Cavs/Magic, Game 6
The Orlando Magic did NOT win tonight’s game 6 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals. They didn’t out play the Cavaliers. The refs didn’t miss calls on either side of the court.
The Cleveland Cavaliers GAVE the Magic this game.
For the first five games of this series, arguably an even bigger series than 2007’s NBA finals, LeBron James hoisted the Cavs on his back for 5 games. In all 5 of those games, LeBron was INHUMAN. He was like the X-Man you never heard of. His superpower? To play ball like very few have been able to.
Statistically, you could argue that LeBron was the greatest player to don a uniform for any team in the history of the league for those five games. Through five games, he was averaging more than 42 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists a game. Numbers no one else could boast. Not many can come near the 42+ points he was averaging.
Game 6? A decent 25 points. An average you’d expect of a starting two-guard in the regular season. Still grabbed 7 boards. Still dished 7 assists. Good numbers, but not the numbers of The Next One. LeBron did what he could do.
Through five games, there was little to no support. Mo Williams, the team’s second leading scorer throughout the regular season, and thought by many to be the guy who really addressed the point guard problem in Cleveland, was inconsistant at best. He made a brash prediction before game 4 that Cleveland would win, and at the end of the game, the stats told he had a lot to do with their loss. 5 of 15 shooting including 0 for 3 from outside the three point line. 2 assists. Sure, he got the 18 he averaged during the regular season, but when your point guard can’t hit his shot, and isn’t handing out assists like penny candy, you’re not going to win many games.
Delonte West, essentially a nobody before he came to Cleveland, was putting up decent numbers, though only averaging 12 points in the regular season. He made it 13 in the post-season.
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the aging center did little to help, although he wasn’t seeing much action, barely touching the ball, and probably shot more from 20 feet than he did under the basket. Unexcusable for a guy with a 7 plus foot frame.
And don’t even get me started on flop-master Anderson Varejao. Or Aleksander Pavlovic, who played 2007 like a star. Wally Szczerbiak who was one of the finer players I’ve ever seen in the NCAA tournament, who is aging much more quickly than he should be. Former rebounding/blocking terror Ben Wallace. And “Boobie” Gibson, whose electric shooting all but disappeared altogether this year.
These Cavs- who put together a 66-16 record this season, who ran rampant through the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks, sweeping both teams in spectacular fashion, who played SO WELL in the regular season that LeBron James was rarely seen in a 4th quarter- absolutely fell apart during the most important part of their season to that point. In the Eastern Conference Finals, the Cavs were merely another team in Orlando’s way.
Orlando, who needed six games to overcome the Philadelphia 76ers, and seven games to defeat a Kevin Garnett-less Boston Celtics team ran rampant through the league’s best team. Were it not for a spectacular performance and incredible last second three-pointer by LeBron in game 4, this series would have already been over.
What made Orlando tick? Their starting five had no flashes of brilliance. Dwight Howard, a perennial All Star averaged only 20 points a game. However, lump in Rashard Lewis’ 20, Hedo Turkoglu’s 15, Rafer Alston’s 13, and even Mickael Pietrius’ 10 off the bench, and they’re not too bad. Courtney Lee split starts with Duke stand-out J.J. Redick, averaged 9 points a game.
Orlando played team ball, and they played it well. But what isn’t shown on the score sheet is how Cleveland chose to play the Magic, and how the Magic chose to play them.
Larry Bird once said of Michael Jordan that the Celtics would let Jordan score all he wanted, shut down everyone else, and they’d still win games. Jordan’s two highest scoring games of his career came against the Celtics. Both games were losses. Orlando pretty much let LeBron do whatever he wanted. But when they shut down Mo Williams and Delonte West, even 42 points per game wouldn’t help the Cavs. They let LeBron be the star, and it only bit them twice in six games.
On the other side, Cleveland was determined to stop a guy who wouldn’t be stopped in Dwight Howard. And it killed them. Howard only averaged 24 points per game in the Finals. But every time the ball came in to him, the Cavs swarmed. He’d casually kick the ball out to the open man on the perimeter, the guy who should have been covered by the double-teaming Cav, and 43 percent of the time, that open guy would knock down a wide open three pointer.
Rashard Lewis was huge in this series, hitting an astounding 58 percent from three point land. Howard only averaged 62 percent, and half of his shots it seemed were dunks. Turkoglu- 42 percent. Rafer Alston, 43 percent. Pietrus, 42. The Magic were lights out from three, shooting a combined 43 percent from outside.
So why wouldn’t the Cavs let the Magic have the inside where they were already dominated? Why wouldn’t they guard the perimeter? On offense, why wouldn’t they drive the lane on Howard the shot-blocker who averaged a shade over 5 fouls a game? Why didn’t they run more offense through Ilgauskas, who is in his own right a great free-throw shooter for a 7 footer?
Instead, the Cavaliers were content to shoot jumpers from 17+ feet. They were statisfied to let the offense run solely through the hands of LeBron James. They wanted him to make every play. Be it a drive for a dunk, a step back jumper, or draw the double team and dish to a guy who would settle for one of these longer distance shots. Sure they were out sized by the Magic. But the Magic’s players, just like any other in this league, are limited to 6 fouls per game. If you drive enough, and get high percentage shots, or even a couple of free throws, it beats all of these missed outside shots.
It’s easy to sit back and say that Mike Brown, the Cavs’ coach didn’t tell them to drive the ball, or to defend the perimeter. Let’s do the math here though- 66 wins, 16 losses in the regular season. 8-0 through the first two rounds of the playoffs. Hard to pin the guy as being the reason the Cavs lost this series. In the end, the Cavaliers just didn’t show up. They didn’t play like the expected NBA champions so many(including myself) were painting them. And consider this too- if a casual fan such as myself can see where Cleveland went wrong, I’ll wager an NBA head coach- the coach of the year, as a matter of fact- could see it too. I can’t put the blame there.
42, 8, and 8. LeBron’s average stat line through 5 games is legendary. But in a couple of years, no one will remember the performance he put on as he willed his team to a 10 win showing in the playoffs. They’ll only remember the 4 that the Cavs couldn’t win. It pains me to see a guy with talent like his fall short. But just remember: there’s always next season.
Edit: So we’re clear, and to avoid any hate mail: I LIKE Dwight Howard, hope the dude wins several rings. I’ll be pulling for them to beat the Lakers. Honestly. And I think they will. I’ve just been watching LeBron since high school, and the dude is dynamite in a basketball jersey. If you liked this post, do please re-blog/re-tweet it.
