LeBron Has Struck Out !

It’s really hard to discuss the Mets these days at a time when all the press and prose is given to LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki, the hated Miami Heat and the hard-working darlings of Dallas. What a reality show these NBA Finals have been! (It was the right time for an exclamation point).

It’s really laughable. James is just getting smeared all over the place for not being some kind of Superman in this Series. He was only mortal, some would say way too mortal. He didn’t take over games in the fourth quarter. He didn’t win the Championship for which he left Cleveland . His bravado, his cavalier attitude, his all too public reveling in his own persona turned out to be unjustified.

No team ever deserved to lose more than the evil Miami team, the brain-trust that concocted their grand scheme for a title and the stars who pranced about on national TV to announce James’s final decision to forsake the utterly forsake-able city of his home town Cleveland.

The Heat lost. James lost. Wade lost. Bosh lost. Life is good, very good.

What’s maybe most compelling to me in following this maniacal coverage centers around the word schadenfreude, a word I had really never seen before but appeared in at least two different columns. It means the taking of joy from someone else’s failures.

And it’s true. Not since the Yanks lost four straight to the Red Sox have I or this nation derived so much giddiness from the failure of others. Never has there been such universal glee over a team’s demise and the failure of its self-proclaimed superstar.

And no person ever deserved it more. No team ever deserved it more. So it’s okay to pile on. These people deserve it, slick Pat Riley, smug Dwayne Wade and the arrogant LeBron James.

The best part of this whole thing is that America didn’t see this coming, I didn’t see this coming and, best of all, the Heat themselves didn’t see it coming. They were too good. They were too smart, too strong and just too tough. No team could take them in the clutch. When push came to shove, in their minds it would be the Miami Heat who would prevail. And they weren’t bashful about it, no no, not at all, precious.

On the other side of things is the perfect counterfoil, if that’s the word….a really good basketball team, a group of individuals with a lot of talent, a lot of experience and a lot of character, a team that knew how good they were, a coach who knew how to use all his talent and even a practically crazed owner who just shut up his incredibly big mouth for practically the entire season. He didn’t want to jinx them. How great is that?

In short, no team ever deserved to win more than this Mavericks team. Yeah, they had their superstar too but he had never won anything before, he was too soft, he was a European, he was just a shooter who wasn’t even that when the clock was ticking down in a big game.

But that European gave away some of his own money so that owner Cuban could acquire two perfect role-players that would make them even tougher, one Brian Cardinal and an even less notable Ian Mahinmi, a big body, from France no less. But even raw 6’11 guys get noticed and tough 6’8 guys with experience can be a real pain in the behind.

And then there was Jason Kidd, the good old guy with all the smarts on the court, in his prime a real triple-double guy who played good defense too, a real winner who never really won anything unless you count nonsense like the Olympics.

Yeah, Nowitzki and Kidd were the names everybody knew but an old fantasy player like myself knew and took note of some of these other Mavs players even before the season started, starting with Jason Terry, who was just great all year but who still hadn’t been touted much outside of Dallas, but also including Shawn Marion, who had always been one of the better all-around forwards in the league.

I had both these players on my winning fantasy squad and they were two real values. Another player I would have liked was center Tyson Chandler, always under-rated as he’s one of those guys who always played much better than his stat-line would indicate.

So I took notice of this Dallas team early on in the season but still was surprised that they beat the Lakers. I thought the Mavs were too small to take the Lakers. And I wouldn’t have put money down that they’d ever beat the Heat.

Hadn’t the NBA always rewarded the star system? Hadn’t the existence of 2 superstars on the same team always practically guaranteed success? Think Jordan and Pippen, think Magic and Kareem , think Kobe and Shaq (who beat Kidd in 2003). Wasn’t it pretty much a lock that the stars would be rewarded again? Hadn’t the Heat just beaten the 3-starred Celtics of Pierce, Garnett and Allen?

After Game 3, when the Heat recaptured their home court advantage, I thought the Mavs might be done. I expected the Heat to win each successive contest. The Mavs win in Game 4 was a relief but their backs were against the wall. Their always fateful Game 5 win was a joy but even then, I thought they had to go back to Miami and could easily lose two there.

I told myself the Mavs had to win Game 6, a Game 7 in Miami would be just impossible. But they did indeed take Game 6. Once again, it was the Jason Terry show while LeBron seemed to disappear. Wade was great throughout.

LeBron was not. He couldn’t drive to the basket. He couldn’t shoot. He found out there are missing elements to his game. And brand.

And that’s best of all.