2013 NBA Playoffs thread

There's a pretty bad one in the final 20 seconds of the elimination game against the Magic that I posted earlier (that so many want to erase from history).

 

You could actually include 2009 in there as well, another year when the Cavs were the No. 1 seed but got upset in the playoffs by a shorthanded 3 Seed Magic team.

And that is a legitimate knock on Lebron in the Lebron v. Jordan game. Jordan never in his entire career lost a playoff series where his team was the higher seed or favorite. Every time Jordan was expected to win, he did. Whereas Lebron had higher seeded favorites get upset three straight years from 09 through 11, and with several of those losses being very much due to him no showing when his team needed him most.

But, again, the Lebron that I've watched the last couple years is not the same one I saw in the playoffs during that 09 through 11 stretch. The dude has matured and become the crunch time killer he did not appear to be back then. Folks still judging him by those years might open their eyes and re-calibrate their definition of the player he is today.

 

Yeah and Antawn Jamison is an offensive juggernaut. If he is your second option, you're fucked.

 

For that matter, you could go back and say that the only reason those teams were higher-seeded was because James' presence made their record wildly better than they actually were.

 

Wasn't LeBron fairly great in that Magic series, though?

Point totals: 49, 35, 41, 44, 37, 25

 

LeBron never had a legit second option in Cleveland.

 

I'm looking up and down basketball reference, and I don't see a single playoff series win attributed to Michael Jordan. They mostly just seem to give them to teams, for some reason.

 

No, Dickie. But that was what you kept insisting I meant.

 

The second leading scorer on the teams LeBron played on in Cleveland:

Ilgauskas 4 years
Mo Williams 2 years
Larry Hughes 1 year

 

And the Cavs signed up Hughes, who already played for three teams in seven seasons and had established himself firmly as no great shakes, for $70 million over five years to be Pippen. Yikes.

History may never vindicate "The Decision," but it will vindicate (if it hasn't already) the decision.

 

We're not going back on that, Dickie. You misunderstood me then, and then you tried to drag it into one of your courtroom interrogations.

Did you get run off all the lawyer boards, counselor?