Posts Tagged ‘LeBron James’

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Epic LeBron/Wade Was Just Two Much

May 25, 2012  ·  12:09AM





INDIANAPOLIS — This was Sinatra and Dino holding it down while Sammy called in sick. Or Moe and Larry getting yuks by themselves because Curly suffered a serious injury from a poke in the eye.

Left without Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade steamrolled the Pacers. Two men were two much. That’s it, folks. There’s no need to look too deep to figure how the Heat won in six. Wade scored 41 on Thursday in the clincher, and LeBron started this run with 40 points and 18 rebounds in Game 4. This was a combination a locksmith couldn’t solve, much less the Pacers.

The last three games, when Miami turned this series around, LeBron Wade scored 70, 58 and 69 points. Isn’t that what the Bobcats get on three good nights? Two guys played at MVP level and did it entertainingly at that, throwing up highlights left and right. Hope you enjoyed it, even if you hate the Heat, because this type of three-game stretch doesn’t come ’round here often.

This was pure brilliance, and dominance, and greatness. And don’t let your disgust for the Heat, if you still haven’t gotten over it yet, blind you to what you just witnessed.

Come to think of it, Bosh’s abdominal strain worked out fine for us spectators, because it allowed us to see LeBron Wade at his very and truly best. Dunks, steals, lobs, blocks, downcourt sprints, you name it, they gave it. And you know why?

“They had to give us more,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. “I don’t know if they’ve ever been required to give us as much responsibility, with Chris out. This series bRought out the best in both of them because they knew what it would take.”

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs / Comments (86) /

Tale Of The Tape For Game 6

May 24, 2012  ·  2:02PM





INDIANAPOLIS — And the yapping contiues.

The Pacers and Heat will actually get around to deciding this East semifinal series on the court, but before Game 6 they threw verbal punches, the kind that don’t draw suspensions, which is what Udonis Haslem and Dexter Pittman received and Tyler Hansbrough didn’t.

“I mean, Hansbrough, it’s not the first time he’s gone after one of our players this year,” said LeBron James. “We have two guys suspended and basically they have no one suspended.”

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, citing the physical whacks on LeBron and Dwyane Wade, said: “The league does not have a problem with hard fouls on our two main guys. In nine games now (including regular season games with Indiana) there’s been over a dozen hard fouls to the face, some of the tomahawk variety, some have drawn blood. They don’t have a problem with it, so we don’t have a problem with it. We’ll focus on what we can control.”

Well, what Miami can control is its fate in this “wild wild West” series, to quote Danny Granger, with two chances to close out the Pacers. Putting aside the bad blood for a moment, both teams aren’t at full strength, Miami without Chris Bosh and Haslem, the Pacers hoping Granger will overcame a bum ankle suffered in Game 5.

For Game 6, anyway, given the injury/suspension issue, it’s a matter of everyone shutting up and certain players stepping up. Here are the candidates for the latter: (more…)

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs, Uncategorized / Comments (16) /

The League Gets The Last Punch

May 24, 2012  ·  7:44AM

INDIANAPOLIS – Retaliation comes at a price, and the true cost for the Heat will be totaled up by late Thursday.

Miami will be without Udonis Haslem, whose foul on Tyler Hansbrough was upgraded to level two and the league office tacked on a one-game suspension to boot. Hansbrough wasn’t suspended for his hard foul moments earlier on Dwyane Wade, and truthfully, the league didn’t see any malice by the Pacer forward. But Haslem’s hit was clearly a payback, and the intent, therefore, was judged just as damaging than the actual foul.

That’s why Dexter Pittman was suspended (three games, and he probably got off light) for clubbing Lance Stephenson and then winking about it. As if the vicious foul wasn’t enough, Pittman went after Stephenson because the Pacer reserve gave the choke signal to LeBron James. Once again, the intent, as well as the foul, carried equal weight.

Because Pittman is a benchwarmer who seldom sees any light anyway, the loss of Haslem is where Miami could feel a pinch. Coincidently, Game 6 is at Bankers Life, where Haslem dropped four critical jumpers late in the fourth quarter of Game 4, which tilted the series in Miami’s favor. Since the Heat’s supporting cast isn’t especially deep, and because Haslem has scored 24 points the last two games, this could be a price that proves too difficult to overcome, unless someone else steps forward for Miami.

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Haslem, Pittman Out For Game 6

May 23, 2012  ·  7:35PM





INDIANAPOLIS – Udonis Haslem won’t be playing in Game 6 of the Miami Heat-Indiana Pacers playoff series Thursday night. Tyler Hansbrough will be. And Dexter Pittman … c’mon, does Dexter Pittman’s availability really matter?

The afternoon-after officiating of the flagrant-foul frenzy in Game 5 probably got it right: Haslem, Hansbrough and Pittman all had their flagrant-1 fouls upgraded to flagrant-2 violations, but Haslem (one game) and Pittman (three games) also were handed suspensions for striking the head and shoulders of their intended Indiana targets.

Haslem must sit out Game 6 without pay for his two-armed chop on Hansbrough, which came less than a minute after the Pacers forward put a hard foul on Miami’s Dwyane Wade. Wade got hit in the head and shoulders, too, but in the view of Stu Jackson, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, that was a foul that fit within the context of basketball. Who hasn’t seen Wade, after all, get up some acrobatic continuation shot that dropped after a defender fouled and let him go?

Haslem’s and Pittsman’s moves, in real time, in replays and in context, were retaliatory moves. That wasn’t included in the league’s news release on their suspensions, but it was evident to anyone in the building or watching the game. Haslem “had” Wade’s back and Pittman apparently decided to do for LeBron James what Juwan Howard had only yapped about. Lance Stephenson, remember, was the Pacers’ deep reserve who made a choke gesture courtside when James missed a free throw in Game 3.

The Heat won’t be happy about losing Haslem, who has given them value scoring, rebounding and toughness (most of it clean) off the bench in the past two games. Will it swing the series? Hard to say. But the NBA would have been remiss – and didn’t offer any explanation for why the game officials got their rulings wrong – if it had let the Heat’s two hammerings go without further punishment. Those veered into hockey, bordering on pro wrestling and had a distinctly dirty feel.

Remember, all Stephenson did was act stupid and disrespect James from afar. He didn’t get physical with anybody, yet wound up getting clotheslined across his collarbone by Pittman’s lunging elbow.

Expect a more buttoned-down Game 6, despite Larry Bird’s “soft” challenge to his Pacers in what might be their elimination. A couple of key transgressors won’t be active and the referee crew almost certainly will have quick whistles, lest things get uglier.

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs / Comments (346) /

Blogtable: Pacers’ Playoff Run

May 23, 2012  ·  11:37AM

Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Give us three words (and some explanations for your choices) to describe the Indiana Pacers at this point of the postseason.

Steve Aschburner: Deep. Talented. And now soft. S-O-F-T. If that’s what Larry Bird sees, it’s good enough for me. The Pacers didn’t need to brawl vs. Miami but they needed to push their inside agenda. In the most bruising way necessary.  

Fran Blinebury: 1 - Disorganized: Sloppy passing, nonexistent defense and no answer to the Heat dunking exhibition.  2- Delicate: When Danny Granger went down with his ankle injury, they surrendered.  ”I can’t believe my team went soft,” Larry Bird told the Indianapolis Star.  ”S-O-F-T.  I’m disappointed.  I never thought it would happen.”  3 – Done.

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Miami Looks Ring-Ready Again

May 23, 2012  ·  12:45AM





MIAMI – Knowing the way things work in the muy caliente frenzy around the Miami Heat, the next storyline is predictable: Speculation will stir that somehow, Chris Bosh getting healthy and returning to action might mess with the Heat’s finely tuned machine.

The guy who was indispensable and sorely missed as the Heat lost Games 2 and 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series to the Indiana Pacers could have risked a “Chris Who?” greeting had he made himself visible  Tuesday night. In its 115-83 dismantling of the Pacers at AmericanAirlines Arena, Miami’s performance was so impressive and, to the Pacers, so potentially daunting that two superstar wing players and a resuscitated supporting cast seem quite enough. To eliminate Indiana and maybe even to plow through two more rounds.

There’s no clear sign whether Bosh, who suffered an abdominal strain midway through Game 1, will be capable of playing again (well or at all) this postseason if the Heat advance. They will, in strict basketball terms, remain weaker for it. But for a night, bah, it didn’t matter a bit.

How complete was the Heat’s game? Let us count the ways: (more…)

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Granger’s Huffing Blown Off By Heat

May 22, 2012  ·  2:48PM





MIAMI – Danny Granger has been doing a lot of huffing and puffing in his team’s playoff series against the Miami Heat, picking up three technical fouls in the last three games and getting in the grills of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade at different times.

The Indiana forward has talked about doing it for his own team’s benefit, to keep the Pacers focused and playing with some sort of edge against the superstar-driven Heat. Maybe he’s serving as a surrogate of sorts, too, for all the fans out there who might wonder how they or anyone else could try to close the gap in skills on James and Wade without feeling intimidated.

If that’s why Granger has been so feisty, fine. But if he’s actually trying to rattle the Heat, that battle already has been lost.

“Whatever he’s trying, it’s not working,” James said after Miami’s morning shootround Tuesday, prior to Game 5 that evening at AmericanAirlines Arena. “Whether he’s trying to do it for his own self-confidence, to say, OK … he’s told you guys already, he’s not scared of LeBron, ‘I want to let him know.’ So I guess he’s doing it for his own … psyche? It’s stupid.”

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Bosh Still Factor For Heat?

May 21, 2012  ·  5:25PM





MIAMI – The potential of Chris Bosh. The threat of Chris Bosh. The idea of Chris Bosh.

Those were all in play Monday after Miami coach Erik Spoelstra shared with the media his brush with the injured Heat power forward, sidelined by an abdominal strain injury since the first half of Game 1 from the Eastern Conference semifinal series with Indiana.

It was an upbeat day for the Heat in general, owing to their bounce-back victory in Game 4 Sunday and its reminder of LeBron James‘ and Dwyane Wade’s awesomeness (70 points, with the tandem outscoring and outrebounding the Pacers all by themselves in the second half). Seeing Bosh, eight days along in his recovery, only added to it for the Miami coach.

“He’s doing his rehab,” Spoelstra said. “I just like seeing him. A smile on his face. He’s doing his work.”

Enough that Bosh might be available for, say, a Game 7 if things go that far? “It’s too early to tell,” the coach said, adding that Bosh isn’t doing any court work while allowing the muscle strain to heal.

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Heat Two Much For Pacers, For Now

May 20, 2012  ·  7:45PM





INDIANAPOLIS — LeBron James and Dwyane Wade combined for 70 points in a captivating and hypnotic performance that left you gushing and the Pacers gasping. It was tag-team basketball at its finest, and it sucked all the suspense from an East semifinal that was turning disastrous by the day for Miami.

And yet: Is this what it’s going to take to beat the Pacers, and then the next team if the Heat advance, and the next?

The short and truthful answer is: Yes. Those two played at an MVP level to keep the Heat from collapsing in their best-of-seven series, which now returns to Miami 2-2. It was a steady and deliberate two-man torture, at times entertaining, at times awe-inspiring, at times breathless. They hooked up for dunks, give-and-goes, fast-break buckets and when the situation called for it, went solo on the Pacers. It was two much for Indiana to handle, an effort that perhaps only they can give.

“They came in with a certain mindset,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra.

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‘Lance Who?’ apologizes for LBJ slight

May 19, 2012  ·  4:12PM





INDIANAPOLIS – At times in this series, Lance Stephenson donned a red jersey during Indiana Pacers’ practices to help his team prepare for the threats posed by LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Whichever one figured to be the primary attacker, that was the one Stephenson – an athletic, 21-year-old deep reserve on the Indiana bench – simulated as an aid to his team’s defense.

Simulate. Not motivate. That’s the concern now for the Pacers, heading into Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series against Miami on Sunday wondering how James will respond to a mistake by Stephenson that was more red-faced than red jersey.

Late in the third quarter of Game 3, James shot a free throw after a technical foul on Pacers forward Danny Granger. He missed it, on the heels of two critical misses from the line late in Game 2, to hoots from the fans at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. That’s when Stephenson erred – he put his hands to his throat in the sports’ universal “choke” sign. And the TV cameras caught it.

That meant it was preserved for posterity and replayed countless times nationally on ESPN SportsCenter and elsewhere. It was a silly bit of exuberance by a young player making most of his contributions as eyes, ears and clapping hands from the Pacers bench – his stint of barely a minute at garbage time Thursday was his only appearance in the series so far and he has played six minutes in two rounds.

But it also was the sort of needless needling Indiana doesn’t want, lest it rankle and inspire James or his teammates. Granted, he and the Heat shouldn’t need a goosing from a Pacers scrub to be driven to even and win the series. But if Lance Whoever gives Miami some video bulletin-board material that does make a difference somehow, he will have stirred up a problem for his side.

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