Sports.

The Failure of LeBron James

The trouble with LeBron James is that he is such a great player, and especially such a smart player, that when you criticize him for passing the ball like a hot potato in one of the biggest fourth quarters of his life, you risk overlooking the opening he saw in real time that a normal human being only sees on a slow-motion replay.

When he took a pass from Dwyane Wade with about 6:50 left in Miami’s disastrous 86-83 Game 4 loss in Dallas and immediately redirected it to Chris Bosh at the top of the key, it looked passive, almost weak. But watch the play again, and you see what James saw: that Bosh’s man, Tyson Chandler, was under the hoop, dragged there by Wade’s penetration. James was ready to hit Bosh before the ball even got to him.

It was a smart pass (which led to a jumper that Bosh missed), and a few such smart passes dotted James’ epically weird fourth quarter on Tuesday night. But they don’t change the larger theme: With a chance to grasp the championship, the best player in the NBA morphed into a bizarre mix of James Jones, spotting up in the corner while the big boys did the work, and a ho-hum point guard running endless pick-and-rolls but unable (or unwilling) to penetrate into the lane. James went scoreless and attempted one shot in the final period.

Even worse, when James had the ball in the fourth quarter, he did not look to attack the basket — not even once. There are two caveats here, neither of which comes close to absolving James but both of which are nonetheless worth mentioning, for the sake of fairness:

• James draws so much attention as a distributor that he can be a major asset to the offense even at his worst. His dish to Udonis Haslem for a potential game-tying jumper with 1:15 left is a great example of a brilliant pass that will be wrongly lumped in with the rest of James’ underwhelming play. LeBron ran a pick-and-roll with Bosh at the top of the arc, forcing Bosh’s man (Chandler) to slide onto LeBron as Bosh rolled to the hoop. James picked up his dribble and looked in Bosh’s direction, and that mere look convinced Dirk Nowitzki that James was going to pass to Bosh. Nowitzki slid an extra two steps away from Haslem, and James found Haslem for a wide-open shot from his favorite spot. He missed.

When you’re the best player in the league, a higher-than-normal level of nitpicking criticism comes with the territory. Especially when that territory is a pivotal game in the NBA Finals one year after you and your teammates drowned the world in your overwhelming egotism. Sometimes that criticism is unfair, and usually it lacks both nuance and a recognition of some of the subtler plays James tries to make; one cannot try to score on every possession when your teammates include Wade and Bosh, after all.

But today, the criticism, even in the broadest strokes and loudest volumes, will be justified.