There’s this quote that’s hangs in the Spurs’ locker room.
“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
And lost in the insipid commentary on LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and their perceived level of clutch-ness or clutch-ocity or clutch-dom is the fact that both players? Both players are hammers.
And against the Indiana Pacers in Miami’s 93-91 victory Saturday night, that much was evident.
Here’s the play that most people are going to talk about and remember. With a little over 40 seconds, left in overtime, LeBron James probed the middle and with ten seconds left burst to the far side and pulled up for three. Here’s what happened.
So James misses, ten passes to Dwyane Wade, who hits the game winner. Same old script, right?
Except that LeBron nailed a huge three to overtime. He scored or assisted on 13 of their final 15 points. He had a chasedown block on Danny Granger in overtime. He nailed a three in OT from somewhere in the Everglades, I think. He was everywhere. And he rose up and took the shot people said he should take. Didn’t hit. So he gave his buddy a whack at it.
The bigger point is that the Heat beat the Pacers in a game in which they did not particularly play well (nor, honestly, did Indiana, considering the domination Joel Anthony enjoyed on Roy Hibbert), and they would not have won that game without LeBron James. When we look at the MVP race, the clutch part is brought up immediately when it comes to James. What isn’t brought up is that without him, the Heat, even with all that talent, do not win as many games as they do with him. He is such a huge part of every victory, makes his presence felt in every facet of the game.
But still. Didn’t hit that shot.
The tapestry of the Heat’s victory has strands that involve team defense, late steals from LeBron, missed free throws from LeBron, a blown alley-oop from Wade to Haslem, Darren Collison falling down, an unforgivable and-one foul from Dahntay Jones on LeBron James who had a clear path to the bucket in transition (never try fouling James there and if you do, bring a 2X4). It’s never one shot, one play, one miss, one make.
It’s that hammer. And Saturday night Wade had the swing that split the rock, but James’ fourth quarter and overtime were just as much the cause of the schism as anything.
