If I was Sploestra or Riley that game last night, especially the first three quarters is the game film I would show to Lebron every day and say that's the player he should be. I never liked Lebron as this emulated model of Kobe Bryant that I always felt he was trying to be. That game was more impressive to me than the crazy Boston game he had simply because that boston game was a bit of luck. You can't count on being that hot very often at all. But you can play in away that maximizes your talents and that's what he did last night. It was a lot more like a crazy effective and more talented version of Chris Webber than Kobe.
absolutely.
Although I sympathize for LeBron in that it probably seems to all the casuals who only tune in to the Finals that he just decided to start playing in post a few games ago after being humiliated last year, when in reality, it has been a multi-year process. His problem has always been that he is good at almost everything, but has had to focus on being great at a few things to really dominate.
The Thunder are the same problem writ large. They have 3 amazing offensive talents who can all drive, shoot and pass well, and they can do a hell of a lot with that. But to really excel, they're going to need to focus their gifts a little bit more. Surrender some shots to role players, figure out who is setting up the offense and how everyone fits into it, and commit to defense. They already know how to do it, as the Spurs series showed. They just need to do it a greater percentage of the time.
Given that they rallied to beat the Spurs (who we thought were the best team in the NBA) 4 times in a row, and have the prospect of 2 straight games in OKC if they can survive game 5, I'm not totally ready to write them off yet. This '30-0 all time in the Finals' stuff is nonsense - the Finals are no more statistically significant than any other series, and OKC was the favorite with HCA in this series, unlike most of the other times the 3-1 disparity has occurred. All the games other than 1 have been so close that there is no real reason why they can't win with HCA and a few lucky bounces. Psychologically it has to be very tough though. But as long as they stay alive, they give themselves a chance for luck to happen I guess. You never know, Wade's knee could burst or Bosh's injury flare up again...