Seriously... how did the Mavs just punk LeBron like that?

[bdm860]

Now this is purely gossip, but according to a popular urban gossip site:

****.com just got a BLOCKBUSTER report . . . from a MEMBER OF THE MIAMI HEAT SQUAD!!!

People are wondering WHY LeBron James hasn't been playing as well as he's supposed to . . . well according to his teammate - it's because of Jason Terry's TRASH TALK!!!

According to the insider, Jason Terry's trash talk goes WAAAY overboard. The insider explained, "He tells LeBron that [his fiance Savannah] is [sleeping with] other players. He talks about [sleeping with] LeBron's mom . . . [Jason Terry] says whatever he has to to get under LeBron's skin."

And the TRASH TALK seems to work. According to LeBron's teammate, "LeBron may [even] believe some of that [stuff]. It's effecting his play."

Just thought it was a funny reason why 

And this is supposedly Deshawn Stevenson pictured below:

[BballTim]

  The Celts starting center was playing with a broken wrist and their backup center was Glen Davis. This, aside from LeBron getting hot from the outside, was why he looked good vs Boston.

[chambers]

Lebron is the most overhyped player of all time.

He's got nothing on Paul Pierce or Dr J or Scottie Pippen or Dominique Wilkins or James Worthy or Bird. 


People have GOT to stop thinking of him as great.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Vince Carter folks. Vince Carter with 10 times the hype machine. 

Stop looking at the stats. Stop looking at the commercials and look at the results. This guy just led a team with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh to a dominant trouncing and made themselves morons during it.

And I don't want to hear how the players around him are so bad. I know Eddie House isn't bad. Udonis Haslem isn't bad. Mario Chalmers isn't bad. Mike Miller isn't bad. This is just hype and Nike trying to hide the tape to get you to buy shoes

alot of what you're saying is true regarding the hype, but this kid is going to be one of the GOAT's.
He was exhausted by the finals. He carried the team all the way to the finals and they came up against an extremely good team who's lone superstar was on FIRE for the entire playoffs.
Wade decided to hog the ball a lot more in the finals for some reason and this hurt the Heat more than anything. His repetitive isolations just killed his teams flow and chemistry- they never got in a rhythm after game 4 and Wade was the chief antagonist for this- not Lebron.
Dallas were the perfect team to beat the heat with their zone and their pick and rolls against that brutal defense.

The Vince Carter comparison is just plain rude.
Okay he's not MJ but he's most certainly not Vince Carter.
I'd put him in between someone like Magic Johnson and Clyde Drexler- or a bit higher than their level.
MJ didn't win his first title till he was like 27 right?
Plenty of time for him to prove himself.
I was surprised they made it this far this season with all those crappy role players.
They had the best defense in the league and not a single center. They had a 6 foot 9 power forward playing center and they made the NBA finals. Imagine if they had someone that could compete with Chandler in the paint.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions but don't overreact by calling him a failure. His legacy has just begun.
wait till he's at least 30 years old.

[housecall]

First,youare making a big mistake when you assume there is a lot of jealousy of Lebron on this board.Why would anyone be jealous of a player that hasn't won anything but individual accalades.I am satisfied and proud of our Big Three because they have won a championship and knocked on the door for another.After being in the league for 7-8yrs.there aren't to many more excuses left to explain why he continues to fail on the big stage.He doesn't appear to have the killer instinct to take a team over the top.The Mavs have several players with killer instincts and finishing ability.As Rick Carlisle stated,"my guys don't jump high or run fast but they know how to get the job done as a team".Lebron is a frontrunner...when things are going his way,he's the world's biggest chest beater but when he has to face some adversity he tends to shy away(shrinks).Lebron disappeared in the 4th quarters of the Mavs series averaging 2.2pts a game.Having a 9pt differential in his regular season average from his playoff average tells you he doesn't show up on the biggest stage.

[tenn_smoothie]

To me James is a freak of nature physically. But I'm not sure he's got that same "killer" instinct like Bird, Kobe or Jordan had. I'm also not sold on the fact that he's got as high a basketball IQ as guys like that too.

Could it be that he's not as good as people make him out to be? Or not yet anyway?

my thoughts exactly - i've always said that Lebron is missing that special internal intangible that sets champions apart.


Lebron and Wilt are very similar in that regard.

[guava_wrench]

To me James is a freak of nature physically. But I'm not sure he's got that same "killer" instinct like Bird, Kobe or Jordan had. I'm also not sold on the fact that he's got as high a basketball IQ as guys like that too.

Could it be that he's not as good as people make him out to be? Or not yet anyway?

my thoughts exactly - i've always said that Lebron is missing that special internal intangible that sets champions apart.


Lebron and Wilt are very similar in that regard.

Odds are that will Lebron will win a championship or two nonetheless in the few years, so he will be a champion.

[nickagneta]

Lebron is the most overhyped player of all time.

He's got nothing on Paul Pierce or Dr J or Scottie Pippen or Dominique Wilkins or James Worthy or Bird. 


People have GOT to stop thinking of him as great.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Vince Carter folks. Vince Carter with 10 times the hype machine. 

Stop looking at the stats. Stop looking at the commercials and look at the results. This guy just led a team with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh to a dominant trouncing and made themselves morons during it.

And I don't want to hear how the players around him are so bad. I know Eddie House isn't bad. Udonis Haslem isn't bad. Mario Chalmers isn't bad. Mike Miller isn't bad. This is just hype and Nike trying to hide the tape to get you to buy shoes

alot of what you're saying is true regarding the hype, but this kid is going to be one of the GOAT's.
He was exhausted by the finals. He carried the team all the way to the finals and they came up against an extremely good team who's lone superstar was on FIRE for the entire playoffs.
Wade decided to hog the ball a lot more in the finals for some reason and this hurt the Heat more than anything. His repetitive isolations just killed his teams flow and chemistry- they never got in a rhythm after game 4 and Wade was the chief antagonist for this- not Lebron.
Dallas were the perfect team to beat the heat with their zone and their pick and rolls against that brutal defense.

The Vince Carter comparison is just plain rude.
Okay he's not MJ but he's most certainly not Vince Carter.
I'd put him in between someone like Magic Johnson and Clyde Drexler- or a bit higher than their level.
MJ didn't win his first title till he was like 27 right?
Plenty of time for him to prove himself.
I was surprised they made it this far this season with all those crappy role players.
They had the best defense in the league and not a single center. They had a 6 foot 9 power forward playing center and they made the NBA finals. Imagine if they had someone that could compete with Chandler in the paint.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions but don't overreact by calling him a failure. His legacy has just begun.
wait till he's at least 30 years old.

First off eja says some stuff that I agree with(the hype machine, Heat surrounding cast not being awful) and some stuff I don't(Vince?) but in making the Vince comparison I think what he's trying to say is Lebron is a stats and me first guy and lacks that....something.....that guys like McGrady, Vince, and others lack that is the drive to sacrifice to win it all.

But chambers....putting Magic on the same level as Drexler might be just as bad saying LeBron is on Vince's level. Magic, Bird, MJ, Wilt, Russell, Kareem, Oscar....those are the best ever. Drexler isn't anywhere near that level. Kobe...maybe. Shaq...possibly. Hakeem...very close. Drexler??? No. No way.

I still think Lebron might not win any rings unless Wade gets him there. They are both the same type player and without sacrifice they won't win it all. Wade has that...something...to come up big at big times and carry a team when they most need to be carried. I don't see that in Bron Bron.

Still, there's not a huge amount of superstar talent on the horizon for the NBA and in a few years he might win one or two. Or if the new CBA causes teams like the heat to disassemble, maybe he won't

[pearljammer10]

I'm amazed at how the Mavericks punk'd everybody this post season... Sweep the Lakers? 4 - 1 on the Thunder? Win three straight to beat the Heat on their home floor in 6? Are you kidding me... Their toughest opponents were the Blazers in the first round? Are you serious? Were they really THAAAAT good? I was leary about Dirk's supporting cast but I guess they're the real deal this year.

[RyNye]

Anybody read Bill Simmons' theory over at Grantland?

I'll quote the relevant bits:

You could say Dallas figured out how to defend him (to a degree, true), that the zone screwed him up (I guess), that Shawn Marion got into his head (possible), but really, he was afraid to attack the rim for whatever reason. Which, by the way, is his single greatest skill.

Will we ever figure out what happened to this guy in the Finals? Allow me to offer two dopey theories for what happened, and only because I believe everything HAS to be explained and can't accept a world in which things don't have an answer …
THEORY A

Remember when Wade tore into LeBron with three-plus minutes remaining in Game 3? When he yelled at him for eight solid seconds? When there was genuine anger in his eyes? When he did it right on the court, right in front of the other players, right in front of 20,000 fans and 10 million TV viewers?

LeBron was never the same after that.

When was the last time anyone ever really yelled at LeBron James? You'd have to go back to high school, right? He just spent the past 10 years being coddled by everyone (teammates, coaches, agents, entourage members, yes-men, general managers, owners, media members, etc.). Imagine he was a little kid (which really, he might be to some degree), and imagine you were his father and didn't believe in yelling at your kids. Now, imagine your kid screwed up in his second-grade play and, for whatever reason, you broke character, snapped, and berated him for eight seconds in front of everyone. How would he handle that? Poorly, right? He'd pretend it didn't affect him, but the more he thought about it, it would gnaw away at him (especially once his buddies said, "I can't believe your dad yelled at you like that").

Could that have been what happened to LeBron? Did those eight seconds shake his confidence beyond repair? Did he resent Wade for embarrassing him? Did he think to himself, "Fine, you want to act like this is your team, then YOU win this title?" I believe every basketball champion needs a pecking order of sorts; that's just what the history of the league told us. Miami tried to cheat this concept by putting two of the league's best three players on the same team. It worked for 8½ months; LeBron and Wade ran the team together and deferred to one another depending on the moment. Then the Finals rolled around, Wade kicked it up another gear, LeBron didn't do the same, Wade called him out … and the team was NEVER the same. These are the facts.
THEORY B

Passed along by a friend of mine in NBA circles: LeBron caved from the never-ending scrutiny (as brutal as any athlete has ever faced in the Internet era) and his shaky inner circle, which consists of one parent (his mother, who battled a ton of problems over the years), his high school friends (who assumed an inordinately crucial role in his life without any real experience), his agents (who never threw their bodies in front of "The Decision"), and Miami's management (who walked him into another fiasco with the Heat's Welcome Party). By all accounts, he's a genuinely nice and happy guy who just wants to be liked — he was never meant to be a villain, and as much as he tried to feed off the heat (no pun intended), once it piled up past a certain point, he broke. Maybe he felt that happening against the 2010 Celtics as well; maybe that's why he chose to play with Wade in the first place.

And maybe that's why, right now, he's in total denial. Even in the postgame presser, when he should have been devastated the same way Magic Johnson was distraught after coming up small in the 1984 Finals, LeBron was doing the Frank Drebin "Nothing to see here, please disperse" routine, bristling at the notion that he choked and taking shots at anyone who rooted against him. That's what you do when you're surrounded by enablers — you blame everyone else, and you never look within. He never understood that people only rooted against him because that's what you do when someone boasts before they've ever actually done anything.

Let's say you're in college and one of your buddies says, "See that girl over there? I'm taking her home tonight. And I'm doing this because I'm the funniest and best-looking guy in this room." And let's say he's COMPLETELY serious. Guess what you're doing if it doesn't happen? You're making fun of him. Relentlessly. Really, that's what 50 percent of the Miami-related vitriol was about; the other 50 percent was because LeBron tried to stack the deck by playing with his biggest rival (we didn't respect it), and because he broke Cleveland's hearts on national TV (we didn't like it). To this day, LeBron hasn't shown any real regret about last summer; that's the main reason everyone rooted against him. He couldn't handle it. He caved. And now we're here.

So it's Theory A or Theory B, or maybe both, or maybe neither. As I wrote last Wednesday, I don't know why I care so much. Maybe it's because I know LeBron might be the most talented player I will ever watch, the Wilt of this generation, and I'm going to end up being p---ed off that he never reached his potential and took me to a higher place as a sports fan … which is only the entire reason we watch sports in the first place, right? Because we don't know what's going to happen next, and because once in a while, someone shows up who's so good and so talented that he makes us say, "I know what's going to happen next?" Like he's giving us sports fan ESP? The best thing about Jordan's final shot wasn't that he made it, but that we knew he would make it. That's why we revere him all these years later. Usually heroes come through only on command in movies; Jordan did it in real life. We loved him for it.

LeBron? We thought he was next. Then he fell apart against Boston. Then he chose to play with his buddy instead of beating him. Then he fell apart again. Forget about him losing; we're losing, too. Nobody has ever fully explained that part to LeBron. We rooted against him this season because it's fun to have villains in sports, and because it's fun to see an overly confident person gets his or her comeuppance. Not because we hated his guts. There will be a day when we root for LeBron James again. You wait.

Considering this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball, I think he has a point.

[BballTim]

Anybody read Bill Simmons' theory over at Grantland?

Considering this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball, I think he has a point.

  He may have a point, but I don't know that I'd go with "this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball".

[Fafnir]

Anybody read Bill Simmons' theory over at Grantland?

Considering this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball, I think he has a point.

I don't know that I'd go with "guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball".

I definitely wouldn't go with that, Bill Simmons is very sure of his opinions and has a big outlet. Don't mistake that for basketball knowledge.

He has more conections with people around the league as his advantage than he has superior basketball knowledge.

I'm not sure what to make of LeBron's last two post-seasons, not at all what we saw during his earlier playoff runs.

[RyNye]

He was exhausted by the finals. He carried the team all the way to the finals

What about Bosh and Wade? Both of them had monster moments in the other playoff series. In fact, compared to his performances in Cleveland, even Lebron's best performances in this year's playoffs were relatively unimpressive. Not that he didn't make a lot of crazy 3s, but he wasn't averaging 30 points a game or anything like he did against Orlando. He may have been exhausted, mentally, but it's not fair to the rest of the Heat to say that Lebron carried them there.

and they came up against an extremely good team who's lone superstar was on FIRE for the entire playoffs.

Dirk's shooting averages for the Finals were lower than his regular season averages. And he went 1-12 in the first half. Dirk was not the reason Miami lost. Did you even watch the games? It was the Dallas bench that decided the series; they outplayed both the Miami bench and, at times, the Miami starters.

Wade decided to hog the ball a lot more in the finals for some reason and this hurt the Heat more than anything. His repetitive isolations just killed his teams flow and chemistry- they never got in a rhythm after game 4 and Wade was the chief antagonist for this- not Lebron.

Actually, the usage rates for Lebron and Wade were similar over the course of the finals. 26 and 27 percent, respectively. That's not a significant difference, so you can't blame Wade hogging the ball. I think Mario Chalmers clocking in at 23% is inexcusable (Bosh was only 16, tied with Eddie House and below Juwan Howard!). That's criminal misuse of offensive possessions. Chris Bosh was underused, he was the most efficient player on the Heat this Finals series; Lebron clocked in at a measly 4th. His Wins Produced numbers were 0.019, which is unbelievably atrocious (for reference, the average NBA player is 0.100, and Lebron's wins produced for the earlier playoff rounds was a mind-blowing 5.46). In essence, the statistics do not agree with your assessment.

I'd put him in between someone like Magic Johnson and Clyde Drexler- or a bit higher than their level.

I'd put Lebron on Drexler's level, at least at this point in his career. But Magic Johnson is far and above Lebron. A completely different style of basketball player, but far more skilled at team facilitation and WINNING CHAMPIONSHIPS.

They had the best defense in the league and not a single center. They had a 6 foot 9 power forward playing center and they made the NBA finals. Imagine if they had someone that could compete with Chandler in the paint.

Did you watch, like, ANY of this season? The Miami Heat by no means had the best defense in the league. Depending on which stat category you put most weight into, it's either the Bulls or the Celtics. The Heat just have absurdly good individual defenders, though their team defense is spotty at best.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions but don't overreact by calling him a failure. His legacy has just begun.
wait till he's at least 30 years old.

See, this is all well and good, except for the fact that this past off-season Lebron himself claimed that the Heat were going to win 7+ championships. His behavior, and his team-mate's behavior, all season has been one of unbelievable arrogance. Yeah, he's not a failure, and he still has many years in the NBA, but we can still call him out for dropping the ball this year. Just because we aren't in love with him like you are doesn't mean we are overreacting.

[Finkelskyhook]

I know how this is going to go over REALLY well on this board, but really, the refs really favored dallas this series. That was a big part of it.

I don't think the officials favored Dallas so much as they didn't have their usual collective Jackson/VanGundy chills up their legs every time the messiah or curly touched the basketball.

The messiah wasn't getting every single call and was getting called for things he virtually never gets called for in this series.  IMHO, when the messiah was sorta kinda getting officiated unlike the messiah...He looked completely confused and exhasperated.  Much like Pierce does when the officials call a travel on him.  IMHO, when the messiah had to start playing basketball by the rules....(He's probably forgotten more NBA rules than he remembers because they never applied to him).  IMHO, the messiah was disheartened and confused by the sudden level playing field.

That's why I hate these freaking star calls in the first place.  The messiah has been blessed with the greatest physical gifts in sports' history.  He also has an incredibly high basketball IQ.  If he wasn't regularly allowed to take 3-4-5 steps without a dribble and barrel to the basket....He would develop the mid-range and post game that Kerr and CO says he needs.   There'd be no stopping him at all.  

As it is....Stern and the officials created their messiah....And it's Stern and the officials holding him back.  He could be 10 times the player he is on a level playing field.

[RyNye]

 He may have a point, but I don't know that I'd go with "this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball".

Have you read "The Book of Basketball"? We are talking about a guy whose entirely life is dedicated to following sports. Regardless of how much any of us follow basketball, it is not the central element to our careers as it is with his. I know that in and of itself doesn't make him more knowledgable, but as someone who has followed his coverage for quite a while it is very obvious that he has a deep and extensive appreciation for the sport that the majority of casual fans don't have.

And, come on, some of the posts I have seen by people on these forums (especially the trade threads) have not exactly been impressive monuments to basketball IQ. "RONDO FOR NASH!!111"

[BballTim]

 He may have a point, but I don't know that I'd go with "this guy knows significantly more than any of us about basketball".

Have you read "The Book of Basketball"? We are talking about a guy whose entirely life is dedicated to following sports. Regardless of how much any of us follow basketball, it is not the central element to our careers as it is with his. I know that in and of itself doesn't make him more knowledgable, but as someone who has followed his coverage for quite a while it is very obvious that he has a deep and extensive appreciation for the sport that the majority of casual fans don't have.

And, come on, some of the posts I have seen by people on these forums (especially the trade threads) have not exactly been impressive monuments to basketball IQ. "RONDO FOR NASH!!111"

  Ok, so if he knows more about basketball than some of the sillier posters he knows more about basketball than all the posters?