CavsNews.com

Kevin Ding, Register columnist for the NBA writes:

The globe is ready. Wouldn’t it be great if the icon is, too?

LeBron James’ goal is to become a “global icon.” With 205 countries watching live on TV and Nike geared up with its reverential “We Are All Witnesses” ad campaign, James takes his first explosive step in the NBA Finals tonight. Time in this special spotlight — reflecting off the gold glow of that huggable, kissable, magical trophy — is what so many basketball players before him have used to elevate mere fame into mortal greatness.

No one ever has been so well positioned as James, whose court vision and world vision are as wide as the Web that Michael Jordan never got to utilize fully.

To start next season, James will play two exhibition games in China — which is so big that NBA commissioner David Stern is quick to offer the context that America has 300 million people and China has 300 million who are just basketball players. That will be a mere prelude to what James’ marketers are truly targeting: 2008, when he’ll return to China for the Olympics.

Next month, James will cross over and share ESPY Awards hosting duty with comedian Jimmy Kimmel. And James already is prepping to succeed Jordan and Larry Bird in the fan-friendly McDonald’s “Nothin’ but Net” commercials, going against last year’s NBA Finals hero Dwyane Wade.

The tracks are perfectly greased, even better than the pigs they let loose in contests in these here parts. Standing in the way is a barn full of Texans with “Go Spurs Go” on white T-shirts and in their twangs, about the only people on the globe who’ll be backing this businesslike, foreign-based, small-town team.

The Spurs would drop Bruce Bowen in front of that greased pig, train the rest of their fast-acting defense to help at the first oink and soon have everyone bored and moving right along to the pie-eating contest. No one does buzzkill like Tim Duncan’s crew.

The crowning of King James will have to wait, because his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates — especially with Larry Hughes on a liquid diet of Novocain and cortisone for his bum left foot — can’t compete with the Spurs. And the shame of it all is that — to answer the initial question — James is indeed ready.

At 22, he has developed a winning mindset to go with that freakish 6-foot-8, 240-pound basketball body he already had in high school. His brilliant play to lead the upset victory over the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals was a product of an improved focus that should be acknowledged.

James started so slowly this season that he wound up not even making the All-NBA first team — cruising through the early months in a way that surely made Shaquille O’Neal proud. (James and O’Neal celebrated their lack of accomplishment with a memorable dance-off at an All-Star Game “practice.”) What was accomplished, though: James’ teammates figured some stuff out in Cleveland’s new less-LeBron motion offense, and James stayed fresh.

Starting with the last game before the All-Star break, when he brought the perfect blend of control and aggression in beating the Lakers at Staples Center, James ramped up his game. O’Neal’s patented format of saving it for the playoffs — insert Shaq comment heavy with sexual innuendo here about how he never wants to peak too soon — did result in another NBA championship last year, after all.

“Once the playoffs started, he has been a different player,” Cavaliers center Zydrunas Ilgauskas said of James. “He’s more determined. He took the early bus to the games. All the film sessions he’s sitting in the front row instead of the back”

Whether James is as good an all-around player as Kobe Bryant is or Jordan was, that’s not the point. James is good enough now to be the game’s flag-bearer.

And that’s an amazing thing at 22. Wade, it should be noted, came in the same draft class as James, but is three years older.

Wade and the Heat broke down this season while O’Neal enjoyed more extended foreplay. That set the Pistons up to win the East again, but they underestimated James’ focus — and his ability to learn from late-game adversity early in the series.

Detroit’s Chauncey Billups, who still was resting on that 2004 NBA Finals MVP trophy instead of leaning on it to push forward, usually rules in assist-to-turnover ratio. But Billups had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 21-23 in the series; James’ was 51-19.

Winning that series after losing to Detroit a year ago in James’ first postseason was such an achievement that the Cavaliers can’t resist some sense of satisfaction now. Even James was so “zoned out” that he “forgot” a question directed to him in his first post-series interview.

San Antonio, meanwhile, has the talent, depth, experience and motivation to add a 2007 title to those from ’05 and ’03. And if the Spurs aren’t going to sit idly by, we are not all witnesses, are we?

We’ll all just have to wait. And even though we live in a world where losing 30 pounds is supposed to happen in 30 days, even though James has been on our radar since age 14, we can wait.

He’s 22.

Jordan didn’t reach his first NBA Finals until 28. And his global-icon thing seemed to go just fine.

 

No one expects the Cavaliers to win this series, except for Cavaliers fans(most of them) and Dick Vital.

ESPN’s Dick Vitale picked them to win in seven games. That would shock the NBA. You are talking about the Cavaliers winning on Spurs’ home court.

“ESPN.com had four “experts” view the series” Terry Pluto in the Akron Beacon Journal said. :the Cavs went 0-for-4. The kindest prediction was losing in seven games by former Beacon Journal Cavs beat writer Chris Broussard”

But if you have followed the Cavaliers, then you know James believes he’ll win every game he plays.

“People underestimate his competitiveness,” said Keith Dambrot, the coach at the University of Akron. He coached James during LeBron’s first two years at St. V-M.

“I remember LeBron in a game we lost in the last seconds to Oak Hill when he was a sophomore,” Dambrot said. “We had no business even being on the floor with those guys. Our team was so young (mostly sophomores), but LeBron just carried us. And then he takes a defeat and moves on. He really bounces back.”

That’s why fans misunderstood James’ meaning when he said, “I’m OK with the loss,” after the Cavs were defeated in Game 1 at Detroit. He saw the effort. He saw how close the Cavs were to winning, and he believed they could rally in the next game.

 Source: Akron Beacon Journal

Paul Oberjuerge from the LA Daily News Writes:

Hello, Kobe?
You may have missed this, while doing a talk-radio interview or updating your Web site with The Real Story on Shaq’s Lakers demise.

(It was all Jerry Buss’ doing; now it can be told.)

Anyway, there’s this thing going on in the playoffs.

LeBron James just threw down a gauntlet. At your feet.

You think you have it bad? Surrounded by mediocrities, burdened by inept management, asked/expected to hoist a team all by your lonesome?

LeBron is in the same fix.

Except he’s just lugged his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, all the way to the NBA Finals.

So it can be done.

You don’t have to resort to demands for trades or trying to be the general manager in your spare time. If you play hard enough, smart enough, relentlessly enough, great things can happen.

It would be nice, sure, to have Jermaine O’Neal or Jason Kidd as a sidekick. But LeBron’s wing men are Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Larry Hughes.

And LeBron is in the finals. Did we mention that?

You have Lamar Odom; LeBron has Drew Gooden.

You have Luke Walton; LeBron has Hughes.

You have Kwame Brown; LeBron has Ilgauskas.

You have Jordan Farmar; LeBron has Sasha Pavlovic.

You have Chris Mihm, Andrew Bynum, Maurice

ShawEvans and Brian Cook off the bench. LeBron has Anderson Varejao, Daniel Gibson, Donyell Marshall and Damon Jones.
Would you rather have his supporting cast over yours?

If so, not by much. And probably only because Gibson (a kid the Lakers passed on last June to draft Farmar) looks like a star in the making. But it’s close, yes? Your guys, his guys. Not much to choose from there.

And LeBron is in the finals. You went out in the first round.

OK, we’ll grant you some mitigating circumstances.

You finished seventh in the superior Western Conference and got the 61-21 Phoenix Suns in the first round, and they’re kryptonite to you and the lads. LeBron finished second in the inferior Eastern Conference and faced 41-41 Washington without Gilbert Arenas, then the 41-41 New Jersey Nets.

But then they got the Detroit Pistons, a veteran playoffs team that rolled over you and Shaq in 2004 — and ousted the Cavs last year — and LeBron pretty much willed the Cavaliers past a team with a better starting five and a deeper bench.

Maybe you saw Game 5? LeBron scored 48, including Cleveland’s final 25 as the Cavs won in double overtime. An epic performance, and the game that broke the Pistons’ backs.

LeBron does some things you, frankly, can’t do. Even if you were generally considered the league’s best player, until a few days ago.

He is bigger than you, and much stronger. He is a better rebounder.

He turns it on down the stretch when you’re running out of gas and banging the front of the rim. The Pistons seemed almost afraid he would hurt them when he was going to the basket; you don’t inspire that sort of fear.No.

He seems to make his teammates better, and that’s not something you’ve ever really figured out. Seems as if you have only two modes: “Getting my teammates involved” and “shooting on every trip.”

When iIt seems as if there ought to be a middle ground there. The one Which LeBron James seems to have discovered.

You’re saying you need help. That you can’t do it alone. But LeBron is four victories away from winning an NBA championship with Sasha Pavlovic in the starting lineup. And if he and the Four Dwarves who suit up with him pull that off, beating West monster San Antone … well, you might want to reframe your rants.

Maybe along the lines of, “If I were as good as LeBron, and I think I am, I’d make the best of a bad situation. I would rise above it. And bring everyone with me.”

Perhaps management will find a way to get you some help. It probably will come only at the expense of Odom, who is better than anyone on the Cavaliers’ roster whose initials aren’t LBJ. Unless some Brinks’ heist of a trade presents itself, the Lakers’ roster won’t be significantly improved, next season. And you won’t be happy.

But if LeBron wins an NBA title, he cuts the legs out from under you. He demonstrates that, in the watered-down, modern NBA, one great player and four non-entities can win it all. If that great player is as good as LeBron James. And we’re guessing you think you are.

The gauntlet is at your feet. Will you pick it up? Can you show you can lead a batch of Average Joes to the finals? Only your legacy is at stake.

Mike Monroe from Express-News writes – “Before Tony Parker played a minute for Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, he had to prove himself to assistant Mike Brown.

“He was my first coach in the summer league,” Parker recalled of his first games for the team that competed in the Rocky Mountain Revue in Salt Lake City in 2001. “I was always messing with him, because when I first came everyone thought I was too small and too skinny and can’t play in the NBA. So I was always being cocky with him, saying, ‘Coach Brown, you’ll see: One day I’ll be playing in this league.'”

There is little left for Parker, a two-time All-Star, to prove to Brown, now the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers — except that he remains capable of leading the Spurs to another NBA title, this time against Brown’s team. They open the NBA Finals on Thursday at the AT&T Center.

More so than even the Dallas Mavericks, coached by former Spurs point guard Avery Johnson, the Cavaliers followed Popovich’s blueprint for building a championship organization.

In 2005, the Cavaliers hired former Spurs player and director of basketball operations Danny Ferry as general manager. He brought Spurs scouting director Lance Blanks along and named him assistant GM. Then Ferry made Brown, a Popovich assistant for three years, his head coach. At the time of his hire, Brown had spent two seasons as Indiana Pacers associate head coach under Rick Carlisle.

One of Brown’s first moves was to hire Hank Egan, his coach at the University of San Diego, as his top assistant. Egan, who also coached Popovich at the Air Force Academy, had spent eight seasons as one of Popovich’s most trusted Spurs assistants.

Soon after, the Cavs came to be known as “Spurs East.”

In fact, the ties between the two finalists are both tight and enduring. The final horn in the Cavaliers’ 98-82 victory over the Detroit Pistons hadn’t sounded Saturday when Ferry, Blanks and Brown received text messages from Spurs front office members offering congratulations.

“It’s a great opportunity to play against guys for whom you have the ultimate respect,” said Spurs general manager R.C. Buford. “You’ve been through the battles and won together and reached the pinnacle together. That bond doesn’t happen very often. So when you have that with guys like Mike and Lance and Danny, their success is almost as important as your own.

“You take great pride in sharing their successes with them, knowing how hard they approach their jobs and the integrity with which they approach their jobs.”

In this instance, familiarity breeds not only respect, but imitation. The Cavaliers aren’t built around a dominating big man, as the Spurs are, but their basic approach under Brown begins with a Spurs-like commitment to defense and offensive execution — even if the offense is more perimeter-oriented.

“There won’t be many secrets,” Buford said. “They’ll know what we’re going to do and we’ll know what they’re going to do. You have a great deal of respect for their execution and their vision and the discipline to their plan. Consequently, some of the things we oftentimes hope will provide us with a competitive advantage might not be a competitive advantage, because they’re going to be as committed as we are.”

Spurs forward Tim Duncan understands the biggest change Brown mandated since taking over was getting the Cavaliers to buy into the same defensive principles that have guided the Spurs since Popovich became head coach.

“Some of the parts are the same,” Duncan said of the Cavaliers’ defensive schemes. “OK, a lot of the parts are the same. Basically, they run the Spurs’ defense.”

Brown worked closely with Duncan while with the Spurs. Duncan isn’t surprised Brown has Cleveland in the Finals.

“He’s a very smart guy and I knew he’d get his opportunity to be a head coach some day,” Duncan said. “I think he’s done an exceptional job with them, what he’s done in such a short time. You can see it, but it’s never there until it’s there.”

As strong as the franchises’ bonds are, now that the Finals have arrived, it’s the differences that count.

“It is what it is,” Popovich said. “The bottom line is they’re the Cleveland Cavaliers. They don’t want to hear about the San Antonio Spurs. They’re sick of the San Antonio Spurs. They’re the Cavaliers and we’re going to go compete. Spurs against the Cavs, and we’ll see what happens.”