"Not only will the Pistons' 4-0 or 4-1 series win make LeBron face linear defeat for the first time in his career, the beatdown the Pistons will hand out will make him make sure he'll never go through anything like it again."
"This series is going to be his biggest challenge. Being here is going to push him to search for answers. Losing here is going to push him to never want to experience that feeling ever again.Which is where greatness comes from. It's where it is born.
And even though he might be 10-12 ppg off of his initial playoff average when this series is all said and done, we'll all be able to say years from now that we were witnesses to when LeBron James was really born. Not the day he got drafted, not the day he became the youngest player to ever win an All-Star MVP.
It'll be the day the Detroit Pistons eliminated him from the 2006 playoffs.
That day he'll always remember."
— Scoop Jackson from "By Losing, LeBron Will Win"
A couple of games ago, the Cavaliers faced the prospect of returning to Cleveland with a 0-2 deficit in their series against the Detroit Pistons, the prohibitive favorites to reach the NBA Finals from the Eastern Conference.
Those first two games against the Pistons were embarrassing.
No one gave the Cavs a chance at winning the series. No one gave them a chance of winning more than one game, and that one game was being generous.
And why not? The Pistons had the best record during the regular season and they had taken the Cavs behind the woodshed in those first two games. There was little doubt in anybody's mind that the series was going to go 4-0 or 4-1, just like Scoop Jackson said.
So what happened in the last three games? What happened to the sweep?
LeBron manned up, stepped up, and climbed one more rung on the ladder.
But hold on, he wasn't supposed to do this until next year, until his next trip to the playoffs.
It was going to take a complete series sweep for him to learn how to be a player that thrives in the intense playoff atmosphere.
We were going to witness something great from LeBron during the postseason, but that would be next year, not this. He was going to make his mark as one of the NBA greats, but that was later, not now.
After all that LeBron has accomplished in his very short career in the NBA, why are we surprised at what he has managed to do in the last three games?
After being...
- The youngest player to be named Rookie of the Year
- The youngest player to record a triple-double
- The youngest player to score 50 points in a game
- The youngest player to score 2,000 points and average 30 points per game in a season
- The youngest player to reach 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 points in a career
- The youngest player to be named the All-Star Game MVP
- The first player to score 40 points in his first career road playoff game
... why are we surprised?
In his first taste of playoff basketball, why would anyone expect that it would take a series loss before LeBron would step up his game again to match the unbelievably high expectations that are all around him?
Before now, during the regular season, there was always another game to be played. Losing never sat well with LeBron then, but the sense of urgency wasn't there.
It may have taken three years to get here, but with two game winning shots against the Wizards and a marquee scoring matchup against Gilbert Arenas, LeBron burst into the playoffs with the energy and urgency of a leader and a winner.
And then came the two losses to the Pistons. The two embarrassing, lowly, depressing losses against the best team in the NBA. An 0-2 deficit with no hope in sight.
Maybe that's all it took for LeBron to learn.
Maybe that's all it took for LeBron to take the next step, because we don't have to wait until next season to see the LeBron that Scoop Jackson wrote about in his column. That LeBron is here right now, leading the Cavs to a 3-2 series advantage.
Why would we expect anything less from the man that hasn't ceased to surprise us since he left St. Vincent St. Mary high school in Akron, Ohio and walked onto the hardwood of the NBA court?
His learning curve isn't the same as everyone else's.
Youngest and best don't even begin to describe LeBron.
In fact, most of the gimmicks and names don't mean anything at all.
Witness. King. Phenom. All-Star.
Those are fine for selling shoes and shirts.
As for defining LeBron, though, they don't even come close. James will be defined not by words, but by numbers.
Number 23 will be defined by what he does on the 94x50 foot hardwood court.
James is 21-years-old, is 6'8", and weighs 240 pounds. He scored 32 points against the Pistons in Game 5, grabbed 5 rebounds, and dished out 5 assists.
The points per game, the rebounds, and the assists are all significant, but they don't mean everything.
Those numbers will describe his success and his career, but they won't define them.
No, the wins and losses, and, most importantly, the number of rings will define LeBron.
Those are the important numbers.
Witness, Phenom, King, and All-Star don't do justice to the man that has surprised us once again.
James has taken the next step ahead of the curve, and apparently we didn't expect it because of his age (another seemingly unimportant number for LeBron.)
Never mind that his Basketball IQ is unmatched, except by a few.
Never mind that he likes adding his name in front of dozens of NBA records that begin with "First" or "Youngest."
Never mind that we all wrote off LeBron and the Cavs after the first two games of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
Taking his team to three straight wins over the Pistons for a 3-2 series lead was just LeBron's latest surprise.
After this weekend, he might have one more up his sleeve.
Of course, if history is any guide, nobody will see it coming.
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