Mavericks Heat Summary

 

Best Player in the Series: Dirk Nowitzki. This series was as compelling as it was strange. And Dirk was the 2nd most compelling player to watch for 6 games. As noted previously in this blog, Dirk Nowitzki already wore this year's crown as The NBA's best scorer. But, compare his overall shooting stats in this series (0.912 PPS) versus his regular season and previous series, and it looks like he played worse. That's not the whole story. He was methodical and efficient running the Dallas sets against a pretty good defense that, by the end of the series, looked completely lost. Oh, he also created a career's worth of 4th quarter highlights in 2 weeks. Hopefully next week during the draft, when every talking head is trying to call a tall European prospect the next Nowitzki, we can all realize how completely ludicrous that is. Dirk's on the list with Oscar, Larry, Shaq... one of a kind talents that we'll probably only see once.

Worst Player in the Series: Lebron James. Lost in the hailstorm of criticism of the "Frozen One" (looking for cutting nicknames that haven't been used yet) is the uniqueness of his performance in this series. Here's a look at the shot attempts (shots and free throws) from the last few Finals. These are the regular season leading scorers on their respective teams, which lost in the NBA Finals.

 
In the last 11 years, the leading scorers on a team in the Finals have continued to do what got them to the Finals. As in, shoot. Mostly, shoot more. In fact, there's really only one instance of someone's shot attempts going down, until this year. This is the thing that I cannot understand about the NBA Finals. Lebron had 1-2 bad games in the Boston series last year, but even a younger Lebron didn't respond to the pressure cooker of the Finals like this in 2007. This is not a subtle change in offense dictated by scheme or defense. This is something greater. And, in my opinion, there's only one person in the organization who could have done it...

Jerome James Award Winner: Dwyane Wade. He showed up in crunch time, when Lebron didn't. To that I say, "bull." As in, "remember the Bulls series?" When everyone wondered what was wrong with Wade, and Lebron was laying waste to the league's best defense in crunch time? What changed? Really, no one on the outside of the organization can ever know for sure. Probably most inside the organization don't.

Subjectively, watching Lebron and Wade interact sure looks like a big brother-little brother dynamic in my eyes. As in, when big brother says/does something, little brother falls in line. Was Lebron explicitly told to give up the ball? Probably not. But it's hard to imagine everyone's best player on the planet (pre-Finals) willingly giving up the ball a series after playing lights out in crunch time. He didn't do it in 2007, after dismantling the Pistons. What's different 4 years later? My theory: when the big brother tells the little brother it's time to fall in line, little brother usually listens. And if confidence wanes because your friend gave up on the co-alpha dog thing you agreed to just when it mattered most, it's probably tough to get back. And it probably cost the Heat a title.