Norwegian Wood

今天早上起来看新闻, 小牛终于完成任务, 总决赛的第六场, 在客场结束了热火. 首先得祝贺司机和小孩, 熬了这么多年, 媳妇终于熬成了婆. 特别是对于司机而言, 这个总冠军承载了太多的艰辛和苦楚: 05-06赛季总决赛, 小牛在2-0领先的情况下, 连输4场, 将总冠军拱手相让于热火. 不过说实话, 那次总决赛哨子有点偏, 基本上Wade一冲到禁区就响了. 06-07赛季, 小牛67胜以联盟第一的身份开始季后赛, 结果第一轮被勇士给黑八, 依然记得司机一脸尴尬的在一个招待会上接受常规赛MVP. 那个赛季后夏天, 传言司机一个人去了澳大利亚旅游散心, 领悟人生哲理… 四年后, 又是热火, 复仇的滋味的确很甜蜜.

不过, 也跟很多主流媒体一样, 我这里想说说热队. 原来我很不理解为什么有那么多人恨kobe, 现在总算多少有点体会, 因为我自己就很不爽热火今年, 巴不得他们输球. 这么讲可能有点不理性, 不符合做科学的人的作风, 所以这里就列几点条目, 都是我为什么这么烦热火的出发点吧. 很多地方会引espn的文章, 因为觉得他们说得比我到位.

1. the Decision

去年夏天的自由球员转会市场上十分热闹, 最大牌的当然是LeBron. LeBron最终选择去了热火, 受到很多人的批评, 譬如乔丹,

“There’s no way, with hindsight, I would’ve ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, ‘Hey, look, let’s get together and play on one team,’” Jordan said after playing in a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada. The interview aired on the NBC telecast of the event. “But that’s … things are different. I can’t say that’s a bad thing. It’s an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys.”

我看过不少LeBron在骑士的比赛, 说老实话, 他们那阵容是寒碜了点, Mo Williams是队里的第二号球星… 所以其实我并不觉得LeBron选择去热火是多大回事, 毕竟是个人选择, 不能人人都像乔丹那样争强好胜. 他去了热火, 有Wade和Bosh, 也许更适合他传球的风格. 但我很不理解的是他宣布自己决定的方式: 在espn的现场直播节目, 长达一个小时, 宣布将bring my talent to the south beach. James在骑士打了七年的球, 在Ohio州土生土长, 事先连他们都不通知一下, 个人觉得做的有点过分. espn的这篇文章比较符合我的思路, Bill Simmons也有两篇文章. 我觉得这个youtube的video最能表达骑士球迷的心声, 不过最好先看这个nike的广告.

2. the Party

我觉得这个可能是让我开始很不喜欢热火的开始: The Gratuitous Party One Night After The Decision. this is just unbelievable. 这可是赛季还没开始, 三个人连一场球都没开始打, James就在那里谈什么not one, not two… 最具讽刺效应的是, 小牛今天在同一个场地上庆祝他们的总冠军, well, karma is really a bitch.

3. the Celebration

总决赛第二场第四节还剩7分多钟, Wade在边线附近投中三分, 热队领先15分. 热队一帮人庆祝就象是夺冠了一样, 然后呢: 小牛在司机带领下反超并赢得了比赛. Chanlder在赛后的采访:

“It’s definitely frustrating when a guy does that and celebrates in front of your bench,” Mavs center Tyson Chandler said. “When you’ve got a guy showboating like that in front of your bench and you’re down 15 with seven minutes to go, you’re like, ‘The game ain’t over.’ That’s all we said on the bench: ‘Listen, I don’t care what they’re saying over there on the other bench. The game ain’t over.’”

在espn上有篇很有争议的文章, 后面的评论很有趣. btw, truehoop这个人以前还不错的, 不过后来三天两头就搞篇说kobe不行, 说lebron很牛的文章, 看了很倒胃口.

4. the fake cough

司机的第四场比赛前好像有点感冒, 带病坚持比赛, 受到一致表扬. 然后Wade和James在比赛前做了这个. Marc Stein在daily dime里面有段不错的总结:

LeBron and D-Wade have so little respect for the star on the other side.

Hopefully you never bought into the quaint notion going into these Finals that this wasn’t really a rematch because each team only had two holdovers from their 2006 encounter. Let’s clarify something, America: This was always a rematch, no matter how much the rosters have turned over, since it reunited two stars from the respective franchises who’ve had an icy relationship ever since the Miami comeback/Dallas collapse in ’06.

Or have you already forgotten the All-Star Game in 2007 when Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki were the only two starters on the floor in Las Vegas who didn’t even bump fists?

But I was actually gullible enough to believe, as well as I remember D-Wade versus Dirk at full chill, that the way Nowitzki has played this postseason would quash some of the Heat hubris we’ve seen since July, when they staged their infamous laser-light show to celebrate the signings of LeBron James and Chris Bosh as a championship unto itself.

I was foolish enough to think, after a season of ill-conceived statements blowing up in their faces, that Wade and James wouldn’t invite more of America’s bile by doing something like mocking Nowitzki’s recent sinus infection with news cameras rolling with every word and step after they finished up their shootaround. In a series where Nowitzki has been the clear-cut best player, no less.

Wrong and wrong.

You can bet that Wade and James will try to spin this as an episode of misunderstood humor — another example of how they get no leeway from a voracious and biased national media monster that the Miami Herald’s Dan LeBatard brilliantly dubbed a seasonlong All You Can Heat frenzy — but they’ll deserve every ounce of the flak they get this time. They crossed a line with disrespect so flip and blatant.

Especially Wade.

His own rep for inflating/creating drama is such that folks all over American Airlines Center on Thursday night, in the stands and on press row, were questioning how badly that left hip was hurting in Game 5 … even when Wade actually left the court twice for treatment. It makes no sense that Wade would fake an injury that cost him a huge chunk of game time … but it makes far, far less for a peer of Wade’s stature, as opposed to outside observers, to look straight into the lens and accuse Nowitzki of staging the wheezing misery that was broadcast worldwide in Game 4.

Given the chance to respond Friday night after the Mavericks landed in Miami, Nowitzki declined comment when reached by ESPN.com.

4. the Meltdown

Simmons专门有篇文章描述LeBron的诡异状态消失. 今天这段文章对第六场比赛里的一个细节的描述很是让我吃惊:

Let’s start with James. We’re not psychologists so it’s not worth trying to speculate what’s going on between his ears. We can only talk about what we saw — and boy, was it a train wreck.

One of the most head-shaking moments of the game came with 40 seconds remaining in the first quarter and the Heat down by five. Jason Terry had just missed a 3-pointer. Mike Miller handed the ball to James after pulling down the rebound. James took possession and started dribbling up the court. As James made his first couple trots down the floor, DeShawn Stevenson stepped up to defend James in the backcourt and to put some light pressure on him. But as soon as Stevenson got in his crouch in front of James, the two-time MVP panicked, immediately picked up his dribble and passed the ball to Miller.

The only problem? Miller wasn’t looking. He had already put his head down and started jogging down the court, but James decided to pass to Miller anyway. The ball subsequently bounced off Miller’s heels behind him. Miller had no idea that James had passed it to him until the ball ricocheted off his shoes. Stevenson picked up the loose ball behind the Mavericks 3-point line and drained a 3-spot on the Heat as James helplessly looked on underneath the Mavericks’ basket.

It was just one of James’ mind-boggling errors in Game 6, but it illustrated how the even the slightest sign of pressure completely swallowed him whole. James may be 6-foot-8 but he remains one of the best ball handlers in the game, but that moment spoke volumes about how James appeared like a different player on this Finals stage.

my theory? LeBron是个善于打顺风球, 但在落后情况下, 表现很是差强人意. 这也许就是为什么他选择来热队, Wade在关键时候还是比较厉害的.

5. the After

这篇文章记录了比赛后LeBron的采访. 最后的那句评论说到我心坎上去了:

When discussing the best of the best, however, it has to be a large part of how they are measured. They are the players most responsible for lifting their teams to greatness. Others must excel, too, as the Mavericks demonstrated. But there is a time when the best players must be at their best.

James wasn’t. And he still does not seem to get it.

“I mean, sometimes you got it, sometimes you don’t,” James said. “And that was this case in this series.  I was able to do things in the last two series to help us win ballgames.  Wasn’t able to do that in this series.  Once you get to the playoffs, every game is pressure.  You want to win.  You have to win.  And I mean, we’ve seen some of that in the Chicago series, we seen some of that in the Boston series.  Even though we lost Game 4, we lost Game 4 in Philly, there’s pressure in that series as well.”

That’s very nice. It’s good that he was very good against other teams. He added later that yes, “it hurts.”

Moments later, however, he trash talked those that were happy to see the Heat lose, ignoring that they brought all that on themselves.

“At the end of the day, all the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had today.  I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that.

“They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal, but they have to get back to the real world at some point.”

When it comes to rooting against Miami, it’s not the Heat, it’s the temerity.

update: Simmons had a nice theory:

Passed along by a friend of mine in NBA circles: LeBron caved from the never-ending scrutiny (as brutal as any athlete has ever faced in the Internet era) and his shaky inner circle, which consists of one parent (his mother, who battled a ton of problems over the years), his high school friends (who assumed an inordinately crucial role in his life without any real experience), his agents (who never threw their bodies in front of “The Decision”), and Miami’s management (who walked him into another fiasco with the Heat’s Welcome Party). By all accounts, he’s a genuinely nice and happy guy who just wants to be liked — he was never meant to be a villain, and as much as he tried to feed off the heat (no pun intended), once it piled up past a certain point, he broke. Maybe he felt that happening against the 2010 Celtics as well; maybe that’s why he chose to play with Wade in the first place.

And maybe that’s why, right now, he’s in total denial. Even in the postgame presser, when he should have been devastated the same way Magic Johnson was distraught after coming up small in the 1984 Finals, LeBron was doing the Frank Drebin “Nothing to see here, please disperse” routine, bristling at the notion that he choked and taking shots at anyone who rooted against him. That’s what you do when you’re surrounded by enablers — you blame everyone else, and you never look within. He never understood that people only rooted against him because that’s what you do when someone boasts before they’ve ever actually done anything.

Let’s say you’re in college and one of your buddies says, “See that girl over there? I’m taking her home tonight. And I’m doing this because I’m the funniest and best-looking guy in this room.” And let’s say he’s COMPLETELY serious. Guess what you’re doing if it doesn’t happen? You’re making fun of him. Relentlessly. Really, that’s what 50 percent of the Miami-related vitriol was about; the other 50 percent was because LeBron tried to stack the deck by playing with his biggest rival (we didn’t respect it), and because he broke Cleveland’s hearts on national TV (we didn’t like it). To this day, LeBron hasn’t shown any real regret about last summer; that’s the main reason everyone rooted against him. He couldn’t handle it. He caved. And now we’re here.

So it’s Theory A or Theory B, or maybe both, or maybe neither. As I wrote last Wednesday, I don’t know why I care so much. Maybe it’s because I know LeBron might be the most talented player I will ever watch, the Wilt of this generation, and I’m going to end up being pissed off that he never reached his potential and took me to a higher place as a sports fan … which is only the entire reason we watch sports in the first place, right? Because we don’t know what’s going to happen next, and because once in a while, someone shows up who’s so good and so talented that he makes us say, “I know what’s going to happen next?” Like he’s giving us sports fan ESP? The best thing about Jordan’s final shot wasn’t that he made it, but that we knew he would make it. That’s why we revere him all these years later. Usually heroes come through only on command in movies; Jordan did it in real life. We loved him for it.

LeBron? We thought he was next. Then he fell apart against Boston. Then he chose to play with his buddy instead of beating him. Then he fell apart again. Forget about him losing; we’re losing, too. Nobody has ever fully explained that part to LeBron. We rooted against him this season because it’s fun to have villains in sports, and because it’s fun to see an overly confident person gets his or her comeuppance. Not because we hated his guts. There will be a day when we root for LeBron James again. You wait. Either way, thanks for indulging me. Back to the diary.