They weren’t taken to task. It just sort of...it slipped through their fingers. That's not how we're judged in Miami, I'm sorry. For some reason, we're judged a lot more harsher than that."But big, bold and brash are part of what have made the Heat what they are. With outsized ambition comes outsized attention, and with that comes occasionally unfair assessment. Even so, as Riley well knows, it sure beats the alternative—not mattering—no matter what.5. LeBron James blamed himself more than others blamed him.The Heat's collapse was so complete, with the complementary pieces contributing so inconsistently and inadequately, that even James' harshest critics eventually put the Game 1 cramping aside, and excused the Heat forward for his third NBA Finals defeat in five appearances.
Still, that cramp controversy again reminded everyone, including some of the game's greats, of the overwhelming scrutiny that James faces compared to those who came before. And before we leave the Finals behind entirely, it's worth relating what two of Michael Jordan's contemporaries, Grant Hill and Gary Payton, told Bleacher Report as they covered the series for their respective outlets, NBA TV and Fox Sports One."We were just talking about that," Hill said before Game 3. "Obviously, Jordan got some criticism around year five or six, and he couldn't win. But once he won, he had such tremendous goodwill from the fans and everybody associated with the league. Once LeBron got over the hump, he's gotten some goodwill, too, but he's still such a polarizing presence. I don't know if it's just the part of the world that we live in, a sign of the times, but he can't do anything: He can't fall, he can't miss a shot, he can't have cramps. It's amazing."
As someone who has been in the spotlight, Hill added, "I'm impressed with how he handles it."
How would Hill?"I'm not sure," he said. "I really don't know. Just get away from it, the chat rooms and all that. Try to keep a close circle, family and friends. The season is so long and taxing, even when you win, so you've just got to have some balance in your life, not take everything personally. But it's not easy."
Especially now.In our day, we didn't have this social media, we didn't have this Twitter, we didn't have this Instagram," Payton said. "And he's a marketable person, where he's in a lot of commercials, he's out in the limelight, so he's the target. And that's the target they want. They want him to be that guy. When he was in Cleveland, he couldn't win, he wasn't a big-time pressure player. And now he comes [to Miami], he wins championships, and everything that happens is still [his fault]."
Payton was especially irritated with the way James' cramping was widely portrayed.You play with a cramp and see what happens; you couldn't play with a cramp," Payton said. "And I hate it because, we look at Tony Parker when he got hurt and he didn't come back in the game against Oklahoma City (in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals), there wasn't anybody saying anything about it, because he's a superstar, but he's not a target like LeBron. Everyone says, 'Oh, he's hurt, we'll see what happens next week.' We didn't have T-shirts saying, 'Well, you play through it like Michael Jordan.' That's the way life is. He's that chosen one. They want to see him fail. That's all it is. They want to see him fail."That is something Payton doesn't entirely understand, especially because "you never see this kid in any trouble. It's just not right...Michael Jordan didn't have to deal with it like this. I think this kid is dealing with too much. And I think he takes it in a good way. If anybody says, 'you're not human,' they're lying. He is human. And I know it does get to him at points, but he comes back and plays hard. He comes back and responds the way he should."He responded well enough in the Finals.The problem was that his teammates didn't.
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