It's Cleveland All Over Again

June 8, 2012

We’re seeing a lot more LeBron and a lot less Dwyane and Chris lately. Last night, LeBron scored 45 points to single-handedly force a game 7 in Miami against the Celtics. Heat fans are understandably elated that their main guy is finally putting up stellar playoff performances and maturing into a true superstar.

But is this a good thing?

The Heat team we saw last night has been referred to, appropriately, as the “Miami Cavaliers.” James is putting together the same kinds of games he did back in Cleveland, where they handed him a jersey and a basketball and humbly asked for a championship with little or no help from anything remotely resembling a team.

That was all supposed to change in Miami, right? Remember The Decision? The Big Three coming together in South Beach to win six or seven NBA championships in a row, no problem? That strategy appears to have melted away in favor of the Cleveland method of just handing James the ball and hoping he can, with all of his talent, somehow win it by himself.

But that didn’t work out too well in Cleveland right? A one-man team has never and will never win an NBA championship. The idea in Miami was that they would have James in addition to Wade and Bosh, but Bosh has spent most of the playoffs injured and Wade has taken a backseat to James in every way. He doesn’t look like the same Wade that won it all in 2006 without James or Bosh.

It looks like the Heat have given up trying to form some kind of cohesive unit out of their all-star roster. For the sake of winning in the shortest term possible, they seem to have wholly committed themselves to King James and His talents. Some nights, like last night for example, this pays off. LeBron is such an explosive and prodigious talent that he can put up a 45 point playoff game on occasion. But it is unreasonable to expect him to do it every night. That strategy probably won’t work in game 7, and even if it does, it won’t guarantee 4 wins against Oklahoma City.

Erik Spoelstra needs to find a way to unite his players as a team, not just a supporting cast to occasionally assist James if and when he needs it. Wade and Bosh especially are superstars in their own right. Right now they look like they are in a daze, jogging up and down the court with an assist here, a layup there, but generally watching the LeBron show like the rest of us only with better seats and a bigger paycheck.

I’m not a Miami fan, so I’m not really hoping that they figure it out. I’d rather see the Celtics or the Thunder win it all, letting LeBron and company go home empty handed yet again. I certainly hope this one-man philosophy doesn’t work, lest it catch on across the league and destroy team play forever. If they can figure out how to play like a championship team, then more power to them, they will then deserve to win. But what we have seen from them lately is that they haven’t yet learned their lesson about what makes a great basketball team.