The Defense of a Dynasty

The Defense of a Dynasty: LeBron’s Quest for Immortality

NBA Writer Alex Gordon

If I am part of the Miami Heat organization right now, I am terrified.  From the front office to the ticket scalpers to the training staff to the video room guy, to Eric Spoelstra (who was the video room guy before he was the coach), and even the King himself.  In the post-game interview with the ESPN countdown crew LeBron put it perfectly.  “You need a little bit of luck to win an NBA championship,” and that is exactly what the Heat had. 

That is not why Mr. James should be worried; he’s worried because he know that the rest of the NBA is right there.  Let’s put into perspective how close the Heat came to losing that dramatic game 6.  Everyone keeps talking about how the Spurs were a rebound away from a championship. They weren’t.  They were a tipped ball away from a championship they, they were a loose ball foul away from a championship. They HAD won a championship barring the most miraculous shot in finals history, and that is exactly what they got.  A difficult catch and shoot by Ray Allen. With his momentum carrying him back, he was able to steady himself just long enough to rise up over the out stretched arm of Tony Parker, get the shot off, and the rest is history.  If anyone had knocked the ball into the air, if Chris Bosh had done anything with that ball beside EXACTLY the action he performed. We would have been talking about the failure of the big three for the rest of basketball eternity.  LeBron would have captured one title in three years with his “not five, not six, not seven team” (that everyone took way to literally), and with the important contracts running out at the end of the year “the decision” would have been a terrible one.   

Funny how one shot that a player doesn’t even take can change the way we look at him historically. Now all we’ll see looking back is that The King prevailed and now has a chance at basketball immortality. The three-peat.  Only George Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers (In an era where you could score 20 a game in the playoffs with a fractured leg, which he did in 1951), Russell’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bull’s, and Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers have accomplished the trifecta.  This year is different however.  Six teams in the west have the potential to make a deep playoff run (Clippers, Spurs, Thunder, Warriors, Grizzlies, Rockets), but the question I have is can the champs get out of the east.  The besides the seven game bloodbath with the Pacers in the eastern conference finals the Heat pretty much walked through the east last year.  They swept the Bucks and rolled the Bulls in five.  This year is going to be different however, with four elite teams that might have what it takes to end The Kings reign over the east.

The Philadelphia 76ers

They beat the Heat on opening night, and are 3-0 with a convincing win over the Bulls… wait never mind I just got a call from the front office.  They’re horrified by the teams hot start and are afraid these crazy rookies and Jason Richardson on crutches will ruin their chances in the “Riggin-for-Wiggins” lottery.  So Three elite teams…

The Chicago Bulls

The Bulls got the last man not named “LeBron James” to win an MVP award back.  It’s horrible that people ripped on Rose for not returning last year.  Anyone who has been an athlete at any time in their lives has probably been injured, and they know the feeling of not being able to totally trust that body part.  You feel almost the absence of pain, and it takes time for you to feel right doing what you did before.  Especially if your game is as explosive and high impact as Derrick Rose’s. 
This team showed that it could hold its own without Rose’s top five scoring numbers.  They relayed on gritty defense, ball movement, and Nate Robinson’s irrational confidence to make a respectable playoff run.  Even with the loss of Nate the great, the rest of the roster remains pretty much intact.  The starting five of Rose, Jimmy Butler, Luol Deng, Carlos Boozer, and Joakim Noah might be the best defensive five man group in the league (even if the Booz is not the epitome of a lockdown defender). 

The X-factor is Jimmy Butler.  If he can improve from a very good defender to a lock-down type (yes these are technical terms, sue me) then the Bulls could send Deng, and Butler at Wade, and James at the same time.  The luxury of this, is most teams have only one guy (if any) capable of defending LeBron or Wade.  Barring injury, illness, trade, or Tom Thibodeau playing them 46 minutes a game in the regular season (don’t count the last one out), the wing defense of the Bulls might put them over the top. With the return of Rose the team brings back the second piece of the formula that always seems to give the Heat problems.  Elite point guard play, and size on both ends of the court has always been the Heat’s Achilles heel.  Even though Rose has struggled out of the gate, I’m certain he will return to all-star form at some point.  Along with the offensive production of Booz and the rim protection of Noah and Taj Gibson I expect a playoff series that you will tell your grandchildren about (multiple times… even though you know they’ve heard it already) from the Heat and the Bulls this year.
          
The Indiana Pacers

The Pace-show was very close to beating the Heat last year, and they did it without any bench production.  If the Pacers could have left the bench on the floor for any amount of time against the Heat they could have won.  Their starters had to play almost entire games in that series last year, and just simply didn’t have the legs come crunch time, and that’s where they lost the series. 

The Larry Bird and the front office addressed the problem very well during the offseason.   They brought in real NBA players (as Larry promptly let everyone he was not involved with signing go) to back up the very good ones they already had.  Luis Scola, and C.J Watson have both been productive offensive players coming off the bench and starting for teams in past years.  They also brought in Chris Copland who seemed to have a breakout year for the Knicks last year, to give them some outside shooting.  Along with solid backup center Ian Mahinmi, the bench becomes almost a strength for this team (maybe not defensively, but they can defiantly score).  As for the Achilles factor, George Hill doesn’t really provide elite point guard production, but do they ever have size inside.

 

The Starting front line of the Pacers is tailor-made to give the Heat all sorts of problems.  David West has always been one of the better low post scorers in the league, and unless Shane Battier puts on 75 lbs. very quickly the Heat have no choice to double West on the block.   The second member is most effective over seven foot center in the NBA Roy Hibbert.  The man is a legit 7’2’’ and the bane of anyone who tries to go anywhere near the rim as we saw in last year’s playoffs.  As Coach Vogal puts it, “the league’s best at drawing no calls,”  as he goes straight up not inducing contact just letting the attacking player figure out some way to get the shot to go against all that length.  The issue for the Pace-show last year was they didn’t have a shot creator to go to with the clock winding down.  They still don’t, but hopefully emerging super-star Paul George will be able to add this to his game this year along while still giving LeBron all he can handle on the defensive end.  Who knows if the Pacers have made the right moves to get over the hump this year, but if they do met in the playoffs we are all going to be winners.

The Brooklyn Nets 

Maybe the biggest question mark on this list, the Nets obviously made a huge splash in the offseason.  They brought in aging stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce along with offensive spark plug Jason “The Jet” Terry.  They also acquired their contracts, which put the team’s total salary at 101 million dollars (19 million dollars over the 82 million dollar salary cap).  There may never be another “win-now” team like this one with the owner Mikhail Prokhorov obviously burning money warm his house (and his car, and his office, and the Barkleys center, and Andrei Kirilenko’s new private island that were not supposed to talk about).  Their bench is among the best if not the best in the NBA with Shawn Livingston, Jet Terry, Kirilenko, Andre Blatche, Reggie Evans, and Mirza Teletovic.  Its versatile, it can score, it can provide spacing, and Evans can rebound for all six of them. 

The may not have the stopper types on the wing like the Pacers and Bulls, but they can give LeBron and Wade a lot of different looks (Kerilenko, Pierce, Joe Johnson etc.) which has proven to be at least semi-effective before.  Where they differ from the Bulls and Pacers is their offence.  The team is full of veterans who know how to move the ball and get the best possible shot every time down the floor.  They beat the Heat in the opening weak of the season (by one point but still), and you could help notice how well the ball moved from side, it never became stagnant nobody just stood there dribbling at the three point line as seconds ticked away.  They passed up good shots to get great ones, and that’s what you need to do against the Heat. 
KG, and Peirce will be effective for the Nets this season, but they are really, really quality starters at this point in their career’s they won’t (and shouldn’t) carry the team night in and night out.  To beat the Heat this team will need to get top-five point guard play from Deron Williams.  We know he is capable of it, but haven’t seen it for a while because of nagging injuries, and nagging ego.  They will also need all-star level production at the center spot from Brook Lopez.  He’s no Roy Hibbert defensively, but he has improved his shot blocking, and rebounding numbers in the past few years.  Roy Hibbert on the other hand is no Brook Lopez on the offensive end.  Lopez may be the most offensively skilled center in the league, and barring Greg Oden finding the fountain of youth they have no answer for him on the block or in the pick-and-roll game.  Who knows? in a seven game series the Heat might just turn every game into a track met and beat them in five with all those old legs not able to keep up.  Or Williams returns to form and impeccably executes one of the best half-court offense we’ve seen in years, they stop LeBron from running amok in the paint with KG and Lopez.  On paper they seem to have the worse chance of these three teams, but that’s just what it is a piece of paper.
I’ve learned never to bet against LeBron over the last few years, and I’m not going to start now.  His Heat however, are going to need to get through two of these three teams and whoever comes out of the west.  If LeBron can get back to the mountain top this time, through these teams put together with the sole purpose of stopping his dominance, we can finally put him in the discussion of all-time greats.