Yeah, that really proved how bad his defense was all right. They had an entire game of tape to watch and they showed 2 plays, one where Shaq loses Kendrick Perkins, leaving LeBron guarding 2 guys underneath, and then when Perkins catches the ball in the circle LeBron just gets out of the way since he already has 3 fouls early in the 3rd quarter and Jamison's already coming over to deliver the hard foul which is pretty much all you can do at that point. Seems like smart basketball to me.

The other play, he gets Mo Williams to come switch over onto Rondo since it would be an obvious mismatch if Williams was on Pierce and then after the switch Mo gets burned by Rondo.

So basically, with an entire game worth of tape to look over, the most damning thing they could find on LeBron was a play where Shaq got lost and wandered away from his man leaving Perkins wide open and a play where Mo Williams got burned? Give me a ****ing break.


Is that really the best you can do to argue with me is just spit out a non-stop deluge of memes? This is the 3rd time in the last 24 hours you mentioned the stupid "sort by PER" thing, and it wasn't warranted in any case, but this time you brought it up with absolutely no prompting whatsoever as it wasn't even responding to a post of mine. This is just obvious blatant trolling at this point. You're not even trying to hide it.

FWIW, I watched all of Game 5 until the last 5 minutes or so when it was a total blowout, and at no point did it look like LeBron was giving poor effort. If anything, the main problem seemed to be that Shaq would stop the ball for 10 seconds at a time whenever he posted up and only even get a shot up about half the time and would constantly clog the lane the rest of the time. Therefore, there weren't a lot of driving lanes for LeBron, and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that his shot was off and so the Celtics weren't playing him quite as tight on the ball as they would have normally.

I agree 100% with the sentiment LeBron expressed in his press conference that the only reason this game seems out of the ordinary at all is that he's SO good that no one expects him to have a bad game ever. I think the Cleveland fans that booed him towards the end of the game and are now ripping him on the message boards are absolutely shameful for not respecting everything he's done for the city, and they deserve to have him taken away. I really hope he goes to New York next year and wins a championship alongside Chris Bosh and David Lee.

this guy victor is a ****** he thinks hes a genius but hes just a ignorant sob. dont even know why anyone would want to argue with him

BTW, for all the people saying that LeBron was completely passive and didn't drive to the basket at all, I'd like to point out that he ended up with 12 free throw attempts, a game high for either team. Kevin Durant had the most free throw attempts in the league this year and even he only averaged 10.2 per game. People are trying to make this into something about 100x worse than what it was. If Kobe has a game like this against the Jazz, no one bats an eye. In fact, the Lakers would probably still win the game over half the time even with that kind of a performance from their alpha dog.

ya, how dare fans boo someone for quitting on his team. i hope he goes to nyc, or wherever, but i def hope he doesnt title.

bolded is just such a joke sentiment. he even said the fans had every right to boo him and he agreed with them.

he has had lots of bad games and no one ever criticized him like this. his demeanor and attituded is what has prompted the criticism. its not about him playing bad. its his apparent lack of effort and care about this team that is frustrating. as much as i hate to agree with national media, simmons, dwyer, and wocz are spot on here.

and when he has had bad games and, imo, pundits have been overly harsh, cavs fans have been kobelakerhomer esque in their defense of his motives, abilities and demeanor.

its not like cavs fans were ambivalent about what was going on until the media outlets put up their articles. i have texts and emails and pms wondering wtf was going on. this was not a standard bad game and everyone with a clue noticed it.

to put blame on cavs fans is asinine. they have stood behind lebron and vehemently defended him against redic assessments of his wim for years. but last night, that was not the wim that we cavs fans have come to expect.

and lastly, he has jerked this fanbase around for a long time with his silent threats of leaving. no one thought it was possible that he would actually leave such a successful team, but it sure seems to me that he ran a machiavellian gambit to get out of town while deflecting criticism to his teammates, coaches and front office. im glade the media is not falling for it, but im very upset that 2p2 is.

lol i dont think im close to a genius. well, unless its in comparison to you.

iggy is an underrated troll imo. Manages to take Lebron's bad game 5 and use it to take credit away from Kobe. *golf clap*

what pisses me off the most is that for so long ppl hated on lebron and his wim and alll that and i defended him vehemently. like, it wasnt even possible imo that he lacked heart killer instinct or any of that dumb stuff. i have had some pretty emotional rants on this board dismissing such ludicrousness.

after what i saw last night i completely changed to the other side and fully agree with them.

HE DIDN'T QUIT ON THE TEAM! HE HAD A BAD ****ING SHOOTING NIGHT!

If he quit on the team, wouldn't you think that the Truehoop people going through the game film with a fine-tooth comb could have found one instance of him having a bad defensive play rather than just showing Shaq being out of position and Mo Williams getting burned? Would he still have led the team in field goal attempts, free throw attempts and assists? I'd go so far as to say that LeBron put out more effort in Game 5 than Shaq has put out in any game the entire season. And he certainly put out more effort than D-Wade has in any regular season game since ~2005.

This isn't about LeBron not putting out enough effort. This is about the Cavs fans holding him to a ridiculous standard whereby if he doesn't single-handedly carry the team, he's not doing a good enough job since they've seen him do it before and therefore, he should be able to do it every single night.

Dirk's had some really bad playoff games too where he stopped attacking too to the point that he was further below his standard than LeBron was below his own standard, but I can't imagine the Mavs fans ever booing him like that. I really do find it absolutely outrageous the way the Cleveland fans are treating LeBron.

and, looking back, i find it absolutely outrageous the way lebron has treated cavs fans.

what was his quote to nyc "something about how jun 1st 2010 was gonna be a very exciting day for them." sure looks like he had this little ploy planned out.

Sorry, it's just really hard to get him out of my mind when we're talking about a player quitting on his team since he's the only one I can actually remember intentionally quitting on his team in a big game.

I'm with iggy!

at least that team had no chance at titling, whereas this team was the vegas odds on fav.

and btw, crazy how many posts scherer has itt considering he has been banned the last 24 hrs and i have been prolifically batsht pretty much from the start.

but lebron just had a bad shooting night in a not so big game?

****** wes wesley. worldwide wes. all up brons ear. oh ya and calipari too. coach cal, what a genius. who said u cant recruit in the nba?

and who wants to give me odds lebron is playing on a calipari coached team next year? i will bet a lot.

http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/20...?currentPage=1

good stuff starts on page 2 of this article.

Take notes everyone. A master at work here. A creature in his natural habitat.

vic i assume you wouldn't have a problem if calipari's coaching the cavs, right?

like if lebron says "mike brown goes and calipari comes in or i go". lebron seems to not like brown that much anyways, so that's very possible.

nbaaddict, obv i would prefer lebron and cal rather than brown and no lebron.

but, well, i dont think i will ever be as much of a lebron fan after this.

Vic,

The emotional hedging bit is extraordinarily tiresome and way overplayed.

awesome usage of machiavellian, btw.

Yet no FT attempts in the 3rd quarter. Did not attempt one layup in the 3rd quarter. Only made one dunk in the 3rd quarter which was available because he was already under his own basket when the Cavs who were actually trying grabbed a defensive rebound and chucked him a long outlet pass. Only 2 FTs he attempted in the 2nd half were when they were already down 20+ in the 4th quarter.

As you have so ably demonstrated he knew what he had to do to compete with the Celtics and did so by attacking the basket in the 1st half. Yet, in the 2nd half he inexplicably did none of this and did nothing but chuck up a bunch of lazy jumpers. Check. Mate.

http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/20...?currentPage=1

You really want LeBron to start passing up open jumpers because he missed a few in the first half? He didn't know he was going to keep missing them all in the 2nd half. Anyway, this topic's been beaten to death. I'm officially done talking about it now.

yea the more you think about it, lebron really is one of those coach cal types and probably would have gone to memphis if he had to play college for a year. unfortunately, the problem with a lot of the coach cal types is they're 1. all about the money (half his players leave after their freshman year) 2. not winners (remember how memphis and kentucky have choked every year) 3. more concerned about the money than about winning.

lebron's character is good. but does he have the discipline of the unc and duke kids? does he have the wim of the unc and duke kids? or is more like the ridiculously talented coach calipari types who put money first and winning second, and who historically haven't won anything in college or the nba? i'll still give lebron the benefit of the doubt, but the fact he's really close to scum.bags like calipari doesn't reflect highly on him.