd’s cheers swell with each passing number… not four, not five, not six… they just won’t stop... not seven...  Everybody loves it.  Everybody loves him.  Liam has no idea that the rest of the country despises him.  In their eyes, Liam will never be as good as Zenger.

It’s 2011.

Liam has become the embodiment of evil.  Jones has become synonymous with traitor.  The Times is battling for number one in readership, but it seems as though the whole world is rooting against him. Jones is writing just as well as he ever has, if not better. Liam doesn’t know what’s wrong.  He didn’t bring guns into the newsroom.  He didn’t start a brawl with his fans.  He didn’t cheat on his wife.  Why are they acting as though he committed a crime against humanity?

Did he make the right decision?  How will he be remembered after this?  Is it all worth it?  The Internet has become his worst enemy.  The negative replies don’t stop.  The Anti-Liam Facebook groups grow in number everyday.  He’s become a villain.  He’s just a small town kid from Iowa, why does everyone care what he’s doing?  Why do they care where he writes?  Who are they to judge him?  They’ve never had to deal with the type of pressure he deals with everyday.  The expectations.  The scrutiny.  Everything he does seems to be front-page news.  He wants to lash out, but his publicist says this will only make matters worse.

Instead he embraces the image that society has crafted for him.  He stars in a Staples commercial that parodies the criticism that Liam is facing.  He asks the audience what he should do.  He plays it off as a joke, but in reality he asks himself that question every day: "What should I do?" He struggles to find an answer.

The Times comes in second in readership behind The Dallas Morning Star.  People from all across the country are celebrating, not because The Star won, but rather because The Times lost.  His fans have turned on him to become his fiercest critics.  They are making fun of him.  They are questioning his decision to leave.  They are saying that Zenger never would have left his own paper.  They are saying that Jones just doesn’t have what it takes to be number one.  He doesn’t have the drive that Zenger had.  He doesn’t have the ferocity that Zenger had.  He doesn’t have the heart that Zenger had.  Did you see him give up when The Times was so close to winning?  Everybody else sure did.  They are saying that Jones is a coward.  It’s 2010 all over again.  He can’t turn on the T.V. without being reminded that he is second best.  Why can’t they just leave him alone?  Why can’t things just go back to the way they were?

It’s 2012.

            Liam wins another Pulitzer.  That’s a record 3 Pulitzers in 4 years. People aren’t happy for him; all they want is for him to fail.  They’re making fun of his receding hairline, even though they’re bald.  They’re making fun of his mom, even though they have affairs.  They say that they hate him even though they’ve never even met him.  The Times is battling once again for a number one.  One of Liam’s key writers on The Times breaks his hand and can’t write during one of the most important weeks of the year.  Liam steps up and leads The Times in his absence.  He gets some praise, but it’s paired with skepticism.  It’s always paired with criticism these days.  He just grins and bears it. The only thing that will silence the chatter is a number one.  He knows it.  And even then they will never truly be silent.  People will put asterisks on it and say it wasn’t because of him.  Liam doesn’t care.  He’s learned that his critics will always be there.  It’s up to him to let his writing do the talking.  

           He knows he’ll be paying for the Decision, as it’s come to be called, for the rest of his career; yet he seems at ease with that.  People want to see him fail.  They feel it’s their right.  It’s not about spite, they say, it’s about loyalty.  They’re not holding a grudge, they say, they’re protecting their principles.  They want him to regret his decision.  They want him to crack under the pressure.  He’s walking on a tightrope over a sea of molten hate.  He’s battling to keep his balance.  He’s battling for our respect every day. He’s battling for his first number one as we speak.  He’s battling for his teammates.  He’s battling for himself.

Now, tell me, who do you hate more: Liam Jones or LeBron James? 

My answer: neither.

#DJLR