jer calls it one of the greatest performances ever.patrick says i dunno.
i thought it was more of a case of AWFUL defense than anything else.
pretty much every analyst i've read says it ranks with the best ever, but i'm still not convinced.
i watched the entire game, and i thought the beginning was UGLY. both teams had tons of bad passes and tons of missed defensive assignments. then at the end, cleveland (bron) blew up and Det (what was left of em after mentally caving in completely) disappeared.
don't get me wrong- i love bron and have even gone on record saying that barring injury, he will one day be commonly accepted as the best player alive. (i said it a long time ago and i don't agree with it as much these days, but i still said it)
i just don't know if that game was all that spectacular. clev pretty much just sat around and waited to see what he would do. i mean, kobe got 81 in a similar situation (by similar, i mean there's one guy on one team with tons of talent, and 9 other guys watching him score. not playoffs, granted, but come on... 81!?)
so after a little time to ponder, what do you guys think? jer- are you still convinced that this was one of the best ind. performances ever? patrick- you still dunno? where do you other guys weigh in on this one?
i wish i hadn't erased it from the DVR so i could re watch...
4 comments:
Yeah. I think time will tell us that it was good, but not all time top ten. Check out the NBA's list. some of them are just singular moments, and not a whole games performance, so It's kind of hard to compare it to this list.
http://www.nba.com/encyclopedia/moments/60moments
I'm gonna play devil's advocate and take both sides cuz... I really dunno; I truly think it's too early to tell.
I started writing the other post within 2 minutes of the game ending because it had me on the edge of my seat. Granted, I'm BBall obsessed, but (a) I really didn't give a crap who won (or even about either team too much) and (b) it was late and I was too exhausted to be very invovled. In spite of both though, I was nice & pumped when it finally ended. It's already faded a little in it's awesomeness to me so who's to say I wouldn't have felt very similarly watching some of the other all-time great individual performance when they acually happened (LIVE). The whole point I've got is that time takes a toll.
As for the _efense arguement... that was actually what inspired me to write that evening more than the LBJ performance (which is what got me all jazzed up) - I actually gave LeBron a little more attention than I'd intended because I didn't want to ignore the fact that he still accomplished a hell of a feat regardless of Etroit's failures.
Even now though, after trying to support that argument myself, I find myself needing to reiterate that regardless of Etroits missing D, this can't just be dismissed as even primarily a Detroit failure. I keep begging people to see that 29 of 30 points in a row, to end double OT of a deciding game of the ECF just doesn't happen - no matter what the other circumstances are. He shot 11 of 14 during that stretch. His teammates... 0 of 10. That's decent D. Even though he wasn't doubled enough for my liking, he was also guarded by a tandem of Prince & Billups. Both are very highly regarded defenders in the league and they both got to alternate so as to get more rest. I have a hard time believing that more than a handfull of players in NBA history could reproduce a comparable performance if placed on CLE at that time/place/circumstance. In fact, until I watch more great historical performances, I can't even say that those individuals had much more difficult defenses thrown at them. I want to see how many of those all-time great players were doubled consistently during their biggest perfomances. If they weren't (which I have a feeling few were), I have a hard time actually using Etroit as a major negating factor from this performance. Now... that doesn't say that they didn't lose the game for themselves, I just don't think you can take anything away from LeBron.
As for where it would rank in the list Richard provided (which btw, seems like a decent historical list to me)... I think we won't truly know until it's put into historical perspective. For instance... if LeBron injures himself tomorrow and never plays again, I'd still have to put this performance in the top 25-30 playoff performances (by 1 player)ever. IF Cle. wins the championship this year though, it's got to jump to the mid to high teens at worst. Even if they don't though, and, in 10 years, LeBron has 3+ titles, I'd imagine that it breaks the top 10, maybe even the top 5.
So, uh... yeah it was awesome to watch, and ask me again in 2018.
you make some excellent points JWin. and along those same lines, another thing to ponder is how does Baron Davis' performance against Dallas compare to Brontasaurus. I say it's a toss up. Yes LBJ was singularly more impressive. and yes it was for a trip to the finals. But Baron was on an 8th seed versus the championship favorite.
So, where does the Baron rank? I think the merrits of both are similar. I think LBJ's gets more credit because he's been annointed the saviour of the league.
So to come up with a final decision that I think would be most fair to history, I would first have to rank Baron's performance. Then I would probably put LBJ's only a couple of slots higher.
I think Baron's was a top 30. making LBJ's a top 28.
I'm absolutely with you - BDavis was a mad man (noone remembers it but he FREAKED out in the playoffs a few years back when he played for New Orleans & Mashburn was hurt). He was unstoppable this year too though... until the 2nd round.
In my mind, I'd put his performance in the mid-40s for a few reasons though. Maybe the biggest is that I didn't see many of the GS/DAL games live. I was drinking mojitos in HI. Also, I give SOO much credit to GS's wins to Don Nelson & not to any singular player (it's even possible they pull off the series win without BDavis right? or am I kidding myself - like I said, didn't see many of the games). Finally, all comes back to historical perspective. If GS makes it past Utah or, to think, even to the Finals, his incredibleness gets an incredible amount of mo' props.
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