We still don’t believe you. You still need more people.

(via CJ Fogler)

If you ranked the many compelling story lines of this year’s NBA Finals, the play of Spurs shooting guard Danny Green might or might not be No. 1, but it’d definitely be top five. Green’s play in the series has been nothing short of historic — in last night’s Game 5, his six made threes vaulted him past Ray Allen for the all-time record for treys in a Finals series, already beating Ray’s mark of 22 by three, and in one game fewer, no less. (Five more threes in the series and he’d tie Reggie Miller’s all-time record of for most threes made in an entire postseason run, with his 58 in 2000.) Green leads the Spurs with 18 points a game for the series, and is now shooting 57 percent from the field and a mind-boggling 66 percent from three.

Throw in some fine defense, including a couple exceptionally impressive defensive stops in transition during Game 5 on the likes of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, and a handful of rebounds a game, and it’s entirely possible that should the Spurs close out the series in Miami, that Danny Green will be the recipient of 2013′s Bill Russel Trophy for Finals MVP. It won’t be a no-brainer — Tim Duncan will have the all-around, two-way numbers and the sentimental vote on his side, and Tony Parker has the reputation of being the team’s most important player and some very impressive highlight plays to his credit. But given the relatively unprecedented nature of Green’s hot shooting in this series, which has started to extend to Stephen Curry-like range beyond the arc, assuming he can avoid pulling a John Starks in the last game or two, he’s going to have a case, at the very least.

If he did win, the word “unprecedented” would apply to more than just Green’s shooting statistics. In some sports, the postseason is frequently marked by unlikely hot streaks or excellent single-game performances that result in non-star, role-player types taking home playoff top honors. Think David Eckstein or Scott Brosius in baseball, or Dexter Jackson or Larry Brown in football. But in basketball, that doesn’t ever really happen. If you were to do a Sporcle quiz on NBA Finals MVPs, it probably wouldn’t take more than a couple minutes, because the winners are generally the guys you expect. Michael Jordan won that trophy during all six of the Bulls’ title runs, Hakeem won the two with the Rockets, Shaq won the first three for the Lakers in the 21st century and Kobe won the next two. Over the course of a series, the most valuable players generally tend to end up the most valuable players.

This, of course, would not account for Danny Green. Before going into this series, Green was seen as little more than the latest success story of the Great Spurs Machine, a franchise who seemed to systematically pump out wings like Green who could shoot threes, play defense, know his role and generally not do anything to hurt the ballclub, just like Bruce Bowen, Roger Mason Jr., Gary Neal, and so on. He averaged 10.5 points on 45 percent FG and 43 percent 3PT with a 14.1 PER, numbers good enough to make him a worthwhile rotation player, but certainly nothing that would have him in All-Star discussions. Not to mention it was unlikely he was ever even going to get that far, seemingly washing out of the league after one season in Cleveland, a former second-round pick coveted by nobody, before being rescued by San Antonio and set back on the righteous path. Hell, he’s still not even the default “Danny Green” on Wikipedia.

Compare that resume to those from the list of previous NBA Finals MVPs, and the differences are pretty staggering. Of the 19 retired players to have received Finals MVP honors, all but two are currently enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and of the nine active players to have won, all but one are a lock for the Hall immediately upon retirement, including Green’s teammates, the three-time winner Duncan and the one-time winner Parker. There are no role players, no one who you’d look at and go “Really? How the hell did that guy end up winning over all those other guys on his team?”

So does that mean there’s no precedent at all for a non-Big Three-er like Danny Green taking home top postseason honors? Well, not quite — there’s nobody who’d be as completely out of left field as Danny Green, but there are a handful of cases of non-superstars taking home the trophy, of guys who certainly wouldn’t have been predicted to be awarded such a distinction — perhaps even moreso at the time than in retrospect. Consider the following cases:

Dennis Johnson (1979 Seattle Supersonics). It’s mildly unfair to call DJ’s name for this, because that Sonics team was famous for not having any true superstars, thus making anyone to win the Finals MVP a sort of unlikely recipient. However, it is worth remembering that despite Johnson going on to a Hall of Fame career with the Sonics, Suns and Celtics, in 1979 he was still a third-year player just named to his first All-Star team, averaging a relatively unremarkable 16/5/4 on 43 percent shooting with a mediocre 15.0 PER for Seattle that year. However, he was undoubtedly All-Star-caliber in the Finals that season, averaging an impressive 22/6/6 (with a couple steals and a couple blocks) for the Sonics as they beat the defending champ Bullets in five games.

Cedric Maxwell (1981 Boston Celtics). Cornbread is probably the one guy whose name would stand out as not belonging on that prestigious list of Finals MVPs, and the guy whose win is the most surprising given the Hall of Fame-caliber talent surrounding him on the ’81 Celtics (Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, even an aging Tiny Archibald). However, it was a team whose truest stars had yet to peak — Bird was just in his second season at the time, and McHale was still a rookie — and Maxwell played just well enough in the Finals against the Rockets (about 18 points and 10 rebounds, including a 28/10 in a pivotal Game 5 blowout) to edge out Bird, whose shooting slumped early in the series. Complex recently ranked him as the third-worst Finals MVP in history, which sounds about right. He currently stands as the only Finals MVP to never be named to an All-Star team.

Joe Dumars (1989 Detroit Pistons). Dumars went on to enjoy a long and prestigious Hall of Fame career, but in 1989, he was still basically on the come up. His fourth season of the league was just his first in which he was named an All-Star, averaging about 17 points a game with six assists on 51 percent shooting, very good numbers for an excellent team, but certainly nothing eye-popping. Before that year, he had never averaged 15 points or five assists a game, and never shot above 50 percent from the floor. But Dumars was absolutely electric from the floor in Detroit’s four-game drubbing of the Lakers in the ’89 Finals, averaging 27 points and six assists on 58 percent shooting, numbers he would of course never even approach during his regular season career.

Chauncey Billups (2004 Detroit Pistons). Before he nailed down his Mr. Big Shot reputation, Chauncey Billups was closer to a draft bust than a future Hall of Famer, having already played for a staggering five teams in his seven-year NBA career, only really settling in with Detroit after landing there in ’02. He had established himself as a starter by the time of the Pistons’ ’04 title run, but still shot under 40 percent from the field that season, and would not be named to his first All-Star Game until two years later. His excellent-for-a-low-scoring-series offensive performance in the Pistons-Lakers Finals upset (21 points, five assists, 50 percent FG) made him an easy selection for Finals MVP, however, and given the big-game reputation he would build in postseasons to come, today his presence on the list hardly seems conspicuous at all.

And really, that last point with Chauncey is the thing to remember when considering the head-shaking possibility that Danny Green could actually be the Finals MVP of a series that also includes LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker — the final story on Green is still super-unwritten. This hot streak of his seems crazy now, but while he’s unlikely to ever repeat 66 percent three-point shooting for a whole season, it’s entirely possible that the 25-year-old Green could spend the next five to 10 years as one of the league’s most feared three-point threats, and in so grow into the role of All-Star and franchise-type talent that usually marks a Finals MVP. In 15 years, Danny Green’s presence on the list might seem totally innocuous.

That said, there’s certainly never been an NBA Finals MVP who went into that year’s playoffs with a résumé less prestigious than Green’s, should he win. In fact, I’d bet even coach Gregg Popovich could have gotten better odds as the trophy winner than Danny. It’s one of the factors that makes his absolutely incredible performance this series so much fun to watch — not only are we watching history in the making, but it’s weird, unique, and totally unpredictable history, seemingly becoming more improbable with every drained 24-to-30-footer. And if the Spurs do win one more game, even Tim and Tony have to be rooting for him to take home the trophy.

Watching on a flat-screen television? Fun. Cruising around in a convertible? Fun. Keeping your television dry? Smart.

Putting all of those things together, then dancing down the street once your favorite team wins? GENIUS.

(via KENS5, KevCops)

On Monday’s episode of “The Fix,” The Basketball Jones recap Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Topics discussed include: Manu’s breakout performance, Tony Parker killin’ Cole and Chalmers, Danny Green’s unprecedented three-point shooting, Diaw on LeBron, whether Spoelstra should go back to The Birdman, and transition D.

All that, plus Jay-Z’s commercial, Tim Duncan’s masked kids, and women razor blades.

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Subscribe to The Basketball Jones show on iTunes | Download the .mp3 directly

If it’s OK with everyone else, I’d be just fine with letting the Heat have a Game 6 win if we can get two hours of Manu Ginobili telling stories about the Spurs. Not only would we be guaranteed an NBA Finals Game 7, we’d also get to hear a bunch of stuff like this and Manu’s Tim Duncan impression. It’s a no-lose situation.

Ballin: Danny Green made another six three-pointers on his way to 24 points in the Spurs’ big Game 5 win. He’s now made 25 in the series, passing Ray Allen’s record of 22 over the course of six games back in 2008, which is the second-craziest thing you’ll read in this paragraph. The first is that Danny Green would be Finals MVP if the Spurs were to win the title.

Not so much: Chario Malmers and Corris Nole went a combined 2-11 from the field for a whopping seven points between them. They also took turns getting worked by Tony Parker, to the tune of a game-high 26 points, just to make sure they were an equally big disaster on both sides of the court.

Gotta catch ‘em all: Hey shooting fans, here is every one of Danny Green’s record 25 threes.

I don’t know if you were keeping track in your head, but you might have noticed that Green tied Ray Allen’s record while shooting over Ray Allen. Pretty cool tribute.

Welcome back: If you’ve been missing old school world wrecker Manu Ginobili, then you were probably pretty happy to see him show up last night. 24 points on 8-14 shooting, 10 assists, a steal and three turnovers for Manu, who seemed to make half of his shots on attempts that started with him facing away from the basket. It was really quite neat to watch.

More proof: Just so you know I am not lying, enjoy some Manu Ginobili highlights.

And also some sloooooooooooowwwww moooooooootioooooooon Manu Ginobili highlights.

See, wasn’t that fun?

T-Watch: No Tracy McGrady, no points, no fun.

Dusty Baker: As I’m sure you were expecting, Tim Duncan’s kids played a huge role in off the court silliness during yesterday’s game. It was Father’s Day, after all.

Get a handle on that tiny bankrobber, Duncan. You don’t want Danny Green to roll his ankle while he’s on such a killer shooting streak. Be a team player for once, geez.

Addendum: Just because it’s weird to get this far and not talk about the Heat’s Big Three, enjoy their lines. LeBron James: 25 points, 8-22 shooting, eight assists, six rebounds, three turnovers, four steals. Dwyane Wade: 25 points, 10-22 shooting, 10 assists, four rebounds, four turnovers, one steal, two blocks. Chris Bosh: 16 points, 7-11 shooting, six rebounds (five offensive), and one each of turnovers, assists, steals and blocks. Now you know.

Other things: Tim Duncan’s head-touching game was strong again last night … Timmy Deucecan also threw down a pretty big dunk, especially for him … Chris Bosh spitting all over himself, as per usual … If you were wondering just how bad Tony Parker was destroying Norris Cole, watch these two clips. The second one makes Norris look woozy … Ray Allen has indigestion

Seriously, what is wrong with that super gross elbow? It’s like his elbow needed nutrients so a doctor injected a bolus of fluids in to it like a vet would to a dog’s belly after they’ve drank a bit too much pond water and get dehydrated. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

To put it more clearly, Roy Hibbert’s elbow looks like a knee.

(via Reddit, from this video)

I’ve alluded to it a couple times throughout the year in this column, but I was not a fan of watching this Nets team in their inaugural season in Brooklyn. They were assembled so hastily and haphazardly, they played a fairly unexciting brand of basketball, and minus one or two guys, they were an absolutely terrible fit attitude and personality-wise for the borough that they suddenly called home. It didn’t take too many games’ worth of Joe Johnson step-back jumpers, Brook Lopez set shots and quickly infuriating “BROOOK-LYYYYYYN” home chants for me to realize that this just wasn’t going to be a team that I was going to root for.

And the thing that really had to bum you out about watching the Nets — besides the fact that they paid over $70 mil this year alone for a starting lineup and still lost in the first round of the playoffs to a Bulls team whose bus probably drove everyone straight to the ICU after Game 7 — was that it didn’t seem like this roster was going to be materially different in years to come. Mikhail Prokhorov had bought his playoff team, but the price he paid was so steep that not only would it be impossible to pay for more guys, the guys he signed on are owed too much to ever get rid of. A minor tweak here and there, perhaps, but for the most part, this was gonna be the Nets’ team, and if you didn’t like the guys, too bad, because they weren’t getting new ones anytime soon.

Well, the offseason hasn’t even officially started, and the Nets have already made a big-name acquisition that would seem to assuage such worries. They’re signing a first-ballot future Hall of Famer, a respected guy in the clubhouse, and a guy whose teams have won more after his arrival pretty much everywhere he’s gone. What’s more, he’s a baller who’s played a pivotal role in previous franchise history — as much as the Brooklyn Nets have previous franchise history, anyway — and one who Nets fans still talk about with unparalleled reverence, one whose jersey will undoubtedly hang in the Barclays Center rafters before long.

The guy, of course, is legendary point guard Jason Kidd, undoubtedly to be the most-discussed, most-anticipated addition to the Nets franchise. Except he wasn’t signed as a free agent — he was signed as the team’s head coach.

My sense of history isn’t perfect on this one, but I’m pretty sure you’d have to go back to the days of player-coaches like Bill Russell and Lenny Wilkens to find a guy with such a short turnaround between his playing and coaching careers as Kidd has here. As recently as May 18 — less than a month ago — Jason Kidd was still an active player, firing blanks for the New York Knicks in the second round of the playoffs, giving every indication that he’d continue to do so for the remainder of his contract. (The contract still had two years left on it, by the way.) But in the period of a week in early June, Jason Kidd had announced his retirement, declared his intent to coach (for the Nets in particular) and lapped front-running candidates like Brian Shaw and Lionel Hollins for the open vacancy. Then on Wednesday, Kidd was officially announced as the team’s new coach, to the continued mind-blowing of basketball fans around the league.

Needless to say, this is crazy. It felt weird to see Jacque Vaughn on the sideline for the Magic this year, because even though memories of it weren’t totally fresh, you could probably still recall a couple things about the end of his career with the Spurs from 2006-09 and think to yourself “s—, that wasn’t even all that long ago, was it?” But for Kidd, that’s how it is with his Nets days, and that was three teams ago. Hell, it took almost all this season to just get used to seeing him in a Knicks uniform instead of a Mavs one. Now, just months after his last playoff run, he’s gonna be in a suit on the sideline, giving Deron Williams instructions that he actually has to listen to? How the hell are we supposed to get used to that?

Still, as weird as it’s going to be … it’s also kind of exciting, isn’t it? Aren’t Nets games going to be so much more interesting with Kidd steering the ship? Aren’t you already oddly curious about just about everything about his managerial style? How quickly he calls timeouts? How much he argues with the refs? What kind of suits he wears, whether he goes with a pocket square or some other subtle kind of flash? How loud he gets in the huddle? How short he gets with the sideline reporters? How short he looks diagramming a play with Brook Lopez? How expressive he gets immediate after a big win, and how much he tries to downplay it in the press conference afterwards? Just how coachy he is in general, even in his first season?

And of course, that’s just the superficial stuff. I’m also fairly pumped to see the on-court team product he puts out, and to pore over it (and read the results of other, better-informed NBA writers poring over it) for little signs of recognition of his playing career. That’s going to be the biggest question, isn’t it? How much is Jason Kidd’s team going to play like Jason Kidd? Will they push the tempo and set up beyond the arc in transition? Will they set solid screens and make a point to make the extra swing pass? Will the guards suddenly start rebounding better on both ends? There are few players we’ve gotten to know better over the last NBA generation than Kidd, and it’s gonna be novel as hell to see him assert his influence on a team in a whole new way.

It’s hard to remember a coaching change in the NBA that was ever worth anticipating this much. Newly-hired head coaches are usually either uninspiring retreads, half-unproven assistants or first-timers that nobody knows what to make of, and the really good ones rarely if ever switch teams. But with Kidd, not only is there a sort of history at stake — if he succeeds, it could set incredible precedent for respected NBA vets making the immediate jump to head-coaching, without any kind of non-playing apprenticeship or training first — but he has a chance to return to the team (figuratively, if not geographically) that he wrote history with once before, and to see if he can get it back to those golden days, as the team’s primary offseason pickup. It’s already one of the year’s best storylines, even if you don’t care about what kind of suits the guy eventually wears. I doubt anything short of a Phil Jackson return could possibly compete with it, as far as the still-coachless teams finding coaches hunt goes.

I have no idea how Jason Kidd is going to be as a head coach, but even if he’s a disaster in terms of on-court results, I’ll always believe that bringing him in was an incredibly shrewd move by Prokhorov and company. They took a team that one year into their 2.0 history already wasn’t going anywhere for years to come, that didn’t have the maneuverability or the opportunity to make their blandly above-average team into something interesting and exciting, and in one move that didn’t cost them a cent against the salary cap, they managed to land a player who will bowl over the fan base, while likely going own as one of this summer’s most impactful signings, even if he’s not actually playing for the team.

Whether that’s enough to make the Joe Johnson jumpers and Brook Lopez set shots tolerable remains to be seen. But for the first time in over a year, I’ll be tuning in to the Nets voluntarily now to find out.

Here’s all of us after that Dwyane Wade dunk you see up there:

Oh man, this is vintage Dwyane Wade!

Here’s Dwyane Wade after that Dwyane Wade dunk you see up there, via Paul Flannery at SB Nation:

“No, I don’t feel like 2006. But it felt good,” Wade said. “When you see the ball go through the basket, then you get more confident. I knew I was on when I took it over the guy’s head and dunked it on the break. That was a little vintage right there.”

OK, so it looks like we all agree that Game 4 Dwyane Wade was vintage Dwyane Wade. Good stuff. Glad that’s settled.

On Friday’s episode of “The Fix” x “The Overdose,” The Basketball Jones recap Game 4 of the NBA Finals, before discussing the latest coaching carousel news (Jason Kidd, Doc Rivers, Lionel Hollins, etc.), the NBA’s new on-court advertising, and ideas for NBATV’s next documentary.

All that, plus grounders, Roxy, mean tweets, the Social Media Awards, and the Stanley Cup.

*********

Subscribe to The Basketball Jones show on iTunes | Download the .mp3 directly

Ballin: The Heat’s Big Three combined to score 85 points in their Game 4 win. The Spurs’ Big Everyone That Played scored 93. That’ll do it.

Not so much: Which is worse — that Manu Ginobili took just five shots last night or that he only made one of them? Here’s a hint: the answer is both. Just two assists and two rebounds for Manu, who had as many points (5) as fouls (4) and turnovers (1) combined. Get going, bro.

Like street meat: This is probably the best one-game block highlight package you’ll ever see.

Seven blocks on the night for the Heat, which is why that thing seems like it’s never going to end. I mean, Mike Miller shows up to block a shot — he has, literally, 12 blocks total in the past three seasons — and it actually looks pretty cool. That’s how insane the blocked shots were for the Heat last night.

Splits: Tony Parker’s first half stat line: 15 points, 7-12 shooting, six assists. Tony Parker’s second half stat line: zero points, 0-4 shooting, three assists. Think that hamstring tightened up at halftime?

2006: It was nice to have the old Dwyane Wade back last night.

32 points — just one fewer than LeBron James, thanks to a late three, haha — 14-25 shooting, six rebounds, four assists, six steals, one block and no turnovers for Wade, who seemed to make at least one of every kind of highlight play in this victory. He was everywhere — stealing, blocking, doing that over-the-head move he loves, grabbing offensive rebounds, running fast. It was neat.

T-Watch: No Tracy McGrady last night. He was the only Spur who didn’t see the court last night. He is obviously still scoreless for the Finals.

Looper: This Tony Parker shot came in the first half, so you know it’s good.

Off the wrong foot with his wrong hand for that side of the basket — it’s like Tony Parker was trying to teach everyone who could never figure out standard layup procedure that it’s OK to be unorthodox sometimes.

Regression: After San Antonio’s record setting three-point shooting in the previous game, both teams combined to make (12 total) and attempt (28) fewer threes than San Antonio alone (16-32) in Game 3.

Other things: Chris Bosh wants another round of drinks … Dwyane Wade and Skeets’ girlfriend were dressed the same last night, and that’s not actually a joke … Don’t worry Tim, Gregg’s not mad … Probably the Spursiest pizza in existence … Nut kick GIF up top via Ride the Pine

To be fair, I kind of thought his super-extendo arms would get there a little faster too. But still, whoops.

This one’s for you, Tony Parker.

P.S. Is Andre Drummond the NBA’s best Viner? And is that something we need to be aware of? Discuss.

We all knew Tim Duncan had a Punisher knee brace, but apparently his airbrush obsession goes even further than that. I wonder if he bought matching t-shirts from the state fair.

(via Reddit)

Seriously, it has happened enough times that we can actually make a list of them. So here’s the list.

• July 5, 2012 — Dallas Mavericks offer Jason Kidd three years and $9 million to play basketball for them. Kidd almost takes it, then pulls a switcheroo.
• Also July 5, 2012 — New York Knicks offer Jason Kidd three years and $9 million to play basketball for them. Kidd says, “Sure.”
• June 12, 2013 — Brooklyn Nets offer Jason Kidd three years, a team option on a fourth year and an undisclosed amount of money to be the head coach of their basketball team. This comes only nine days after his retirement from playing, and just four days after anyone knew he was even a head coaching candidate.

So basically, Jason Kidd is a three-year contract magnet. By May of next year, I fully expect some team to offer him a three-year contract to run their team as general manager. Which would mean April of 2015 is when he would get a three-year contract to join Adam Silver as the league’s deputy commissioner, and then March 2016 Kidd would get yet another three-year contract to be the commissioner of the entire league. Pretty sweet career path, but once he gets that top job, I’m not sure who else can get offer him a three-year contract. I’m sure he’ll figure out something.

Stephen Curry is 25 years old, looks like he’s 15 and has the dad sense of humor of a 42-year-old. Befuddling.

(via Complex)

Best closeout the Spurs saw all night.

Sure, you’d have to change the eye color and make them less stonery, but if you take away the Joakim Noah hair from Blake from “Workaholics,” you’re left with a pretty solid Danny Green troll face facsimile. Danny’s probably a better shooter, but I bet the other guys have more fun.

Andrew Unterberger is the Last Angry Man in the crusade against LeBron James and his not-so-gradual march towards total unassailability. He’ll be checking in with us once a month this NBA season for an update on where he’s at with his LeBron hating, and how his attempts to channel all the world’s negative energy towards one generally well-meaning basketball player are progressing.

In my pre-playoffs edition of the LBJ Hate Index, I ranked the 10 most likely obstacles to LeBron winning his second ring this season, taking another step towards basketball’s innerest circle in the process. No. 1, of course, was LeBron himself — as fearful as I am of the man, I always believe him to be the person most in control of his own destiny — and more specifically, “Whatever weird stuff happened with LeBron during his handful of prior playoff meltdowns.” I wrote the following in explanation:

That guy can’t be completely dead and gone, can he? Sure, LeBron seems like he’s “clutch” now, and he’s figured out when to “take over” and all that other nonsense. But there must be a little bit of 2010 LeBron remaining, right? Something that can be triggered, and cause him to act weirdly passive and inert during big games and big moments as his team and the world crumples around him?

Last night, the San Antonio Spurs absolutely steamrolled the Miami Heat, running them off the AT&T Center floor to the tune of a 113-77 final. This isn’t as big a deal as it would be if the Heat hadn’t essentially done the same thing to the Spurs the game before in Miami, rocking them 103-84 in a game that wasn’t even as close as the final 19-point margin would indicate. But it’s still a pretty big deal. It’s by far their biggest loss of the season — they hadn’t lost by more than 20 all year — and more importantly, Miami now trails 2-1 in the series, facing the possibility of the Spurs winning out before the Heat can even make a return trip to South Beach.

This is doubly notable, for both this column and for national news purposes, because LeBron James has not played particularly well over that stretch. Well, by mortal standards, he’s still been fairly boss, going for a triple-double in Game 1 and keying a 33-5 second half run in Game 2 that put the game well out of reach for San Antonio. But he’s been uncharacteristically ineffective when it comes to scoring the ball, going for less than 20 in each of the first three games, shooting under 50 percent in all three, and most stunningly, only getting to the line a combined six times, including a big ol’ bagel in FTAs for Game 3, his first game without a single trip to the charity stripe since 2009. Also worth mentioning: The last time LeBron went three straight games, regular season or playoffs, without scoring 20? Games 3-5 of the 2011 Finals, where the Heat let the series against the Mavs slip through their fingers.

It begs the question, and I certainly doubt that I’ll be the only one asking it today: Is it happening again with LeBron? Is this going to be another playoff series — his third in four years — where we sit around waiting for the Chosen One to flip the switch, put the team on his back, and blow away the inferior competition … only to never have it actually happen? Are we due for another post-elimination press conference where we stare dumbfounded at LeBron, expecting some sort of explanation to make sense of what just happened, but without him giving us any kind of satisfying answers with either his rote responses or stupefyingly blasé demeanor? Is 2010 LeBron alive and well after all?

It’s a little perplexing to me, because for reasons I can’t quite articulate, this one doesn’t feel the same as the other LeBron no-shows yet. The common factor in all of those was a sort of hesitance to really assert himself, a deference to less-qualified teammates and kind of offensive inertness that, despite what Magic Johnson may have blathered about on NBA Countdown, I haven’t totally felt from LeBron in this series. He’s averaging 18 shots a game so far for the series, which is pretty closely in line with his regular season and playoff average in attempts. He’s still driving the ball a lot, even if he’s not getting the whistles for doing so. He seems engaged. He seems like LeBron James, for the most part, except for one crucial difference: He’s worse.

The Spurs’ game plan for the Heat, particularly for Dwyane Wade and LeBron, fascinates and amuses me endlessly, because its core principle seems to be an attempt to prey on the duo’s fear of inefficiency. Both players have improved immeasurably as offensive weapons over the years by cutting down low percentage shots and maximizing their looks near the rim, from the free throw line, and (for LeBron anyway), on rhythm looks behind the arc. The casualty of this is the pull-up jumper from distance, commonly seen as the least efficient shot in basketball, especially when still within two-point range. It seems like it’s been so driven into the two players not to take those relatively low percentage shots that doing so barely even crosses their minds anymore as they operate in the half court.

It’s amazing no one thought before, then, to give them that shot unreservedly. At just about any point in these three playoff games, Dwyane Wade and LeBron could pull up for a long two or a reasonable three, and get a half-hearted contest from the Spurs, at best. Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard have been playing so far off LeBron at some points that even as a card-carrying LBJ Hater, I’m screaming at him to pull up for the top-of-the-arc three that I know he can hit. But LeBron still seems so intent on getting the most efficient looks possible that he doesn’t seem to realize yet that in these instances, a pull-up three or even a long two might be higher-percentage than barreling into the congested lane for a tough layup, especially when the refs have been pretty loose with the foul calling. When he has taken those shots, he’s seemed uncommitted and begrudging, like he’s going against his nature by taking them. It’s a brilliant maneuver by Pop and the Spurs to make a weakness out of perhaps LeBron’s greatest strength: His fixation on playing the game the right way.

And still, I’m not totally convinced this is sustainable. Even though he only scored 15 points last night, seven of those points came within one terrifying minute of each other near the end of the third quarter (in which the Heat cut the lead down to 15), five coming on long jumpers the Spurs were goading him into taking. It wasn’t enough to mount a serious comeback, as Gary Neal and Danny Green continued to battle for Game 3 naming rights into the fourth quarter, ultimately combining for an utterly ridiculous 13 three-pointers, but it was enough to put the fear back into the hearts of anyone who had dared let their guard down against LeBron. He’s still just a game adjustment or two from potentially being LeBron James again.

Regardless, I am thoroughly enjoying this reminder of LeBron’s fallibility. Even if he hits 13 threes on his own in Game 4, and the Heat end up surging back and wrapping this thing up in six, I will be able to minorly content myself in the knowledge that even amidst his ascendance to immortality, he’s finally once again shown signs of mortality, of vulnerability, of being properly defended and game-planned against, of being upstaged by two guys who probably wouldn’t be in the league right now if the Spurs hadn’t resuscitated them (one of whom was even watching LeBron from the bench during his first true playoff meltdown). I am a happy Hater today.

LeBron Hate Index: 8/10

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Fix,” The Jones recap Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Topics discussed include: Danny Green and Gary Neal’s 13 (!) three-pointers, LeBron’s shot selection and passiveness, Tony Parker’s status, Spurs’ ball movement, whether Wade thinks he’s still playing the Pacers, and whether Kawhi Leonard is the early frontrunner for Finals MVP.

All that, plus mouthguards, floppy wrists, Sebastien De La Cruz, chants, and more.

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Subscribe to The Basketball Jones show on iTunes | Download the .mp3 directly

At first I thought seeing a man with Manu Ginobili shaved in to the back of his head was going to be the most bizarre thing I saw in the aftermath of Game 3′s Spurs blowout. But then Ben Golliver tweeted this.

You know, just a pickup truck scrawled with Spanish obscenities and GIANT MUSTACHIOED BABIES IN DIAPERS STANDING ON THE TOP. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Please “Eternal Sunshine” this from my brain.

Ballin: At first I was like, “This is the Gary Neal game,” because he went 6-10 from three and scored 24 points. But then Danny Green scored 27 on 9-15 shooting, including 7-9 from three, and now I don’t know what to do. Help.

Not so much: Take out the seven straight points on three made shots that LeBron James had at the end of the fourth quarter and you’re left with eight points on 4-18 shooting. Bill Simmons would make an “Almost Finals MVP worthy joke,” but that’s probably still going to end up happening so let’s move on.

Bangarang: Do you like threes? So do the Spurs. Here are all 16, an NBA Finals record by the way, that they hit last night.

16-32 on the night for the Spurs, which would have been even better if their scrubs hadn’t gone 0-2 from deep in their garbage time minutes.

T-Watch: Tracy McGrady played another six-and-a-half minutes of NBA Finals basketball last night, but failed to score, becoming the only San Antonio Spur who played to not put up at least a single point. This might sound crazy, but I think T-Mac is washed up.

Game-changer: Those 16 threes were wild, but these specific two are the ones that really turned things around for the Spurs.

Don’t believe me, just ask John Schuhmann. He’d never lie to you.

Monkey man: Mike Miller still has it, you guys. And by “it” I mean both his horse mouth and his outside shooting stroke, as he knocked down all five of his three-point attempts and then let his jaw dangle after every splash. He’s now 9-10 from far in the Finals.

Fairness: Not everything was a disaster for the Miami Heat, just most things. Here’s one thing that wasn’t.

Of course, with just 6.4 seconds remaining in the quarter after LeBron’s layup, the Spurs took the ball the other way and found Tiago Splitter wide-open in the lane for a dunk which was not blocked. So it goes when you’re playing the Spurs.

Size wise: The Heat’s Big Three went 18-46 from the field and scored 43 points. The Spurs’ Big Three went 10-23 and scored 25 points. Blow both of these teams up.

Other things: Tim Duncan was very nice to role players last night, both giving Gary Neal a jolly head rub and Danny Green the right of way during a standing ovation … Here is Chris Bosh being turned in to a statue because he looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah while a basketball play is happening all around him … Sad Erik Spoelstra is going to become a meme, and Dead-Eyed Erik Spoelstra might too … Tiago Splitter waving GIF up top via CJ Fogler

The White Stripes haven’t got this much play since that LEGO video. Miss you, Jack and Meg.

(via SB Nation)

With news breaking that Jason Kidd is a “strong frontrunner” for the Brooklyn Nets’ head coaching job, it’s probably a good time to look at Kidd’s much-maligned coaching résumé. And really, it’s not nearly as bad as you would think. Getting a job is more about life experience anyways. Click for full size.

All things considered, pretty good year for Roy Hibbert newspaper-wise.

(via EOB)