LeBron: The Best Player In The Finals, Though Voters Refused To Admit It

There’s nothing like a championship series to bring out stupidity and unfairness in sports commentary, whether paid or not.

The enduringly frustrating aspect of championship series and individual championship games is that the weight of scrutiny placed upon every participant — in ways that wouldn’t apply to a second-round series or a fourth-round Wimbledon match or an NFL wild card game — is so immense that the blame game becomes an automatic part of the proceedings, whether deserved or not. My Crossover Chronicles colleague, Joseph Nardone, sharply and eloquently elaborated on this dynamic earlier in the week when talking about David Blatt.

It wasn’t Blatt’s fault that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love missed 11 of 12 combined games in this series (5 for Kyrie, 6 for Love), leaving Cleveland with a desperately short bench. Coaches are only as good as their players, and Golden State had a lot more good players… at least, among those healthy enough to play.

This is, to anyone who has followed the NBA closely for the past 10 years, a very familiar reality.

Yet, familiar realities don’t seem to teach us the lessons they should. Many times, human beings allow certain situations to override logical impulses. We have just such a case at the end of these Finals, which were puzzling in many ways from start to finish.

*

We shouldn’t have to review the past 10 years of Finals history, but apparently, we do.

Why? Voters — media voters, mind you — gave Andre Iguodala the 2015 NBA Finals MVP Award over LeBron James.

This wasn’t a bunch of Kansas City Royals fans putting Omar Infante in position to start the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game next month; this was an instance of educated basketball people choosing to value the winning team-losing team tension point more than the heart of the Finals MVP award: Who was the best damn player in the series?

If you think that the Finals MVP award should only be given to a player from the winning team, fine — as long as this is made into a rule. Under the current circumstances, the lack of specific limitations or rules surrounding the award makes Iggy’s honor a direct frontal assault on basic intelligence.

Let’s make one thing clear: This is hardly an attack on Iguodala. Being the best player on your team, and the second-best player on the floor, in an NBA Finals series in which you walk away with a world championship is a tremendous distinction, a lofty honor of which Iggy should be immensely proud. I will not deny or run from the fact that I have directed withering criticism in Iguodala’s direction in the past. The former Sixer and Nugget, now a champion with the Warriors, has served me a fat, thickly-stacked refutation sandwich with a basket of humble fries, dumping a cold coke on my head while walking away from my table.

Yet, no histories or side details can take away from this basic reality: LeBron James was the best player in the 2015 NBA Finals, and not by a small margin, either. Was he on the losing team? Sure. Should that matter? Maybe, if you think being on the winning team is a prerequisite for being the Finals MVP. Does it matter right now, given the lack of rule restrictions placed on the award? No, it does not.

This is where we go back to that fundamental reality of the NBA: The teams with more good players are the ones that win titles.

*

In 2007, LeBron James’ starting-five teammates with the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers were: Sasha Pavlovic, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. The Duncan-Parker-Ginobili Spurs were just a wee bit better in that series.

That was not the last time LeBron would be outmanned in a Finals series, in or outside Cleveland.

In 2014, the Spurs were there to stop LeBron again, playing the game of basketball as well as it’s ever been played. LeBron was playing with a broken-down and exhausted Dwyane Wade, an increasingly unreliable Mario Chalmers, and Rashard Lewis, in addition to his one fairly reliable teammate, Chris Bosh. LeBron had a much better supporting cast compared to 2007, but the Spurs of 2014 were miles better than the 2007 version.

Don’t blame LeBron for losing those Finals, either.

Now, we arrive at 2015, and we shouldn’t have to go through the basic details: No Kyrie, no Love, no really good options beyond playing creaky older players — Shawn Marion, Mike Miller, James Jones — 10 to 15 minutes per game in order to keep LeBron fresher. Blame David Blatt for perhaps not picking his spots well enough in the attempt to rest LeBron, but don’t blame him for keeping inadequate players stapled to the bench. Cleveland, with Kyrie and Love healthy, might very well be the team celebrating a Game 6 close-out win and a world title under that scenario. The team with more healthy quality players won.

LeBron James might be the best player on Earth, but he can’t defy the laws of NBA physics. Only in 2011 did LeBron enter a Finals series he should have won, but failed to. In the other five Finals LeBron played in, the better team won — no more and no less. That Michael Jordan fellow? He was on the better team in all six Finals. He never did enter a Finals in which his side had fewer quality players in good shape.

Why, then, does winning a series have to be viewed as necessary to win a Finals MVP award?

Chuck Howley of the Dallas Cowboys was voted MVP of Super Bowl V in a losing cause; the Baltimore Colts won that game. Jean Sebastien-Giguere of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (as they were called then) was given the Conn Smythe Trophy following the end of the 2003 NHL Playoffs, even though Anaheim lost to the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup final. Jerry West was named MVP of the 1969 NBA Finals for the losing Los Angeles Lakers against the Boston Celtics.

Precedent existed to give LeBron the MVP he said he didn’t want, but which he deserved (like it or not).

We shouldn’t have to discuss this, but I guess we do.

Let’s start here:

Let’s continue here:

Let’s get the third nail in the coffin here:

Let’s then end this “we shouldn’t have it but we’re having it, now let’s get the point of it” discussion right here and now:

The postscript, mentioned above by Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star: As great as Iguodala was in this series, he didn’t have to create shots by himself. He didn’t have to take 30 shots a night because his teammates were cramping (Delly), carrying injured shoulders (Shumpert), limited in range (Tristan Thompson), squeezed to the margins by small ball (Timofey Mozgov), or just plain erratic (J.R. Smith).

LeBron posted these averages in the Finals, while logging an average of 46 (!!!!!) minutes per game:

For most basketball observers, this would be hard to categorize as even human. It sounds more like the product of a divine entity (damn the shooting percentages).

But sure, LeBron James wasn’t the MVP.

If you want to put a rule in place about losing players being ineligible for Finals MVP awards, hey, that’s entirely reasonable.

Saying LeBron James was not the best or most valuable player to his team in these Finals? That’s not reasonable to any slight extent.

Unconvinced?

If you’re not moved by this last set of facts, nothing will ever move you:

Andre Iguodala was one of five Golden State Warriors who did a lot of great things in Game 6. Draymond Green, Stephen Curry, Shawn Livingston, and Festus Ezeli all made major contributions to the cause for the new champions of the NBA. Cleveland had only three players show up for Game 6, with Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov lending a measure of support to LeBron. J.R. Smith’s 19 points were a mirage, given that many of them came only after the Warriors had established complete control heading into the final two minutes.

Last time I checked, 5-on-3 is not just a two-man power play in hockey; it’s rather decisive in basketball as well. One team getting five different guys to play well on the same night will almost always defeat three guys playing well (and even then, Mozgov and Thompson mostly split halves in terms of carrying the secondary scoring load for Cleveland).

When Kyrie Irving went down after Game 1, a lot of media commentators wrote off the Cavaliers. LeBron then proceeded to win two games almost by himself, only for reality to set in as far as fatigue was concerned… and in terms of Matthew Dellavedova running out of both inspiration and answers.

LeBron, though, is the one who has been punished for limitations he could not control. Despite averaging a full game’s stat line more than Iggy did in this series (20, 7 and 5) while playing 46 minutes a night, LeBron was not seen as the most important player in this series.

*

Winning team? Losing team? That’s a separate discussion.

One thing that was always clear in this series: LeBron James — not just in terms of reputation or potential or physical attributes, but actual on-court performance — was the best player… and it wasn’t particularly close.