AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- You knew it would eventually come to this. Cleveland's LeBron James would get tired of his incompetent teammates and try to beat the Detroit Pistons all by himself. You knew it would happen. You just didn't know if he could do it.
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| LeBron is the best player in basketball. (Getty Images) |
LeBron beat the Pistons 109-107 in double overtime Thursday night, giving the LeBrons a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference finals, which LeBron can end Saturday at home in Cleveland.
Detroit has more good players than Cleveland, but Cleveland has the best player in the sport, and arguably the best player in any sport. Forget the MVP voting this season that went (laughably) to Dirk Nowitzki. LeBron James is the best player in basketball, and before you try to argue that, watch a tape of the last 12 1/2 minutes of Thursday's game.
James scored 48 points. He had nine rebounds. He had seven assists.
James scored 25 points in the final 12½ minutes ... and those were Cleveland's last 25 points of the game. Read that again, because in my stupor I'm not sure I wrote that clearly enough.
James scored his team's final 25 points. After hitting the game-winning shot with 2.2 seconds -- driving through the defense and spinning the ball off the glass -- LeBron headed to the Cleveland bench and collapsed against Drew Gooden, leaning his head on Gooden's shoulder while Gooden held up James with both arms.
On this night James was the best basketball player I've ever seen. Best you've ever seen, too, unless you saw Wilt Chamberlain score 100 that night in 1962. And even then, Wilt gets an asterisk -- his supernatural size for the early 1960s his own (natural) steroid.
This was Michael Jordan scoring 63 against Boston in the Garden in the 1986 playoffs ... only LeBron's team didn't lose.
This was Danny Ainge against Notre Dame in the final five seconds of the 1981 NCAA Tournament ... every time Cleveland had the ball.
I never saw Chamberlain. Didn't see Bill Russell or Oscar Robertson. I saw Jordan, Magic and Bird, however, and I never saw any of them do what James did Thursday night. He took on the Detroit Pistons down the stretch of the biggest game of this NBA season to date, and damn if he didn't win. In reality, the Eastern Conference finals should read: Detroit 2, Cleveland 2, LeBron 1. Because LeBron won Game 5.
By the time overtime rolled around, after trying to stop James with 6-foot-9 Tayshaun Prince and 6-3 Chauncey Billups and 6-2 Lindsey Hunter and 6-6 Rip Hamilton, the Pistons abandoned that nonsense and started playing a modified box-and-one.
The box guarded James. The one guarded his teammates.
