At halftime, with the Miami Heat and the Chicago Bulls tied at 48 in the first game of their Eastern Conference finals series, LeBron James came out and sat on the team bench.
James and
his Heat teammates were holding off the exuberant Bulls and the raucous 22,874
fans at the United Center. It was not a bad score, on the road, in a hostile
arena against a team they had not beaten all year.
But you
wouldn’t know it by James’ face. He sat staring straight ahead, no emotion
telling on his face, with his long legs stretched in front of him. His
teammates were out on the floor, warming up, shooting baskets. Rapper Lil Wayne
was sitting under the basket nearby, his red sneakers on his feet, bobbing his
head to whatever beat was blasting in his red headphones.
James
just sat.
Maybe it
was his “game” face. Maybe he looks like that all the time. But it sure looked
like he was dejected. It sure looked like he had already considered that this
game, this first game, was gone.
Shortly
after that, it was gone. The Bulls took over in the third quarter and their
stifling defense only allowed James and the Heat to score 15 points in the
quarter, while they scored 24. The fourth quarter was even worse, and with two
minutes left in the game, the Bulls starters were all on the bench celebrating,
and James and the Heat were wondering what hit them.
The Heat
came into the series already christened the new kings of the East, having
vanquished the Boston Celtics and established themselves as the team to beat by
too many pundits.
But the
Chicago Bulls won 62 games this year, most in the NBA. They had already
vanquished the Indiana Pacers in five games and the Atlanta Hawks in six. They
may not have looked flashy, or even dominant, in doing so, but all they did was
win, which is all that is necessary. Style points are not awarded in the NBA
playoffs.
The
conventional wisdom was that the stylish Heat would breeze into the United
Center and James and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh would overwhelm the Bulls.
Three stars versus one would mean that Miami would take the series and move
ahead and annihilate whoever was served up from the Western Conference.
But it
was never a three-on-one scenario, unless you consider it three players against
one team. That’s what the Heat faced, and the Bulls team, at least for this one
game, showed that the aggregate was better than the singular.
Oh, the
Heat will probably come back. They are too talented to melt away into their
disparate parts and forget their own team defense. But the bar has been set for
them. To beat these Bulls, it won’t be individual heroics or one-on-one
brilliance or soaring soliloquies to the rim. Instead, the Heat will have to
take a page from the Bulls book and play team defense. They’ll have to adjust
to the fact that these Bulls aren’t going to let them get too many uncontested
looks at the basket. They have to realize that there will be a hand, a hip, a
forearm on every shot, every rebound and every scrum for a loose ball. If they
didn’t know it before Sunday night, they have to realize that they are in a
series.
Perhaps
that is what James was contemplating on the bench at halftime. Perhaps he
realized that his team – or more correctly – he himself, had not brought enough
to the arena that night to weather the stampede of the Bulls. Since they make
you play the whole 48 minutes even if you know you aren’t ready, LeBron James
came back out on that court and promptly got spanked, with Luol Deng glued to
him.
James
probably won’t miss 10 of 15 shots next time he comes out on the court. He
might get a couple of offensive rebounds to offset the 19 offensive rebounds
the Bulls pulled down. Wade will probably get over the jitters of playing a
playoff game in his hometown, in the arena where he grew up cheering for the
Bulls.
But the
Bulls won’t change. They won 62 games by playing suffocating defense and having
the otherworldly talent of Derrick Rose punctuate their effectiveness with
gravity-defying drives, three-point daggers and basketball brilliance all over
the court. They won by unleashing a bench that plays defense like it was a
religion and they are the zealots. They won because they believe in their team,
and their head coach, Tom Thibodeau, and his system.
James
could end up sitting on the bench, with that look on his face, for the entire
off-season.
Copyright
2011 Chicago Defender
