LeBrontext
by Bryan
Part of my job now involves watching and reading an irresponsible amount of sports commentary, most of it recently having to do with the New Orleans Saints or LeBron James. Everyone agrees that LeBron James plays wonderful basketball until a certain point. To use a cross-sport analogy, LeBron basically refuses to be his own closer. Deadspin’s Sean Newell exhaustively listed the reasons that this is okay, but he wrote one thing that will be, at some point, proven demonstrably false: “If Lebron took the shot and made it, LeBron and the Heat would have done exactly what is expected: beat the Jazz in March.” No. The sports-watching world is waiting for LeBron to shoot. If he takes a last-second shot and he makes it, it will not hesitate to congratulate itself for remaking James in its own image, even if it’s only one game and one shot, and one he’s taken before, albeit under different circumstances.
While Newell and even Jon Barry, whose argument Newell briskly escorts to the woodshed, both say that LeBron’s pass to Udonis Haslem against the Jazz was the “right basketball play,” I think they’re overstating what they know. I love statistics and I pray at their altar, but what we don’t know far outstrips that which we do. Is a surprise Udonis Haslem 15-foot open shot a better percentage play than a LeBron isolation play after LeBron has drilled miraculous shot after miraculous shot? I have no way of knowing. I don’t like that people think they know the answer. I think the source of my confusion is: context.
Context is why the same meal on fine china tastes better than on paper plates, and why better-looking people get paid better than worse-paid ones to provide exactly the same service. It is powerful and deceiving, and it is real. To go back to the baseball analogy, the Red Sox’ closer-by-committee didn’t work because the pitchers were crappy, but the generally accepted theory is that it didn’t work because pitchers wanted to know their roles. If you’re willing to admit that that sort of uncertainly had at least some effect on their performance—and I encourage you to imagine yourself at work, battling uncertainty, and compare that to your most productive times—then you’re granting that context provides an unknown. If Michael Wilbon was to be believed on PTI today, Magic Johnson told him that other players on the Heat are likely looking to James to take that shot, and that they see his passing it up as something akin to Josh Beckett removing himself to let Dice-K face the last batter when Beckett has 18 strikeouts. If context has some effect, then it’s almost certainly playing a role here, both in the short term and long term.
If you grant all that, and you believe in the numbers… well, if you’re willing to discount a regular season game as just a regular season game, isn’t it in LeBron’s best interests to kill this storyline? Process is important, as the Sloan Conference hammered at last weekend. So is realism. You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The potential shitshow of this continuing nonsense is not worth one regular-season loss, even if it’s nonsense. I’m confident enough in my math to say that. We’re at that point. We don’t often get there. If LeBron takes the last shot the next time he has the chance, he will feed the monkey enough to shift the ball enough toward his amazing play that, if the stress is wearing on him at all, it’ll free him up to be even better.
Shoot the ball, buddy. It’s like sushi. You might love it if you try it.
Bryan Joiner 
Sushi is not good.
I’ll have to disagree with you here on the veracity of my hypothetical. I think the fact that a buzzer beating, game winning three pointer in a playoff game for a team that was LeBron’s and LeBron’s alone is just hyperlinked in a throwaway “albeit different” kind of sentence goes to show that while, for sure, “Lebron’s game winner against the Jazz” would have been in Sportscenter’s top 10 plays, the overall narrative would not have changed.
As you said, he’s already made the shot, on a bigger stage with higher stakes, and yet we’re still talking about an all-star game and an early March game.
I’d also like to say that I don’t claim to know it was the “right play.” While I saw a man covered by two defenders pass the ball to a wide open teammate, I don’t presume to know what is the proper play. It looked like the smart thing to do–A wide open shot by a professional player seems like a better play than a forced shot (regardless of what preceded it). The entire discussion afterward just struck me as unfair and put LeBron in an un-winnable position. That was the crux of my post.
Finally, if an athlete starts altering his performance to end a particular media created “story line” that, to me, is much more problematic than a guy unwilling to shoot the final shot. A guy who does something like that sounds exactly like the kind of ego maniac he’s accused of being.
Anyway, the truth is probably somewhere in between, as it always is.
Thanks,
Sean
Yeah. I guess my point is that the only way to prove whether or not it’s unwinnable would be for him to shoot the damn ball (and not just because I want him to). I think it’s still only hypothetically unwinnable.
There are a LOT of similarities to the A-Rod situation from a few years back. The difference is, I think that A-Rod would have been (and still would be) received the same way you say LeBron would, because A-Rod’s at the mercy of the lineup. He has more pressure on him because of something he has less control over. This is silly, but it’s why I think he, more than LeBron, is right to focus on process. LeBron has it totally in his power to at least test the waters here, and when Kobe’s calling him out for it on the court, I think it’s pretty clearly developed a life of its own. I suggest he at least attempt to kill that life of its own, Fight Club-style, by shooting it in the face.
And thank you for responding. I have a nasty habit of sounding hypercritical of things I really liked but for one or two things, and that certainly applies here. Working on it.