Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Unsportsmanlike Conduct?

I was looking forward to Sunday's Miami Heat/Oklahoma City Thunder game not only with fingers crossed for an OKC victory, but also for the display of raw basketball talent that would be on the court: Durant, LeBron, Westbrook and Wade on the floor at any given time as well as some guy named Bosh that everyone keeps talking about. Epic Game Potential (EGP) was sitting at about 60-70%.

And it was quite the game - hotly contested down to the end with Durant hitting some clutch shots down the stretch, but at the end of the day it was all for naught. With about 25 seconds left in the game, there was an interesting moment on the Miami offensive side of the ball.

After Wade missed a well contested 19-footer, Heat down 102-103, Mike Miller corralled a crucial offensive rebound and dished out to a completely open LeBron James - I mean COMPLETELY open, as in no OKC Thunder player was within 8-10 feet of LBJ. What happened next was fascinating: James started to go up with the shot, stopped, then dished to Eddie House who hadn't taken a single shot all game.

For you numbers people, LBJ for the game: 23pts on 7-14 shooting, and 2-5 from 3pt range - not too shabby, which makes his decision to pass even more interesting.

However, I don't find much use in speculating on what was going through LeBron's head at the time of the shot. I will point out that Eddie House drilled that shot, took a page out of Sam Cassell's celebration book, and was promptly fined $25,000 by the NBA. Check out the footage below:



Final score: MIA 108 - OKC 103.

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