PROMPT (AARON): With two games in the books, the series has been surprisingly great – exactly the sort of epic heavyweight matchup the league wanted to see. There are two opposing schools of thought on the series to-date. The first: the Spurs are lucky to be 1-1, because they only won game #1 because of LeBron’s injury scare. The second: the Heat are lucky to be 1-1, because it took a god-like LeBron game in game 2 to overcome a Spurs team that wasn’t totally clicking and nearly won the game regardless. Which end of the spectrum do you gravitate towards? And how worried would you be about losing home court, if you’re San Antonio?
So someone might object to your use of "luck" there, Aaron, but, to pry them off pre-emptively from the back of your sportscar as you speed, just two miles from the border of plausibility that will grant you amnesty from their attacks, to literally throw them off your trail onto the expressway as the bus behind them full of children just barely swerves to avoid them and they miraculously survive, but able no longer to attack your point:
Variance happens. Except for the simplest of layups and passes, a large part of the sport takes place in the space of the largely or partially unknown, where -maybe until you see how someone's knees are bending for the shot- you don't have a clue how something is going to end up. And neither do the people on the floor or on the sidelines. And even when you see the knees bend, you may still have no idea if it's going in. It's an imperfect sport.
LeBron has god-like games and he has cramps, and both effectively amounted to random events -- unless "feeling it" is real, knowable, and practicable, in which case, whither Swaggy P? No; you absolutely can't control that kind of a god-like game. LeBron seems to know when he's feeling it, and takes full advantage, but he plays the percentages just like anyone else, even then, and these games seem to develop organically over the course of the game. It's no coincidence his ridiculous shooting nights seem to start in the third quarter.
And even if LeBron had, like, a heightened awareness of the potentiality of cramps before the Saunantonio Game and as the heat became apparent, even with all of that knowledge, LeBron is still not going to be able to predict whether or when it's going to hit him, making his knowledge on the matter irrelevant, except to prepare as well as he can and hope it doesn't strike him. And, to add to that, unless everyone is obviously unable to play, LeBron can't really know or control what kind of measures the AT&T Center and league staff would be able to undertake, say, to postpone or cancel the game.
All of these are basically chance situations with imperfect knowledge or control. And they, in aggregate, probably favor the Heat.
The Spurs have come in with a better differential, more (at least by quantity) solid NBA players, more answers to every question, more consistent execution on both ends, and more historical cohesion. This is saying a lot (and is a far cry from a knock on Miami), because the Heat also have all of these things in abundance. And on a couple of these points you could probably quibble with me. But, overall, that's what the Spurs have as a slight marginal advantage -- the knowns just slightly favor San Antonio and disfavor Miami.
And what it means is that, if both teams play in a mystical environment with little to no variance --where every player shoots his average every game and no one gets too high or low-- the Spurs will win every game by 1.5 points*, count their blessings, and celebrate a 4-0 sweep. And, while this wouldn't be such a vacuum, it's worth noting that the Spurs would've won both games if LeBron wasjust 85%. That 85% means he can be gameplanned. That 85% means he can be slowed. And the Spurs excel at that stuff. Other than Kawhi, the Spurs' defense isn't built on lockdown individual defense and incandescent steals, but on solid positioning and playing the percentages. If LeBron is 85% every night (call it his average capacity), I think they weather Game 1 and steal Game 2.
*Or maybe 1, or 0.5, or 2. I don't know. I'm just convinced it's slightly positive.
But they're playing basketball. And that means LeBron is subject to both triumph and lactic acid. It means that he's able to soar at his peak and crash to earth at any moment, all depending on things we don't know. And it means that a Heat role player can get hot, and it means that the Spurs can get tired or dumb and miss rotations. It means that Danny Green can go up for a stupid block attempt on Chris Bosh like two minutes in when he already has a foul. It also means that Mario Chalmers can let his execution slip and get into foul trouble himself. It means that even if you've personally counted Rashard Lewis out, if you leave him open and if the Heat see it, he has a chance to go off. And it means that, not only do match-ups matter, but they're still being navigated and re-navigated as we speak by two brilliant coaches that don't know exactly what they're going to get.
The variance in basketball is high. And in a series with two teams dominated by age and the 3-pointer, the variance is absurdly high relative to the difference in efficiency, making a series that might be the closest of sweeps one way or the other into an awesome drama where everyone is struggling to step up and break through on the slightest of margins, and not get left behind.
So 1-1 sounds about right.
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