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.
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
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