No shit. If I were him, I would say, "Forget all the nicknames, just call me LeBron until I actually win something." I'm gonna start calling him "Milk Carton" because he keeps vanishing at the end of the game. EDIT: Jeff Van Gundy is suggesting they evaluate moving LeBron or DWade in a play to get Dwight Howard. He's a funny motherfucker.
If I were Miami I would definitely do D-Wade for Dwight. Lebron and Wade never looked comfortable playing with each other and serve redundant functions. Wade is the less productive player between him and Lebron according to Dave Berri's analysis (<a class="postlink" href="http://dberri.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/an-elite-duo-in-miami-how-often-does-this-happen/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://dberri.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/ ... is-happen/</a>), albeit not by much. However, in addition, Lebron is three years younger and more durable than Wade. Dwight and Bosh have less redundancy than do Lebron and Wade. Dwight can be defensive presence and all-around tour de force while Bosh can be the finesse guy, which are the roles both are most comfortable with.
But they do have the same number of NBA years on their legs, and I would say that Wade is years ahead from a mental toughness standpoint. Plus, he's got a ring and is probably untouchable.
I supported Miami all season, and I'll continue to support them. Still, what's lost in all of this is how brilliantly Dallas' roster is constructed. In a vacuum, I take Devin Harris over Jason Kidd, but does Dallas win this series with Harris at the point? Dallas was a great team all season, and they beat the Lakers pretty easily. This wasn't some David vs. Goliath matchup between the super talented Heat and the scrappy fundamental Mavs: it was a treatise on the ability of a deep group of specialists to compete with a shallow troika of talented generalists. I said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't understand Dallas' roster construction. I'm sure their front office does though, and it IS nice to see smart managing succeed.
Yeah, but I bet they would suck at fantasy basketball! In all seriousness, having the most talent doesn't necessarily mean having the best team. It's like the debate over "the best PG in the NBA". Doesn't matter if you have the best PG in the NBA, what matters is that you have the best PG (or SG, SF, etc) for your team. I think the Heat thought they could throw together fantastically talented players and the "team" part of it would take care of itself. Doesn't work that way. Oh, and unless the Heat are planning on trading Bosh and Lebron/Wade and something else for Dwight Howard, don't expect to see him going to Miami. I bet Orlando would trade him to Tel Aviv before they trade him to the in-state rivals.
So true. Even truer. Ricky coached the fuck out of that game. Eric kept is cool, but he ran out of ideas, didn't have the tools, and doesn't have the ability to put down the clipboard and pump in the mental steroids. There was a certain point in that game (9 minutes left) where the clipboard comes down and the coach just has to shout at a team "Look, you are better than those guys, you have been all year. Remember all the shit we've been through,. Get fucking tough, be the men you are supposed to be. Defend your home fucking court." He didn't do that, they lost. I do think Simmons had the right theory when he said LeBron didn't know how to handle Wade yelling at him on national TV for an entire timeout because no one has ever yelled at him or really told him what to do his whole life and it threw him off the game. He basically checked out. He's been the man this whole time and started deferring to Wade. His post game press conference was golden.
<a class="postlink" href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2011/news/story?id=6690475" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2011 ... id=6690475</a> I feel like Kahn's just spitting in my face at this point, even for the mere suggestion of something like this.