On Tuesday night, after LeBron James missed two key free throws and then declined to shoot on the next two possessions in a 78-75 Game 2 Heat loss to the Pacers, his apologists immediately began arguing the inarguable. They stressed swiftly and passionately that LeBron James had not let his team down at all.
Forget the fact they're dead wrong. They're also missing a bigger, more meaningful point.
The key question stemming from LeBron James' lackluster late-game playoff performance is not whether he choked. It's whether the Chosen One can complete the most human and universal of quests by redeeming himself.
Instead of accepting that truth, the apologists rallied around their guy with bluster. They showered columns and social media with righteous indignation, they wrung their hands over why anyone would focus on LeBron's last minute rather than all of the game that preceded it, and they offered up varying narratives to counter his culpability: That the MVP did not pass up the last shot because he was scared, that his missed free throws were just single moments that say nothing about the great man in the bigger picture, that his game-high 28 points prove he was the only reason the Heat were in the game at all, that he doesn't have enough help, that "clutch" doesn't actually exist, that it's just a bunch of hate tagging King James as an increasingly frustrating disappointment … on and on it went.
Please. Enough.
This isn't about hating LeBron James, even if many of the people who deeply hate him are taking joy in his continued struggles under the spotlight. This is about the Heat's last best chance to win it all, it's about LeBron's role in making that happen, and it's about the redemption and ridicule that ride on whether he can get it done.
The road to championship glory is wide open, even if Chris Bosh is out for this series, and it falls to LeBron to make it happen.
He is good enough to carry his team despite Bosh's injury and despite his own troubling history. He was good enough Tuesday night in those closing moments until he shrunk in the face of a possible loss; that he did not carry his team to victory is a fact that rests solely on him. It also is fact that he is capable of being in the playoffs, at the end of such games when everything hinges, what he is in the regular season: the greatest basketball player on earth.
Whether he actually will prove it is the most important, intriguing and telling question in the NBA. It's one of the best storylines in all of sports.
The debate over whether LeBron chokes in big games is over. He does. Time to tune out those who say otherwise. The next debate, and the people worth listening to, will focus on whether he can overcome that history and turn himself and his team into a champion.
That is part of why his story, his successes and his failures, so capture the American public. LeBron James has always been more than a mere athlete. He is a pop-culture touchstone, a looking glass into the best and worst parts of each of us. For that reason, like so many aspects of our culture, he has become the answer rather than the question.
If you like LeBron, then the answer is LeBron never chokes. Facts be damned.
If you don't like LeBron, the answer is he deserves nothing good – not an MVP, not praise, not benefit of the doubt. Facts be damned.
We see and respond to him the way we do our political or religious beliefs: someone to be defended or attacked regardless of what is true. Someone who stopped being a person we assess honestly because we've attached so much certainty to what we see in him that we struggle to admit when we're wrong.
This is true for basketball writers, analytics experts, LeBron haters, Cleveland fans, Miami fans, casual fans, most everyone.
It turns out the facts are complicated. LeBron James is the greatest basketball player on earth. LeBron James does suddenly choke in some awfully important moments. LeBron James was a blowhard jerk last year who left Cleveland the wrong way and was wildly unlikable afterward. LeBron has grown this season and handled all this self-made pressure with aplomb and grace. LeBron James is a human being who makes on- and off-court mistakes, and for those he deserves both blame when they happen and understanding when he learns from them, stops making them or apologizes for them. He's neither free from blame nor second chances.
He is capable of winning an NBA title, and in doing so perhaps get past the pressure and dominate in the postseason for years to come. He's also capable of continuing to wilt and never rising to his real potential. Both are possible, beyond doubt, even if partisans on both sides pretend otherwise.
That's why Game 3 and all future games like it will remain referendums on LeBron.
They are referendums on the meaning and merits of his third MVP award, which he won this season despite having never won a ring. They are referendums on his regular-season greatness and how it translates into the postseason. They are referendums on whether Pat Riley was wise in bringing together the Big Three and on whether LeBron James, self-proclaimed King and Chosen One, will ever live up to his own towering potential and self-inflicted expectations.
And, most stirring of all, LeBron James is a referendum on the most tantalizing human story of them all: the ability to evolve, or not; the ability to overcome not the myths of our weaknesses but the reality of our weaknesses, or fail to do so.
Whether he's a villain or a misunderstood legend, LeBron James at his most basic is still just a guy playing a game that represents so much more than some final score.
And the best part of that fact – and of his story – is that he's fighting for a very real kind of redemption that pits the best parts of himself against the worst parts of himself. Even if he happens to be doing it in basketball terms, it's a struggle full of lessons and insights that apply to every one of us.
He, like all of us really, is fighting to capitalize on his many blessings by trying to overcome the many weaknesses that most threaten them.
The question – one of the great sporting stories of our time – is what part of his humanness will win out: the gifts given, or the challenges flung in their way.
It's a slowly unfolding question, and it continues Thursday night in Game 3, the series knotted at 1-1, the pressure cranked up, the Chosen One once more at the center of how this will end.
This is the important takeaway from LeBron James' struggles and successes: that the only thing more interesting than talent wasted on a historical scale is the quest for its redemption.
You can follow Bill Reiter on Twitter or email him at foxsportsreiter@gmail.com
