MIAMI — It was over before it was over.
It was over when nerves got the best of this team that, by the end, appeared so unfamiliar it looked worse than when the season started.
It was over when the Mavericks had such a grip on this series that Erik Spoelstra was forced to change his starting lineup and then rely heavily on Eddie House off his bench.
It was over when Dirk Nowitzki missed 11 of his first 12 shots and the Mavericks were still leading by a bucket at halftime.
It was over when Jason Terry started backing up his words by lighting up LeBron James and the Heat.
There are a lot of things you can account for when dissecting this Heat six-game Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
But the Heat lost this final game because of the unaccountable.
Nerves. Pressure. Burden.
There’s no way to prove it, of course. And it’s certainly not a way of shortchanging the Dallas Mavericks.
In fact, it’s because the Mavericks managed to avoid succumbing to any pressure in this series, playing as freely in the fourth quarter Sunday as they did in the final quarter of that Lakers sweep, that they managed three consecutive wins.
But the Mavericks aren’t the Heat when it comes to pressure. No one on the Mavericks is LeBron James.
And on Sunday, LeBron James wasn’t LeBron James.
He hadn’t been LeBron James since this series started.
There’s no way to dance around it this time. There’s no way to ignore six consecutive games of this. No way to excuse another passive performance (12 points after a red-hot nine-point start that included a pair of long jumpers).
If you needed to see how the pressure of being LeBron James had gotten to him, all you had to do was watch a few possessions of the last few minutes in the second quarter.
It was a close game at that point, with the tension in the building tangible.
At one point, James drove to within a couple feet of the paint, facing little resistance. And he didn’t even look at the basket. He passed it off for a baseline jumper to someone else. Didn’t matter who it was. It wasn’t LeBron James with a layup.
A few moments later, LeBron was at the line, his first trip there in the game.
Even though he had hit his first few jumpers, there was a strong feeling he’d miss the first free throw. He did. And the second. Not close misses. Misses that basically proved his hands weren’t steady, his mind wasn’t right.
That free-throw line issue wasn’t just LeBron’s, of course
The Heat lost by 10 and missed 13 free throws. James missed three of his four attempts. The fact that he missed three of them isn’t even as bad as the fact that, once again, he got to the foul line just a few times in a game that was begging for him to get to the rim more often.
James was playing the same game he had been playing since the series started: standing around the perimeter, whipping passes side to side, hoping offensive execution would mask the fact that he wanted no part of taking over games.
Think about this for a second: How many times this year did you get upset because James stalled the offense by standing in front of his man and waiting until the final seconds of the shot clock to put on a move? Regardless of what the result was, that was one of the most memorable and repetitive scenes we’ve seen in his first season in Miami.
Now, how many times do you remember him doing that in this series? Hard to remember even a couple.
Did he choose this series to suddenly perform within the offense at all times? If so, why?
No, these are the kind of inexplicable parts of LeBron James’ performance in this series that will haunt him, will haunt this franchise, will linger with him for the entirety of next season.
And under normal circumstances you could say he made up for it on the defensive end, like he had so many other times in these playoffs. But this time, James was as flat-footed on that end as he was lacking on the offensive end.
He left Jason Kidd open for a three-pointer. He fell asleep multiple times on Terry. This was Terry, the most efficient offensive player of the last three games in these Finals. And LeBron was, once again, caught up in the moment, looking the other way, rather than responding to it.
James wasn’t alone in this one. It just so happened that Wade had his first poor performance as well. He was a lousy 6 of 16 from the field, and he spent more time complaining to refs, committing bad turnovers or launching unanswered prayers from the perimeter than lifting his superstar teammate.
Another picture of a Finals series gone horribly wrong?
With 8:12 left and the Heat down 12 coming out of a timeout, it was Mario Chalmers who was in the face of Wade and LeBron and not the other way around.
The point guard that spent so much time being criticized for being inconsistent and having too much confidence in himself suddenly looked like the only steady force in this game.
And what of Chris Bosh? Well, he didn’t get enough of a chance to make a stronger impact in this game. Whose fault is that? Perhaps a coach who also crumbled under this unprecedented level of pressure.
“I was frustrated. … I would’ve liked to get more involved,” Bosh said. “But I was just playing the game as it went. Looking back at it, I had it going a little bit. I was in a good place for the game.”
This game, this series, was certainly an eye-opening experience for this team and its biggest star.
Perhaps the pressure was too much, after all. Perhaps it always has been for LeBron James, in particular.
“At the end of the day, guys try,” Bosh said, offering the best possible compliment he could of James’ play.
Maybe next season the Heat will take a cue from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and stay quiet, maybe then relieving some of that pressure that was placed on the team.
Because this season ended at the exact opposite place that it started.
No. They. Didn’t.
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