All-Star controversy involving Dwyane Wade, LeBron James reinforce Heat as league’s most interesting team
Dwyane Wade broke an NBA code. LeBron James passed on a last-second shot. Thank you both, gentlemen. It was getting a little too quiet in this Heat season. Welcome back, controversy. We missed you.
Wade and James combined for 60 points in Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game in Orlando and nobody cares. The national conversation a day later was that Wade had revealed his inner-assassin behind that engaging smile, and James had done something of the opposite, inviting – unfairly or not – recollections of the player who shrank from opportunity in last season’s Finals.
I’m only half-kidding in thanking both men. Year 1 of the Big 3 was a nonstop circus, a chaotic delight from a media standpoint, but this season has been pretty tranquil. That can happen in this league. If your team is really good the regular seasons tend to drone on uneventfully, serving as what they are: simply the perfunctory bridge that gets you to the playoffs, when everything that matters begins.
That’s why you revel in the small spikes of interest along the way, such as when LeBron misguidedly spoke aloud a desire to maybe play again in Cleveland someday. Or last week when the Knicks visited and Miami shrunk the galloping phenomena of Jeremy Lin to the size of a Bobblehead doll.
Sunday’s All-Star Game delivered a double spike to start the season’s second half off right. Or noisily, at least.
Wade authored the first blow quite literally when, with 8:48 to play in the third quarter, he hard-fouled Kobe Bryant from behind, over the shoulder. The Lakers called it a “nasal fracture.” In the real world that’s a “broken nose.” Bryant was bleeding within seconds. Though he remained in the game, severe headaches and a mild concussion would result.
Wade never apologized. Not then, not after the game, not on Twitter. Nothing.
“Obviously I didn’t try to draw no blood. But I took a foul,” he said afterward. “Kobe had fouled me twice in a row before that, so he still [was] one up on me.”
The same foul in a playoff game would have earned Wade credit for toughness. But the code says everybody knows nobody plays defense in an All-Star Game, let alone hard-foul, maybe flagrant-foul defense. That the West would beat the East 152-149 might be Exhibit A for the no-defense part.
All-Star Games are mindful of Harlem Globetrotters games back in the day, except both teams are the Globetrotters on offense and both defenses are the Washington Generals, sort of feigning defense while the fans delight in an alley-oop-fest.
So Kobe was bleeding, Wade walked away unrepentant, and now (bless the schedule) the Lakers happen to host the Heat this coming Sunday, when payback vs. Wade may be expected. Executives of ABC Sports, which will air the Heat-Lakers game, must have been high-fiving when Wade busted down on Bryant like that.
Teammate Chris Bosh called it the hardest foul he’d ever seen in an All-Star Game, noting, “We play them in a week so we’ll probably get it crackin’ early against these guys.”
James’ turn in somehow making a meaningless All-Star Game interesting would come later, in the final minute.
Only this man can score 36 points with seven assists and six rebounds to lead his team’s furious fourth-quarter rally, and still manage to do something that invites only criticism in the post-mortem.
It was The Shot Not Taken.
Inside of a minute left, James had the ball, dribbling toward the top of the key, Bryant defending. The ball was in the hot hand, where you want it. A tie game and overtime were in James’ hand. “Shoot the [expletive] ball!” Bryant was heard to yell at him.
James passed instead, his pass stolen, the game over.
Because everything about James is seen for its larger meaning and begging analysis, LeBron’s decision to pass instead of shoot was interpreted as him finding the choke when he should have been reaching for the clutch. He is having a great season; probably he is the MVP frontrunner. No matter. Passing on that last shot (despite his 36 points), reopened the window (and the wound) on his inexplicable disappearance in last season’s Finals loss to Dallas.
Suddenly all of the basketball psychoanalysts had all the reason needed to start probing anew the mental state of James’ game.
It was fascinating to me, the juxtaposition.
In one moment, with one hard foul, Wade had verified his basketball DNA as one of aggressiveness, killer instinct and strutting, give-me-the-ball machismo – even though the reality is that physical play hardly is his nature. Wade has taken one defensive charge all season. He hasn’t fouled out of a game in three years.
In one very different moment, with one shot not taken, James had invited an opposite interpretation of his own mental makeup – even though the reality is that anyone who would associate James with timidity might be a fool. There is no less subtle or more impressive five seconds in all of sports than when James is bulling the length of the floor, shouldering through defenders like a locomotive and finishing with a tomahawk slam and then that nodding, yes-I-did stare of his.
Sunday did this and nothing more:
It reminded us that D-Wade and LeBron make Miami not only the best team in the league, but also the most interesting.
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