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Dwyane Wade is showing fans everywhere why he is one of the best basketball players in the world. LeBron James is showing us why he went to play with Dwyane Wade. For a player that was dubbed, "Best Player of All-time" by Scottie Pippen in his recent, questionable remarks, James' 17 points may have helped the Miami Heat win on Sunday night, but this isn't the player we've come to think of as "the chosen one".
The only thing we "witnessed" Sunday night was two turnovers in the fourth quarter and a give-it-to-Wade panic that was obviously discussed after game two's collapse in which Wade barely got the ball towards the end of the game. If it was any other superstar we would probably not be having this discussion, but we're talking about a player that hasn't won a championship yet that has been in discussions about being the best-ever. He 'decides' to go to Miami to help lead the Heat and suddenly he's a role-player in the finals?
James averaged almost 27 points per game during the regular season and in the NBA finals he's averaging just over 20 ppg. When you look at the play-by-play of the 4th quarter to see the impact that James had on this game down the stretch it's a little misleading to believe that James is truly helping to lead this team towards a NBA title. via espn.com
| 11:38 | LeBron James makes dunk |
| 8:37 | LeBron James traveling |
| 7:18 | Mario Chalmers makes 24-foot three point jumper (LeBron James assists) |
| 7:01 | LeBron James loose ball foul (Tyson Chandler draws the foul) |
| 5:11 | LeBron James double dribble |
| 0:04 | LeBron James misses 25-foot three point jumper |
There is absolutely nothing wrong with LeBron James playing a lesser-role to help his team win a NBA title. The problem is that five, ten, maybe even fifteen years down the road they'll be talking about LeBron James and how many titles he's won. Who know's how many there will be at that point but he shouldn't get best-of-all-time-type credit so far for this series and the Heat being up 2-1.
All of this probably doesn't make one bit of difference to any Miami Heat fan, LeBron himself, or anyone else for that matter, and it shouldn't. It's just looking down the line and seeing how this could be perceived in the future. Will people still talk about the fact that he had as many turnovers as points in the 4th quarter of game three?
You just don't get the feeling right now watching the game that LeBron is in fact....well.....LeBron James. It shouldn't matter what the defense is doing because the "Best Player of All-time" shouldn't be having issues scoring on anyone, Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki don't seem to be having much trouble scoring.
It's just important that we remember that Wade already won a title before in Miami, and he didn't need Lebron James to win that. He needed the big "AARP" in Shaquille O' Neal.
LeBron's 'decision' to 'witness' Wade run around and do all of the things that we expected LeBron to be doing should not be lost over time.