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• At cavstheblog.com, the incomparable John Krolik reminds LeBron James of all the memories -- good and bad -- that he left behind in Cleveland. When loved ones leave us, we often bid farewell by wishing them the best. But here, Krolik wishes that LeBron becomes the best LeBron can be. Because if LeBron fails in that endeavor, it may makes his fans feel foolish for once believing in his greatness.
• Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo! Sports Ball Don't Lie blog hopes Cleveland fans will do the right thing tonight. Be civil: "Cleveland, and northern Ohio, were wronged. And LeBron James was wrong. In every regard save for wanting to play with more talented teammates. But that's where it has to end, fans. You were wronged, no doubt about it, but it's not time to sink to James' level, and be wrong."
• LeBron James for Sportsman of the Year? Andrew Sharp of SBNation.com makes his case: "By exaggerating everything that's wrong, LeBron's 2010 forced us to appreciate complicated, imperfect heroes like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. Or even someone like Mo Williams in Cleveland. Thanks to LeBron James, we've taken solace in these people. The ones that just want to play sports for the sake of playing sports; not the ones looking to become a global icon. At least for this year, we're not looking for the next Michael Jordan. Starting with the Cavs tonight, whoever's playing the Heat will do just fine in the hero role. So as you think about the Sportsman of 2010, ask yourself: Who has given us more to cheer about than LeBron James?"
• Over at HoopsSpeak.com, Beckley Mason delivers a terrific expansion on a piece I wrote about the chemistry of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. Mason refers to a recent quote from LeBron in which he states he doesn't want to become a role player. As Mason points out, although the term "role player" evokes the connotation that a player is devoid of any scoring ability, it's vital for players to understand their function on in the offense in order to cook up some chemistry. Understanding your role doesn't make you a "role player"; it makes you a team player.
• Need a ticket to tonight's game in Cleveland? SeatGeek.com has you covered. Tickets available at a price anywhere between $88 to $1,436. The best deal? A $111 ticket just five rows from the roof. Also, just be careful about what you wear.
• The forecast for Cleveland tonight calls for snow while the game tips off at 8 o'clock. So which will be colder: Cavaliers fans welcome or the temperature outside (projected to be 29 degrees F, by the way)?
• Is tonight going to be the single most emotional and notable return of an individual in sports history? In an email memo, ESPN Stats & Information offers their list of other candidates who elicited strong reactions from their former teams in their return: Brett Favre, Rick Pitino, Nick Saban, Terrell Owens, Wade Boggs, Johnny Damon, Roger Clemens, Bill Parcells, Leo Durocher, Henry Bibby, Ken Norton Jr., Dusty Baker, Bill Sharman, and Bo Schembechler. Any others?
• Dave Hyde of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel walks us through the path to the place LeBron calls home: "Let's take a tour of the king's lost kingdom. Let's drive down the highway a politician once proposed naming for him. Let's stop at the city that once considered putting, 'Home of LeBron James,' on its border signs. Let's drive to the third home on the right in this big-yarded neighborhood. Here's the 35,000-square-foot palace LeBron built with a theater, bowling alley and barbershop. It's 25 miles south of Cleveland, in Bath, Ohio, a suburb of his beloved Akron. The gate is closed. The guardhouse is manned."
• A painful realization for Cleveland fans: when LeBron James left the Cavaliers, he took the organization's future along with him. One can't help but wonder how the fan reaction would be if the franchise weren't so ill-prepared to handle the very real possibility that James would jump ship. ESPN's John Hollinger details the hopelessness surrounding Dan Gilbert and the Cavaliers franchise in today's PER Diem.
• When LeBron left Cleveland this summer, former teammate and current Cavaliers point guard Mo Williams was very public this summer voicing his disappointment. How would Williams liken the emotions? As he tells the Akron Beacon Journal, "It’s almost like your ex-girlfriend coming to your wedding."

Writer Scott Raab has made waves lately as a leading voice among those most angry at LeBron James. Wikipedia notes that this lifelong Cleveland sports fan has "a tattoo of Chief Wahoo on his forearm, and a son." Ethan Sherwood Strauss, who writes for Salon, WarriorsWorld, HoopSpeak and others, takes issue with Raab. The result is this e-mail exchange about lost love:


Ethan: Scott, you angered me because LeBron James angered you. I sneered as you tweeted bile towards The King. When the Miami Heat excised your presence from their arena, I even cheered the authoritarian rebuke. I hated you that much. You were expressing honest humanity in the cynical sportswriting world, and I wanted you shunned for it. Sorry.

Then, realizations hit in question form: Why do I hate Scott Raab for hating a stranger? Have I become a crazy person?

As you were filing an anti-LeBron opus at Esquire, I was at Salon.com, wrapping maternal embraces around a superstar who wouldn’t care if I died today. My defense of James grazes pathetic obsession. I thought myself on a righteous journey, defending a young minority athlete from a frothing Puritanical mob. Now I can see clearer: I’m just childishly defending my deity from those who would angrily make him mortal.

I remember: 18 years old, 25 points, nine assists, six rebounds. That was LeBron’s first game and it was better than religion. At the time, the ungodly debut was as shocking as it isn’t in retrospect. I was hooked -- perhaps you were too. James crushed opponents with Venus Flytrap dunks, he threw passes between defenders like his hands were moving time and space. Nothing like him had preceded him, despite the comparison rush.

(Magic? Michael? Oscar? Zeus?)

Hype was trumped en route to more hype.

LeBron was going to save my favorite sport from its mid-2000’s obscurity. His transcendence would rescue pro basketball from the people who couldn’t let go of M.J., from those who derided NBA “thugs” with code words to cloak an unsavory bias. As a child, I was led to believe in the NBA as magic, a league so incredible that it delivered cliche moments of bonding with my distant, troubled father. LeBron James could validate my stupid belief in that sorcery.

Even if he didn’t save the universe, today’s NBA is more popular than anytime since Jordan. And for seven years, I lived vicariously through LBJ like all you Clevelanders did. Those were seven great years, ugly as he ended that Ohio run (saying those who burned his jersey were maybe never real James fans anyway).

You weren’t, I was. Your tribal attachment to Cleveland trumped any to The King. It’s easy for me to write, but I wish you could enjoy him from afar. Irrational as my defensive LeBron love is, it’s got to be better than unbridled antipathy. What’s wrong with simply saying, “Those were good times, let’s move on”? When Cleveland viciously boos James, it’s akin to turning positive memories poisonous.

Sure, he slighted a Rustbelt town with little else to publicly pride in. But LeBron James isn’t at fault for Ohio’s poverty -- he’s just born from it. It seems pointless to forever scorn a 25-year-old for the sins of public policy -- as his gutter footprints dry. Why keep on him, Scott? I implore and dare you: Enjoy LeBron James, the basketball player. Stop hating the person.

Scott: But I am enjoying LeBron James, the basketball player. I’m delighted that he’s shooting poorly and seems to be barely trying on D most nights. I’m thrilled to see the toxic effect of his selfishness on Dwyane Wade and Erik Spoelstra. I’m worried -- which, when it comes to sports, is part of my pleasure -- that the Heat will find a way to put it all together the right way, that the team won’t dump its coach and hand the keys to the franchise to the Whore of Akron.

I guess it’s hard -- maybe impossible -- for me to separate the player and the person, the artist from his art. Woody Allen? Not a problem. Richard Wagner? Not a problem. LeBron? Honking huge problem. And it surely isn’t about blaming him for the economic forces that have battered every Rust Belt city since long before his birth, or about my need for external affirmation due to a dearth of unconditional love in my childhood. You pretty much nailed it: My unbridled antipathy and tribal attachment are not separable. I -- and, if I may, the collective We of the Cavs fanbase -- thought he was a member of the tribe.

The joy you felt when all the hype turned into living history on the court? Imagine our ecstasy. The dreams we had dreamed in every pro sport for two generations seemed ready to come true at last. We had our Moses, our Messiah. Sure, it’s only sports, but you and I need not debate how vital sports are in places like Cleveland. What the Steelers and Penguins have provided to Pittsburgh, or the Pistons and Red Wings to Detroit -- that sense of mattering, the pride and joy of being the best -- goes far beyond the box score. Cleveland hasn’t felt that since 1964. LeBron was one of us, and he also was the Chosen One.

That wasn’t just our projection. He played to that; how could he resist? I don’t blame him for that, but not blaming him for it doesn’t make it any easier to say, “Those were good times; let’s move on.” And blaming Us -- the Cavs fanbase -- for “turning positive memories poisonous” is absurd. Our Moses left us tasting ashes with his play against the Celtics last May, and then he left us as part of an hour-long, nationally televised celebration of his solipsistic lunacy. Then he kept talking, and made it perfectly clear that he never counted himself as one of us -- and went on to issue quotes like the one above. Read it again, and think about it carefully. Ponder what it literally says about him: There is no team in LeBron. No team, no tribe, only Me and those who worship at my throne.

A few fans torched their LeBron jerseys, yeah. Are you honestly going to tell me that what LeBron burned down somehow mattered less? We are not LeBron fans, and never were -- not in the sense of the bum’s quote. We’re Cleveland fans, first and forever. And forever is precisely how long we will hate him.

Ethan: Fair enough, hate can be a hobby. But did you really think he was a member of your tribe? We talked on the phone, and you cited the self-deluding, jilted lover analogy. That splits the bullseye. Can I say -- as an outsider -- that LeBron’s membership actually was your projection? I can.

You wrote, “He played to that (Cleveland membership); how could he resist?” If Bron embraced Cleveland roots, he did so with that Game 5 shoulder droop. I never bought what Dan Gilbert sold.

Remember the Yankee cap incident? Of course you do. In your condemnation of this “traitorous act,” you made the case that LeBron knew. He was aware of the hurt this caused, cognizant of the offense.

To my mind, that’s the warning from a reluctant lover. When I was 19 years old, a girl from Cleveland (of all places!) broke my heart. And it wasn’t really her fault. In the dorm days, I pulled her into exclusivity. She was ambivalent, but that was no match for my need to love her. Or so I thought.

Towards the end, there were signs that only retrospect saw. When she muttered, “I love you too,” if it wasn’t muted, it was non-existent. Over the Summer break -- when she was back in Cleveland -- the phone calls slowed. “She’s busy with old friends,” I told myself. “Can’t wait to see her in the fall!,” my brain shouted on loop.

My love was impervious to observation and altogether not meaningful. She was my narcissistic projection, not a human being whom I listened to. And she swiftly destroyed that ersatz love with her own Decision -- as I collapsed into the dirty carpeting of the room we were supposed to share. The experience left me devastated, angry, searching for reasons to make her evil.

I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s book on infinity, “Everything and More.” The beginning explains how great geniuses suffer because they lack our stabilizing intuition. To make a system-warping discovery, to get to that point, the physicist has to doubt everything, even whether his feet will hit floor when he leaves the bed. These scientific pioneers often melt into complete madness, dissolving after their contributions like beached grunions. Uncertainty is the enemy of happiness.

To be certain of reciprocated love is to be ruined when reality undermines. It’s like rolling out of bed and falling 40 feet as you yawn. What gave you comfort was just an illusion, and it’s gone forever. And if a man recognizes his insane self-deception, then how can he be sure of anything?

So in hindsight, the jilted focuses on the lover’s awful deceit -- instead of the self-delusion. It’s easier to question their actions, instead of your own perception and insecurity. “She loved me, then screwed me over,” feels better than, “I was needy enough to imagine our cohesion.”

Making her out to be unstable and traitorous only carries so far. Clinging to blame, bitterness, and rage can be corrosive like self-doubt -- after awhile. As I said above, sometimes it’s best just to move on.

But back to LeBron. How awful of him to trick Cleveland and let you believe a lie. He didn’t. Your need to be loved back created that false hometown hero. He was just along for the ride, with one foot out the car.

One day, somebody will reverently wax: “Remember LeBron James on the Cavs? Now THOSE are the coolest highlights.” Cleveland Bron might have that ABA Dr. J cachet, and you still have the footage. The embarrassment and pain have long since subsided from my old relationship. Since I was able to move on, I’m fondly detached from those fuzzy memories. They are folded into a lot of early college hilarity. Who knows? Maybe one day, we’ll even be friends. The hate ebbed long ago, and I’m better for it.

Scott: I feel you, brother. That Cleveland girl broke my heart, too. But let’s not get lost in old romance. Let’s not let a metaphor stand for the thing itself. And let’s not pretend that fanhood -- as I define it anyway -- isn’t at its heart romance writ large. Love projected, if you will.

Fanhood for me -- and I’ll presume to speak for Clevelanders en masse -- is about the permanence of one kind of love: love of place. One of the most frustrating things about this week for me has been trying to answer media cretins who have no sense of history, who are not well-traveled or well-read, who are too dumb or disengaged to understand what’s really going on in Cleveland this week. One thing I hate more than LeBron? Smug and lazy journo-punks. And I am NOT talking about you, sir. I’m talking about all the schoolmarms telling Cleveland to behave itself tonight, lest it leave a bad impression on the pundits who have portrayed it as a sewer for 40 years.

Think about the World Cup and the astonishing global fervor that surrounds it. Think about what cricket and rugby mean to hundreds of millions of people in countries across the world -- and not in terms of sport alone; a single game can reflect and often help to shape the culture and politics of a nation. Those citizens aren’t playing the game; they’re projecting. To belittle their passion by comparing it to some long-lost love is to miss the point entirely. Fanhood on the level I’m talking about is a deeper thing than you seem to think. It embodies love, loyalty, passion, and pride on a titanic scale. I know, I know: Love of country has been defiled by red-state rabble-rousers. But that’s the kind of fanhood I’m talking about here.

Whatever plays out on Thursday night at Quicken Loans Arena is part of the history of the relationship between this city and people whose families have rooted passionately for Cleveland teams since long before the player who left was born -- and spare me the ridiculous notion that Akron and Cleveland aren’t a single entity when it comes to Cleveland sports. That’s nothing but more self-serving, post facto bull from the same guy who thought surrounding himself with small children on the night of The Decision would fool anyone into thinking he cared about anyone but himself. Yes, his place of birth, like mine and yours, was an accident. That still doesn’t make it a projection. Nor does it justify painting Cleveland fans as a collective version of young, hapless Ethan Sherwood Strauss.

As for the Yankees cap, I stand by everything I wrote at the time. I came back as a Cavs fan -- after boycotting the entire 2008 season and half of ‘09 -- not because I felt that the player had changed, but because the team had. I thought that they were good enough to win the NBA title, and I wasn’t going to miss that experience. I thought the same last season, when I started this book in the hope that it would a fairy tale come true.

The fact that the story hasn’t turned out that way isn’t all LeBron’s fault; there’s plenty of blame to go around. But that doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for the disgrace and dishonor -- not "embarrassment and pain" -- he heaped upon himself and every Cleveland fan when he quit on the court against the Celtics last May and then spent an hour on national television feeding his insatiable ego at our expense.

How pretty it is to think that he and Cleveland will be friends someday. The truth is elsewhere. The time when we all get over it and reminisce about the good old days with young King James will never come. Here -- in the heart and soul of Cleveland -- he will be loathed forevermore.

When the Miami Heat tip off tonight against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the match-up is sure to draw more eyeballs than on a typical night during the NBA season. Yes, there's that highly-anticipated return of a certain player but here's another reason: 26 teams have the night off. Will those resting players tune in?

Count some of the Memphis Grizzlies as part of that audience. But not for the reasons you might suspect:

"Oh yeah," forward Zach Randolph said. "I'm definitely going to watch that. It's going to be interesting with uniformed police and undercover guys there. That's why I'm going to watch. You don't know what to expect."

The Heat and the NBA have taken additional security measures to ensure the safety of James and the team when they visit Quicken Loans Arena. Cleveland fans reacted with bitter disappointment when James announced on live television that he'd sign with Miami as a free agent.

"I'll watch the first five minutes to see what they do," forward Rudy Gay said. "This is really unusual. People forget it's all about basketball. ... It was a high-profile offseason as far as free agency. It's going to be the same way when Chris Bosh goes back to Toronto."

Tonight's game will be a spectacle of culture, more so than of basketball. Ask NBA fans about why they're watching the event and chances are it's not about the game itself but how Cleveland will treat their former hometown hero in his return to The Q.

And take it from Randolph and Gay, the fans aren't alone: NBA players are just as curious about the city's reception.

MIAMI -- About the only thing that could go wrong for LeBron James – as well as the Miami Heat, the NBA and the fans waiting in Cleveland – almost happened on Wednesday night.

James hit the deck. Hard. Then he struggled to get to his feet from an awkward fall following a botched block attempt of a Jason Maxiell dunk with 7:53 left in the third quarter against the Detroit Pistons.

As much as Cavaliers fans don't care to see James happy in Miami, odds are they certainly didn't want to see him hurting -- at least not before he gets to Quicken Loans Arena for Thursday night's showdown/homecoming/moment of truth to face his former team for the first time.

But there was James Wednesday night, sprawled flat on his stomach along the baseline near the Heat bench. And an entire team, franchise, arena, city and -- perhaps -- league collectively held their breath.

“That's the only thing you think about,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said of pondering the worst-case scenario after James crashed to the court. “Just get up. You see so many people take hard falls in basketball. Get up, get up, get up. OK. He's fine.”

Exhale. James was on schedule to arrive in Cleveland healthy and hoping to carry Miami's modest momentum into Quicken Loans Arena on Thursday. James got up from that nasty spill, brushed aside his pain and helped the Heat dust off the Pistons 97-72 at AmericanAirlines Arena.

Disaster averted. Cleveland, here he comes. Heat fans have grown accustomed to seeing Dwyane Wade tumble to court, get back up and fall yet again. But not James. For a brief moment, there was legitimate concern. Since he arrived in the league, 6-foot-8, 260-pound LeBron has seemed physically invincible. He's been as tenacious as a tight end. But for a moment, the most anticipated game in the NBA this season might have been in jeopardy.

Later, James humbled himself enough to admit that there's at least one thing he's unable to do on a basketball court: Fall.

“I just don't know how to,” James said, who landed on his wrists but managed to brace his fall by getting one foot down before he stumbled to the court. “When I go down, there's a little hurt.”

James recounted the fall as he sat beside Wade during the Heat's postgame press conference. He made light of the situation by taking a playful jab at Wade for his tumbling skills.

“He mastered the fall,” James said of Wade. “He falls even when he doesn't have to. He must have had a Slip-n-Slide thing when he was a kid or something. He likes sliding all over the place. I don't like to slide, so I stay on my feet.”

The most productive thing the Heat did on Wednesday night was maintain their footing after stumbling through their most difficult stretch of the season last week. Miami is now two lopsided victories removed from the LeBron-Spoelstra Bump-gate. The Heat took another step in distancing themselves from that players-only meeting in Dallas last Saturday and from reports of player dissatisfaction with coach Erik Spoelstra's approach on offense.

For now, they've diverged from some of the disarray, but aren't quite clear of the controversy.

And the Heat owes a big “Thank You” to the league's schedule-makers, who delivered consecutive games this week against the John Wall-less Wizards and the spark-less Pistons.

James walked out of the arena on his own two feet, standing firm in his focus and vowing to take a fearless approach into an emotional game against his former team. Wade believes James is not only strong enough to get up from just about any fall, but also determined enough to block out any of the potential distractions he might face Thursday in Cleveland.

“He's able to take falls,” Wade said. “He's able to take hits. I mean, look at him. He's got shoulder pads on right now. He's a big guy. So I don't really worry too much.”

Apparently, James isn't too worried either.

Before Wednesday's game, the Akron, Ohio native talked about taking trips back to his home state after he announced his free agency decision to sign with the Heat. Concerns for his safety didn't stop James from returning to Akron to hold charity events, including his Bike-a-Thon last summer.

“You're having a community event like that, you want to make sure everything goes right for the protection of the kids, mostly,” James said. “I had 450, 475 kids coming. So it was more of a hope everything goes right for them, so that they could be happy and grateful. So I was nervous getting up that morning and wondering if everything was going to go right for the event.”

James biked through parts of downtown Akron without incident alongside several young riders. That wasn't necessarily the case in his next post-Decision public appearance in Ohio, when he went to an amusement park about a 90-minute drive west of Cleveland.

James was heckled as he was escorted through the park by security.

“You hear minor stuff,” James said. “But for the most part, I've been back. I was there for the whole summer after I signed here, working out and being in the city of Akron.”

But that's Akron, where Many folks have unconditional love for LeBron. Cleveland is different. One city was disappointed he left. The other was downright outraged he abandoned it. One city mourned. The other was scorned.

“I know it's going to be a little bit different when you pack 20,000 people into one tight atmosphere with a closed roof,” said James, who compared his return to Cleveland to Brett Favre's first game back in Green Bay as a visitor. “I think I'll probably feel the same way. It's going to be a lot of butterflies.”

Thursday night against the Cavaliers will be far from a stroll through an amusement park for James. That's why it was so important that he got back on his feet after Wednesday's fall. James is going to need his legs under him to stand up to the hostility he's certain to face on that court in Cleveland.

To someone unfamiliar with the Heat’s substitution patterns this season, the play-by-play text with 27 seconds left in the first quarter may have appeared utterly trivial.

Mario Chalmers enters the game for Carlos Arroyo.

It’s not much but this seemingly negligible move may have large implications for the Heat as the season progresses. After the game, Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra called it “one small tweak” to the rotation but the ripple effect could relieve LeBron James of his primary point guard duties going forward. Chalmers allows James to play more off the ball where the superstar looked far more comfortable Wednesday night than he has all season.

On a typical night, just before the end of the first quarter, Spoelstra has signaled for his tandem shooters of the bench, James Jones and Eddie House, to check in for Arroyo and Dwyane Wade. These substitutions have effectively left LeBron as the only ball handler on the floor. In that second unit, LeBron doesn't play with another ball handler to share the point guard duties and he devolves into one-on-one isolations for offense.

But that’s changed now that Chalmers, who recorded team-high 6 assists against Detroit, and his ankle are fully healthy.

“I watched our preseason game and [Chalmers] was a shadow of what he is now,” Spoelstra said. “He’s earned his minutes in practice. I haven’t given him anything.”

Chalmers may be just what the Heat offense needs to give it life. James and Wade have been blamed for the stagnation of the Heat offense, but Jones and House have largely been spared, despite being incredibly redundant when they play together. As spot-up shooting specialists, the two rarely move without the ball and avoid the paint whenever possible so they can be ready for the kick-out to beyond the arc. Remarkably, Jones and Wade have a combined five shots inside 10 feet this season.

Chalmers, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be anchored in one spot.

“I wanted to get another ball handler out there,” Spoelstra said of Chalmers. “It allows us more flexibility with our offense. It’s less home run and a little more variety.”

Spoelstra would probably agree that having one Dave Kingman, the famous all-or-nothing baseball slugger of the 70s and 80s, in the lineup is more than enough. That’s why we’re seeing House, who also offers little defensively, get phased out of the rotation these days.

“You can see, [Chalmers] gives us another element,” Spoelstra said. “Somebody who can put the ball on the floor but you also have to guard him at the 3-point line.”

Chalmers offers more versatility off the bench, freeing LeBron to run along the baseline for easy buckets like he showcased on the Heat’s first possession of the night. Additionally, we’re seeing LeBron set screens for Chalmers, something that wreaks havoc on defensive rotations. Chalmers’ vision was on full display as he consistently found the open player on the floor which rewarded and encouraged off the ball movement. At one point in the second quarter, Chalmers assisted on three consecutive Heat buckets, the last one setting up Chris Bosh with a beautiful turnaround alley-oop.

Given the strong praise from Spoelstra after the game, expect more Chalmers in the future. He could be a difference-maker for a team desperate for a spark, giving the offense a fresh new look with LeBron more active off the ball. A little wrinkle just in time for the Cleveland game Thursday night.

If you haven't finished assembling your prep for LeBron James' return to Cleveland tomorrow night, then you're in luck.

This brilliant video produced by Rob Mahoney on Hardwood Paroxysm blog captures it all -- LeBron's on-court highlights in Miami and Cleveland, the Nike ad, the summer pyrotechnics, the Decision and all the emotions that came along with it. Mahoney does an extraordinary job integrating the song lyrics with the film. Oh, and try not to be moved by the ending. Amazing stuff.

As the Big 3 struggle to get on the same page offensively, coaches from around the league are taking the opportunity to give their two cents on the situation. Today, it's Nuggets coach George Karl and his assistant Melvin Hunt who grab the mic from Lakers coach Phil Jackson and offer their thoughts. From the Denver Post's Benjamin Hochman:

"I think the two things in basketball that are underappreciated are 'play hard' and chemistry," said Nuggets coach George Karl, who once coached Allen Iverson and Anthony, two of the league's top scorers at the time, together. "It's a team game. And if pieces don't fit, it can be just as ugly as it can be beautiful. And when the pieces fit, it doesn't have to be the (most talented) pieces.

"Your team magnifies your talents. The chemistry and character of your team usually magnify your success. And right now, (Miami) doesn't have much team and chemistry. But it doesn't mean they can't figure it out."

Nuggets assistant Melvin Hunt coached in Cleveland, where current Heat center Zydrunas Ilgauskas was "like a son" and, as for James, "I know his heart and his head," Hunt said. Watching from afar, Hunt is confident that Miami will "get it figured out."

But he knows the difficulties of coaching a King. Hunt watched James struggle at times to coexist with Larry Hughes, a player who also needed the ball to generate offense. And that was Larry Hughes, a far less talented player than Wade.

"LeBron James is a different kind of player. You get different kinds of shots with him on the floor, different kinds of opportunities," Hunt said. "And I'm sure it's the same with Dwyane Wade. You put those two guys together, sometimes it's hard to find time to dance together. Sometimes you say: 'It's your time. And then I'll dance.' "

Billups, Hunt and Karl agreed there is plenty of time for the Heat to ignite. But Billups pointed out that Miami will always have a target on its back.

We've touched on the hot-button topic of the Heat's chemistry here before, but it's interesting that the conversation has evolved from the Big 3 to solely focusing on Wade and James. Now that Bosh has received more touches and scoring well with those opportunities, the talk has shifted to the two ball-handlers.

Hochman draws the comparison to the tandem of Hughes, another ball-dominant wing scorer, and James during their time in Cleveland. While Hughes is far from being an exact comp to Wade, it's about as close as we'll get over James' career. Hughes saw his efficiency and shots tumble alongside LeBron, and he never recovered. But as far as wing scorers go, Wade's in a class of his own, with the skills to adjust in ways Hughes couldn't. Hughes wasn't a great scorer to begin with and his greatest skill was finding his own shot, regardless if it was a quality look.

Hunt also alludes to the turn-style offense that has drawn considerable criticism from the basketball community and it's certainly a concern. But while Wade and Lebron resort to alternating possessions, the Heat still have the eighth best half-court offense in the league. It's far from broken. The fact that the Heat are a top-10 offense and still drawing advice from around the league speaks to the height of the team's ceiling.

As Karl and Hunt point out, there's plenty of time for Dwyane and LeBron to mesh their games. The Nuggets and Heat are set to face off on January 13th and the Nuggets coaching staff probably wishes it were sooner.

When Miami Heat power forward Udonis Haslem suffered a torn ligament in Memphis on November 20, the team’s morale a took a big hit as they learned they would lose their locker room leader and team captain for the majority of the season. As bad as it hurt their team cohesion, they were expected to miss his presence on the court as well.

So how have the Heat done without Haslem? Overall, the Heat are 2-3 since the injury, beating only Philadelphia and Washington in his absence while losing to Indiana, Orlando and Dallas. But we can’t pin the team’s record entirely on Haslem.

Looking at the rebound category, the results have been mixed. After the Pacers destroyed the Heat on the boards, it looked like the Heat were going to get abused down low going forward. But they’ve bounced back since them. Surprisingly, the Heat have actually rebounded the offensive glass better as a team. Since Memphis, the Heat's 23.7 offensive rebound rate, which calculates the percentage of missed shots the Heat have recovered on their own basket, is actually better than in the games previous to Haslem’s injury (23.1).

But rebounding on the other end of the floor has indeed fallen off a bit. Heat opponents have found it easier to grab their own misses since Haslem went down, posting a 26.0 percent offensive rebound rate, compared to just 23.2 percent before Memphis -- which makes sense given that the defensive boards is where Haslem has made the most impact over his career.

With regard to personnel, starting power forward Chris Bosh has stretched himself thin, but it’s Juwan Howard who has seen his minutes skyrocket since Haslem went on the shelf. The 16-year veteran was a regular “DNP-Coach’s Decision” heading into Memphis, only seeing action in three of the team’s first 12 games for a total of 25 minutes. But since Haslem’s injury? Howard has stepped in for an average of 11.6 minutes per game while getting the call during some pivotal moments.

No, the Heat weren’t expecting to fully recoup all of Haslem’s production but Howard has provided minimal contributions in his time. Howard's 5.4 PER ranks seventh worst in the NBA among players averaging at least 10 minutes per game. The 37-year-old isn’t a scoring option whatsoever, taking just 12 field goal attempts so far this entire season and his rebounding rates resemble those of a small forward. He’s certainly not the pick-and-pop counterpart for LeBron, but the Heat already have Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Bosh to fill that role. And easing off the predictable pick-and-pops may be a good idea for the redundant Heat offense.

But the Heat don’t want Howard to take on a big role on offense, so it’s probably for the best that he rarely looks to shoot. As a veteran, his job is to stay out of the way, set some screens and let the others go to work. In that sense, he’s doing an admirable Joel Anthony impression.

Defensively, however, Howard’s has struggled mightily trying to stay in front of his quicker, younger opponents. Washington Wizard forward Andray Blatche turned Howard into a lamppost on Monday night on one particular play en route to an and-one opportunity. Howard barely moved his feet as Blatche spun around him in the post and converted a reverse layup, with Howard fouling him from behind. Those instances have Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra missing Haslem’s footwork and post defense the most.

Seeing how Haslem’s injury exposed Miami’s thin front line, the Heat were wise to nab Erick Dampier off of free agency. He’ll step in with a big body in the post and give the Heat some of that inside presence that Howard hasn’t been able to provide in years. Haslem's injury also means we've seen the end of the devastating small-ball lineups that featured Bosh at the five. Howard can’t run or provide enough help for Bosh to make small-ball a worthy endeavor and Spoelstra has rarely pushed LeBron James to the four.

With Dampier in tow, the Heat’s recovery without Haslem becomes a little easier. As always with the Heat, it’s a process -- and a painful one at that.

On Thursday night, LeBron James will return to Cleveland. He will look the same, wear the same headband and may or may not go over to the scorer's table and toss the chalk the same way he always has. The number, the uniform and the reception will certainly be different, but all of that was to be expected.

What's surprising is that the LeBron James who will return to Quicken Loans Arena on Thursday hasn't been playing basketball like the man who won the last two MVP awards and was, at 25, the best player in franchise history.

From the beginning of the 2008-09 season to the end of the 2009-10 season, LeBron's teams could be best described as "pretty great." They won 127 out of a possible 164 contests, played the Magic very tough in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals, and appeared to have the Celtics on the ropes before completely collapsing in the 2010 conference semifinals. That's not bad. However, it's not the kind of résumé a player who wants to be considered one of the best to ever to play the game wants.

If LeBron had stayed in Cleveland, maybe one of those pretty great teams would have been able to put together 16 tough wins and reach the promised land. We'll never know. What we do know is that LeBron left the Cavaliers for the chance to be on a team that could be more than pretty great.

Count me among those who thought the Heat would win around 70 games this season. After all, LeBron won 66 games in 2008-09 -- wouldn't the upgrade from Mo Williams to Dwayne Wade be worth a couple of games, even if Williams fit LeBron better than Wade? Shouldn't the upgrade from Anderson Varejao to Chris Bosh be worth a win or two? How severe could the dropoff from Ben Wallace to Joel Anthony be? Isn't Mike Miller a better first-swingman-off-the-bench than Wally Szczerbiak was? (Yes, injuries have changed the equation for the Heat this season.) How much worse is Eddie House than Daniel Gibson, who had one of the worst seasons in his career in 08-09?

We could go on like this, but the bottom line is that if LeBron was playing the same way in Miami that he did in Cleveland, there's no way Wade, Bosh, and the rest of the Heat supporting cast would have been able to screw up a dominant regular-season run. Yet, if Miami wins its next 50 games, it would need to go 10-4 over its last 14 games to get 70 wins. There are a number of reasons for this; the injuries to Haslem and Miller, Wade's lingering health issues, Bosh's lack of aggression and the team's lack of size.

But the biggest reason for the Heat's struggles is this:

Given the chance to be a part of a great team, LeBron has continued to play like he's on a pretty great one.

For the better part of the last decade, LeBron has been praised for his "high basketball IQ." But the X's and O'x debacle of the Heat offense through its first 18 games obligates us to revise that sentiment a bit.

LeBron is blessed with excellent basketball instincts, but he has not shown that he has an excellent basketball IQ. With the ball in his hands, the floor spread, and a pick set for him LeBron is nothing short of a virtuoso. In a fraction of a second, he can figure things that many pro basketball players never could. If the defense shades him to his strong hand, he'll explode to his left. If the defense overloads a screen-and-roll and the screener slips the pick, LeBron can put the ball in his hands. If the defender readies himself to take a charge, LeBron can fire a skip pass to an open shooter.

It's a true gift, and it's why the Cavs were so effective offensively despite a lack of offensive imagination. The Cavs didn't run many complex sets, but on virtually every possession, they gave LeBron a number of dangerous options.

If the defense overloaded on LeBron, the Cavs would set a back-screen for a mobile shooter like Mo Williams to free him up for a 3-pointer. If the defense tried to trap James on a pick-and-roll, Varejao would roll to the hoop and get set up with an easy basket. If the other team successfully collapsed on LeBron, he'd deliver the ball to Zydrunas Ilgauskas at 18 feet or to Parker in the corner as a safety valve. If the other team relaxed when LeBron didn't have the ball, the Cavs would spring an action like their "decoy" pick-and-roll and get an easy basket.

It wasn't the most complex offense in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but it was perfectly suited to LeBron James' skills and it worked very well up until the 2010 Boston series. (Offense wasn't the Cavs' problem against the Magic.) Every role player around LeBron was mobile, ready to improvise and knew how to get high-percentage looks when the defense loaded up on LeBron.

Of course, there was a ceiling on that offense's effectiveness, and LeBron presumably came to Miami to break through it. The only problem is that LeBron didn't seem to think through how he would actually play alongside Wade and Bosh before making his decision.

Instead of trying to adapt his game to Wade and Bosh and create some absolutely terrifying offensive sets, LeBron seems comfortable playing only a Cleveland-style read-and-react offense. Get the ball on the perimeter, isolate, or get a pick, look to drive, pull up from time to time, and kick out to a shooter when the defense collapses.

The problem is that Miami isn't built around LeBron the way Cleveland was -- Bosh is actually making fewer shots per game the rim this season than Varejao did last season. Arroyo and Wade can't shoot like Williams or Parker could, and the mighty Heat are relying on 18 foot pick-and-pop jumpers while either James or Wade stands and watches.

Instead of playing smart, LeBron has been deferring, and there's a difference between the two things. This has been particularly noticeable in close games. James' ability to dominate down the stretch made the Cavs one of the league's best teams in close games during his time with the team, but four of the Heat's eight losses this season have come in games that came down to the wire.

When LeBron doesn't have the ball in his hands, his discomfort is obvious. When he sets a pick, he pops out to 18 feet rather than rolling hard to the basket. (It's worth noting here that LeBron is the size of Karl Malone.) When he sets up in the post, he floats back to the ball instead of maintaining deep position and trusting his teammates to get him an entry pass. When he does get it in the post, he faces up and waits for the double team instead of making a quick move and putting pressure on his defender. On the weak side, he waits for the ball to come to him instead of moving towards the basket and hoping his team will open up a passing lane for him.

You can see the wheels turning in his head every time he doesn't have the ball: what if they can't get the ball to me? What if a teammate breaks open and I don't find him? In Cleveland, the behavior was somewhat acceptable because the concerns had some validity. The Cavs' chances of scoring fell drastically on possessions that didn't involve James. Miami is more than capable of scoring when James doesn't touch the ball, and James' paranoia has been choking the offense.

Like a great spread-option quarterback being asked to learn a pro-style offense, a pitcher with a golden arm being asked to mix speeds and pitch types in order to fool major-league hitters, or an adolescent math whiz being asked to show his work and learn step-by-step problem solving instead of relying on his innate ability to do basic equations in his head, LeBron is being asked to trust in something greater than his talents and instincts.

He's being asked to be the smartest basketball player on earth.

Greg Maddux, who is considered one of the smartest pitchers in the history of baseball, once said, "People think I'm smart? You know what makes you smart? Locate your fastball down and away. That's what makes you smart."

Likewise, it's amazing how "smart" being able to put a pass wherever you want to can make you. Now that LeBron is surrounded by teammates capable of doing more with the ball than make spot-up jumpers or timely cuts to the basket, he's going to have to show that he understands NBA offenses on a macro level.

Given how successful James was doing things his way, that may not be an easy process. But if he wants Miami to dominate, it's an adjustment he'll need to make.

If LeBron had stayed, the Cavs could have been pretty great for years to come. He left, and pretty great will no longer be acceptable. On Thursday, tens of thousands of fans will remind LeBron that he's not a Cavalier anymore. LeBron would be well served to remember that when he's on the court with Wade and Bosh instead of Williams and Varejao.

CLEVELAND -- Shaquille O’Neal has a bet riding on Thursday’s Heat-Cavs game.

No, it isn’t on the outcome so no need to call the Commissioner. It is on whether former teammate LeBron James will perform his trademark pregame powder toss in front of what is expected to be a historically hostile crowd in his return to Quicken Loans Arena.

"I’m anxious to see him do the powder [expletive]," O’Neal told reporters before the Celtics’ 106-87 win over the Cavs Tuesday. "We have bets he won’t do it."

After the Heat’s practice in Miami Tuesday, James said he would likely stick to his routine of throwing up the power but left himself some wiggle room.

"He’s done it for every game he’s played so why change for just one game," Dwyane Wade said. “If he doesn’t throw it up, I’ll throw it up for him.”

O’Neal said he believes James’ return to Cleveland will be far more intense than two of his own high-profile returns to former home arenas.

"My situation in Orlando was a six, my situation in L.A. was a seven,” O’Neal said. “This is like a 12. ... He's a tough kid. He'll respond to it very well and have a good game."

With the Heat’s struggles this season, chemistry has been thrusted to the forefront of conversation. Much has been made about the chemistry, or lack thereof, amongst the Big 3. Over the past couple days, we’ve seen a flurry of commentary from statistically-focused NBA writers – ESPN’s own John Hollinger, Basketball Prospectus author Kevin Pelton, and Basketball-Reference blogger Neil Paine to name a few – who have offered their reasons why the Heat haven’t met expectations. And the stat guys are pointing to the intangible of chemistry.

But what is chemistry and how exactly do we quantify it?

The basketball world has been wrestling with the answer to this question ever since James Naismith nailed a peach basket on a wall. Studies have been done, theories have been hypothesized, and companies have been born all with the interest to solve the mystery of basketball chemistry.

But more often than not, chemistry is cited as the reason why teams fail or exceed expectations -- filling the gap between what happened and what was supposed to happen. When was the last time you heard that good chemistry propelled a team to play exactly how we projected them to play? Probably never, if you’re like me.

There’s an empirically-based school of thought that says chemistry is nothing more than random luck wrapped with a bow. Our brains are not hard-wired to understand the concept of randomness and therefore, we use psychological shortcuts to come up with answers. And when it comes to sports (and basketball in particular), those answers contain the word “chemistry” time and time again. The Thunder outperformed expectations last season? Chemistry!

But there’s chemistry in the locker room and then there’s chemistry on the court.

And its the latter that interests the stat guys. In many ways, basketball players are a set of puzzle pieces on the floor -- except the shapes aren’t clearly defined. It’s the job of front offices and coaching staffs to figure out how the pieces fit together. And statistical analysts are trying to do the same thing.

So how do stat-heads interpret the chemistry issue? As Paine points out, the struggles of the Big 3 defy a statistically-based model devised by Denver Nuggets statistical guru Dean Oliver called “Skill Curves.” It sounds like something one would overhear in a third-level Economics seminar but the idea is simply this: when a player takes on more responsibility on offense, their efficiency tends to drop. On the extremes, it makes plenty of sense. If you ask a player to score the ball every time down the floor, shots become increasingly difficult as he is forced to shoulder the scoring load. But if you tell him to “pick his spots” and only shoot when he has a clear shot at the basket, then he’ll enjoy far more success trying to get the ball in the hoop.

Many expected the Big 3 to become more efficient since they didn’t have to take on the taxing scoring burden like they did in years past. Riskier shots would be weeded out of their game because they don’t have to carry their team’s scoring anymore. They would become smarter and more disciplined with their shots. But while the Big 3 have shot less this season, their efficiency has not gone in the other direction as previously anticipated.

Why? Tough to say. While usage rate treats all shots the same, it should probably treat them differently. Scorers have roles on offense and those roles require specific types of shots. When two ball-dominant attackers like LeBron and Wade combine forces, they must share the ball and alternate their isolation or pick-and-roll penetration. But these particular games don’t complement one another because they provide identical means to the same end.

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal had chemistry on the court despite outrageously high usage rates probably because their shot types were different and the way they got their shots didn’t overlap. The shapes of their puzzle pieces were more clearly defined because differences were easily distinguishable. Shaq goes to the post. Kobe goes to the perimeter. They understood their separate roles and there wasn’t any confusion.

As the basketball world debates why Wade and LeBron haven’t developed chemistry together yet, it may be time to add a third variable to the two dimensional model of Skill Curves (usage vs. efficiency): distinction. How well do the players understand their unique skill-sets and limitations? How versatile are their scoring attacks and do they show a willingness to bend? With roles in mind, players know where to go on the floor and where to go once they get the ball.

But are Wade and LeBron unique enough to complement each other? We’re still trying to figure that out. And so, too, are Wade and LeBron.

• Paul DePodesta, one-time protegee to Oakland A's general manager and baseball analytics proponent Billy Beane, once described chemistry as a three-game winning streak. For many subscribers of advanced stats, chemistry has always been a bogeyman, an unquantifiable abstraction used to explain away failure or credit success in the absence of empirical data. But the current state of the Heat has challenged ardent subscribers to advanced statistics not so much to reconsider chemistry -- even the most serious diehards understand that basketball isn't baseball and synergy on the court is a very real thing. But it has prompted advocates to define chemistry. At Basketball Reference, Neil Paine does a stellar job of doing that with regard to the Heat's three stars: "[T]here's been no synergy between the big stars this season, with each defying the rules of 'Skill Curves' and actually decreasing their efficiencies despite reduced offensive workloads. That's a chemistry issue -- talents of this magnitude are supposed to take their games to a new level when combining powers, not fizzle to near career-lows."
• Tom Ziller, in his farewell at The Works, wonders if Spoelstra is a bad fit for the Heat, even though he's an indisputably smart coach: "[W]e know, emphatically and empirically, that Spoelstra is not a bad coach. He took last year's version of the Heat to a 47-35 record ... Spoelstra is part Pat Riley -- a grinder at heart, a guy who works 23 hours a day and demands the same from his players -- and part Lawrence Frank -- a X & O whiz kid. But because of the very nature of Miami's three 'chill' bros, Spoelstra has had to be a bit heavier on the Riley, all while maintaining a delicate balance. That hasn't allowed his L-Frank side to come out. Or, these superstars are so heavy-handed that the Xs and Os have to come with a heavier dose of Drill Sergeant than Spoelstra can muster in his tenuous position. So, while Spoelstra has both the chops to command this team and the brains to make it sing, he just isn't in the right spot to execute it all. It's just a bad fit."
• If you're an opposing coach charged with the task of stopping LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, what's the best you can hope for? Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus: "Watching the Heat's offense, something jumps out immediately. When both James and Wade are both in the game, they are almost never on the same side of the floor. Sometimes, that means both are waiting as Carlos Arroyo or another perimeter player handles the ball. More often, it translates into either James or Wade initiating the offense (typically out of a pick-and-roll) while the other spots up on the opposite wing. For opposing defenses, this is essentially an ideal situation. Though James and Wade can still create problems by driving off a cross-court pass, their presence on the weak side usually limits them to serving as stand-still shooters at best and decoys at worst. Scouting reports around the league encourage defenders to force James and Wade to become outside shooters, neutralizing the danger they pose off the dribble, in the paint and at the rim. For a variety of reasons, Miami has managed to do exactly that to its own stars."
• Tracy McGrady: not a believer the James-Wade pairing but still believes they can make it work.
• Yesterday, we reported that Dwyane Wade is prescribing more isolation sets as an antidote for the Heat's offensive struggles at times. Wade feels that the Heat's heavy pick-and-roll offense invites too much ball pressure from the defense. Reading Wade's comments, Rob Mahoney of the New York Times' "Off the Dribble" blog recalls a presentation at MIT's Sloan Conference called "The Price of Anarchy in Basketball," by Brian Skinner, a graduate research fellow at the University of Minnesota. The paper posits that, even though it seems to make sense to go to the most efficient play call as frequently as possible, a team must vary its offense to achieve maximum efficiency -- even if it means mixing in some less efficient plays. But what if Miami's problem isn't that thy're relying too heavily on the pick-and-roll, but that they're doing so with a lack of creativity? "Maybe the problem is that the Heat are utilizing the pick-and-roll too simplistically. Perhaps each screen, drive, or dish to the roll man is seen as the primary end, when instead the entire sequence should be acting as a mechanism in a more comprehensive offensive plan. Utah Coach Jerry Sloan has milked the pick-and-roll for all it’s worth by implementing it as a crucial part (but only a part) of his flex offense, and while that level of offensive structure may not serve this Miami team, the principles behind it might."
• When Mahoney isn't pondering the Heat's offense, he's taking a close look, as part of Hardwood Paroxysm's "Have Ball Will Travel" series, at whether Wade got away with a travel on Monday night against Washington.
• According to StubHub, fans in Cleveland have paid an average of $209 to see Thursday night's Cavs-Heat game, making it the most expensive regular season Cavs home game since the secondary ticket broker came online ten years ago.
• A beautiful word/player cloud for each NBA franchise based on games played.
• According to Dwyane Wade, Quicken Loans Arena has some of the best chicken wings in the NBA.
• A picture book of screen shots from Kyle Weidie of Truth About It that captures some of the fireworks that went off in Monday night's Wizards-Heat game.
• The San Antonio Spurs: The anti-Heat.
• Heat training camp invitee Kenny Hasbrouck has found his way to Greece, where he'll suit up for Aris.

There’s nothing quite like a 22-point second half to erase a nightmare performance in the first half. Such was the case for Dwyane Wade in his metamorphosis on Monday night.

Maybe the hangnail healed. Maybe Erik Spoelstra performed a magical halftime speech. Maybe Wade just had enough with the talk about his shooting woes.

Whatever it was, it worked. Wade’s horrific first half featured a litany of careless mistakes and ugly shot attempts that repeatedly hushed the AmericanAirlines Arena crowd -- which, admittedly, is not that hard to do.

Wade missed 6-of-7 shot attempts in the first half with 4 points, but he just as easily could have scored a dozen more points if he wasn’t under some phantom spell. After halftime? He exploded for 22 points on 7-for-9 shots in the second half.

But leave it to the highlight reels to showcase Wade’s second half. Here, we’d like to offer a complementary reel of lowlights that puzzled Heat fans for the first 24 minutes of Monday night’s game.

I hereby present Wade’s eight gaffes of the first half:

Gaffe 1. On this possession, Wade took advantage of a dozing Gilbert Arenas, beating him baseline off the dribble. Hilton Armstrong then rotates off of Zydrunas Ilgauskas to contest the shot, inviting Wade to do his best Blake-Griffin-on-Timofey-Mozgov impression -- only to ultimately miss the “dunk” throw-in. He falls.

Gaffe 2. This clip begins with Wade grimacing from what was reported to be a hangnail. Seconds later, Andray Blache passes it directly into Wade’s lap before he fumbles it out of bounds. If Blache were a heady passer, he would have faked the swing pass and hit Arenas backdoor to trap Wade's gamble. But instead, Wade saves him the embarrassment by bringing it onto himself.

Gaffe 3. Here, Wade ends up with the steal after Nick Young takes his eye off the ball and misses the pass from Arenas. Wade fumbles it initially but successfully dishes it out to Carlos Arroyo on the break. After JaVale McGee pancakes Wade to the floor, McGee leaves Wade to sneak in behind and receive a bullet pass from LeBron James. McGee bites on Wade’s pump fake but Wade misses a bunny on the other side of the rim. It looked like a gift-wrapped dunk opportunity but Wade didn’t get high enough to throw it down. Oddly enough, the miss resembled Joel Anthony’s gem against Phoenix.

Gaffe 4. This miscue had the makings of a classic Wade transition layup but he gets too fancy on the break trying to pull the ball over Young’s head and consequently loses control of the ball. Wade gets the assist after a trailing James Jones bails him out with a 3, but it could easily have been a traveling or palming violation. Wade skirts a turnover.

Gaffe 5. Here, it’s Young whom Wade catches snoozing and makes a sharp cut through the paint. But McGee does an excellent job of stopping Wade, forcing a back-breaking fade-away jumper – one that should have probably been bagged in the first place. Erick Dampier was wide open for an dump pass initially and again after he closes out the undersized Young under the rim. It looked like an airball but McGee gets a well-deserved block for the effort.

Gaffe 6. Once again in transition, Wade fails to finish on the break. This time, he freezes Young in the paint and misses a clear layup off the glass. High school coaches everywhere scowl as he takes a right-handed layup on the left-side of the hoop. Wade then makes an appeal to the referee for a late whistle, all while spinning in a circle, no less.

Gaffe 7. And yet another transition snafu from Wade as he failed to recognize Trevor Booker timing the jump to slam the layup against the glass. To make things worse, James Jones was wide open in the corner as he watched the ill-advised basket attack unfold. Bosh rescues Wade with an offensive rebound in the midst of the entire Wizards lineup and gets to the line.

Gaffe 8. This particular clip could be seen as a poor entry pass from Arroyo but Wade does a few things that warrants the lowlight. For one, he fails to meet the ball on the entry pass and instead prematurely pivots away from the pass to make his move. Secondly, he asks for the post-up entry pass but barely muscles up Arenas which allows the Wizard to get a clear path to the bounce pass. And lastly, and most inexcusably, Wade turns to complain to the referee behind him rather than following Hinrich down the court.

MIAMI -- What the Heat have here is a golden opportunity.

It’s an early crossroads the Cavaliers’ franchise reached about five years ago, but it didn’t quite grasp the importance.

In the soul-searching done since July, it was something the Cavs wished they could do over:

Stand up to LeBron James.

Whether you believe ESPN the Magazine’s Chris Broussard’s report that several Heat players, particularly James, have grown frustrated with coach Erik Spoelstra doesn’t really matter. James has already said as much repeatedly in recent days.

He complained about playing too many minutes, which required a meeting with Spoelstra. He said he doesn’t like playing point guard, which Spoelstra has asked him to do for much of the young season. And he maintained that, unlike in seasons past, he isn’t having fun.

On Monday there was another meeting between James and Spoelstra. This confab supposedly focused on the offense, where James and the Heat have been struggling, and not on the ESPN report of discord -- though it's fair to assume the topic came up.

Of course James isn’t totally happy. He’s given up money, a massive piece of his reputation, the freedom to walk freely around his hometown. He's also sacrificed shot attempts and his beloved statistics to be with the Heat. Yes, it's early in the process, but the results so far have been underwhelming.

There are only so many people to blame, and in the NBA the first fingers are usually pointed at the coach. Check back in a few weeks. There’s a chance the conversation will sound completely different, which is what Spoelstra is counting on.

Whatever the case, the Heat have encountered their first critical test with James.

Now is when the organization -- be it president Pat Riley himself or Spoelstra in one of their series of meetings, or perhaps both -- need to tell James that they won't completely accommodate him. Spoelstra will remain the coach and the team is going to stay the course. That means James, whether he likes it or not, will to continue to be asked to sacrifice parts of his game.

It may be hard in the short term, but this course of action will make a difference over the long haul. The evidence resides in the Cleveland Cavaliers' recent history.

Five years ago when Dan Gilbert bought the Cavs and completely revamped his basketball operations department, his instincts told him to give
James and his friends stature as decision-makers. James was just about to fire his agent and install his friends as his management team and the owner saw a chance to bond with the young and restless.

So Gilbert and the organization decided it was best to treat them as power brokers and not just another entourage.

At the time, Gilbert felt it was good business, especially with James on a short-term contract and the team without much talent. It was a major gamble followed by hundreds of smaller decisions that eventually led James to have a vapor lock on the franchise with no one in a position to truly hold him accountable. It ended up putting the team in a fragile position, with James holding all the cards.

The Cavs won a lot of games in the interim and gave a James contract extension, albeit briefer than preferred. But the franchise didn’t realize it had made a mistake until it was too late. In the end, Gilbert couldn’t get James to return his calls. Ultimately, it was a member of the entourage who informed the team that James was leaving.

The Heat’s situation with James is not an apples-to-apples comparison. The Miami organization simply has more leverage. Now is the moment they should use it, a strategy that might eventually benefit both parties.

First, James is on the longest contract of his career. He’s signed for a total of six years and cannot be a free agent until 2014. That deal means the Heat do not have to adopt a position of appeasement as the Cavs did over the past several years. By the time James became a self-aware megastar and his friends were naming his marketing company after themselves, their hooks were deep into the Cavs organization.

Second, there are other players on the Heat roster that enjoy a similar prestige as James. Their prominence enables the Heat to hold them all to a tighter -- and equal -- standard.

Neither is a luxury the Cavs enjoyed.

Neither is a situation James is used to … yet.

The Heat have already used their position of power. They didn’t hire a James associate who had a job and traveled with the Cavs. As the team constructed its schedule, it hasn’t succumbed to James’ preferences, as the Cavs did. But those are largely behind-the-scenes machinations discussed only in entourage circles (yes, those exist).

Much more important is what faces Spoelstra, Riley and the Heat with the first waves hitting South Beach. There will be more, to be sure, but this period could very much set a precedent. James is testing his limits, and the organization must decide how to play it.

Perhaps drawing a line in the sand was the mission of Spoelstra’s meeting with James on Monday. Because when it was over, the coach emerged oozing with a brand of confidence not usually seen in a man believed to be on the hot seat.

After looking worn down and mentally fatigued over the previous few days, Spoelstra arrived to talk to the media poking fun at recent reports. He brought up the meeting with James on his own, making sure everyone knew not only was he being proactive but aggressive with his superstar.

“This is when your relationships get strengthened,” Spoelstra said after the chat. “As long as you can survive these it will make you stronger. It is not always going to be good. I look forward to these moments when there is controversy and healthy conflict.”

Considering everything he’s been dealing with inside the team and outside, Spoelstra's attitude and posture were impressive.

Meanwhile, James brushed off the notion that he had any issues with Spoelstra, while also sounding resigned that Spoelstra will be the coach for the foreseeable future.

“I have Coach Spo’s back, or whatever the case may be,” James said. “This is who we have.”

It is too early to know whether a crisis has been averted. More wins like Monday’s blowout of the Wizards would certainly help, but how the Heat handle these coming days may largely determine whether the entire James experiment works in Miami long-term.

Just ask the Cavs.

Chris Broussard's report about the situation in Miami cites an anonymous source that maintains Heat players are frustrated by the team's sixth-ranked offense being implemented by head coach Erik Spoelstra:

[The players] feel like he is running nothing but pick-and-rolls and telling the Heat's secondary players to find open spots on the floor for catch-and-shoot jumpers.

For the most part, Spoelstra, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh sought to diffuse at shootaround on Monday any notion that there's major discord in the Heat camp. But Wade did offer a critique of the offense that paralleled what we read in the report:

I think, at times, we get into a space where we let the whole team guard us because we run a lot of pick-and-roll. And we are letting guys off the hook. I want to see someone guard LeBron [James] one-on-one three or four times in a row down the court, because I know what they are thinking: "Somebody please help."

I want to see them do that to Chris. I want to see them do that to me. So it’s about how we do it in spots in games, if all of us can be involved together. And it’s about how you do it where we are getting other guys involved as well.

Wade's comments are interesting on a number of levels, primarily because he's suggesting that the Heat's steady diet of pick-and-rolls are inviting too much pressure on the ball. This isn't necessarily an incorrect diagnosis. For instance, you've probably seen Kobe Bryant at the top of the floor in a 1-4 scheme, dribbling some clock away during the final possession of a quarter. At about the :08 mark, a big man will move high to offer Bryant a screen, but Kobe shoos him away.

Why doesn't Bryant want the benefit of a screen? It might be because a pick in that situation invites a double-team, the kind of "pressure on the ball" Wade refers to in his comments. The screener's defender follows the screener toward Bryant, then opts to trap Bryant and the clock ticking down. But if Kobe is in isolation, now the defense has to make a decision, as Wade points out. Do they send a helper? And if they do, whom does that leave open?

If we take Wade at face value, he's prescribing more isolation for the Heat's offense. Currently, the Heat rank 18th in percentage of possessions used for isolation plays, and rank 9th in points per isolation possessions, according to Synergy Sports.

Working more isolation into the Miami offense could be advantageous, but potentially dangerous as well. James, Wade and Bosh almost always have a matchup advantage over their respective defenders, and anytime you have the opportunity to turn James loose on an ill-equipped small forward, you'd be foolish not to force the issue.

But isolations and clear-outs can be invitations for the sort of stagnation the Heat have pledged to get away from. Unless the player with the ball can make a perfect read on that double-team, and sling the pass to the open man, and the defensive rotation is slow, and the recipient of that pass can finish, it's not necessarily an efficient way to win basketball games. To wit, only one team in the NBA -- the Los Angeles Lakers -- scores greater than a point per possession on isolation plays.

Furthermore, strong pressure defenses such as the Boston Celtics, Lakers and Chicago Bulls are designed to neuter isolation players, even if you situate that superstar on one side of the floor and invite help. These teams are able to both pressure the ball and zone up effectively on the weak side. It requires the zippiest reversals and most creative off-ball schemes to beat them.

Will additional isolations put more pressure on individual defenders? Perhaps. But if Broussard's source is correct and the team feels that Erik Spoelstra's offense is too facile, more isolation basketball is hardly a remedy for simplicity.