LeBron James seemed to be a little “under the weather” on Sunday after his night with Justin Timberlake but the Dallas Mavericks want a chance at getting the top pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. T-Lake vs. Tank ensued…
Believe me when I tell you that Dorian Finney-Smith is not actually Kawhi Leonard. It just simply appeared that way in Cleveland on Sunday night.
LeBron James casually attempted to back him down on the second possession of the game, only to be easily swatted away by the second-year player (pictured above).
LeBron — who has been literally unstoppable for almost two months — shot just 5 for 21 against the Mavericks. He looked slow, uninterested and … hung over.
Yeah, I said it! Well, I’m not exactly going out on a limb here. He wasn’t really attempting to hide his evening:
Now before you accuse me of being some kind of old-school moralist, all upset because LeBron isn’t taking a professional basketball game seriously, let me clarify.
I loved it! LeBron’s splitting headache and crippling nausea left us with the most competitive matchup of the night: Hung over LeBron versus a basketball team actively trying to lose.
As die-hard basketball fans, this is the stuff we live for. Especially in the dog days of the regular season.
So, to the tale of the tape. In the right corner we had LeBron, who was handicapped by all of the inevitable symptoms mentioned above. But in the left corner we had Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s legendary comments on Dr. J’s podcast:
"I’m probably not supposed to say this, but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option.’ Adam would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again. This was, like, a year-and-a-half of tanking, and that was too brutal for me."
$600,000 in fines later, the Mavericks have perfected their craft. They thoroughly outplayed the Cavaliers through three quarters on Sunday night to adequately achieve the appearance of caring.
LeBron’s hangover had brought its A-game as well. He had more missed shots than points (through three quarters). We were in for one heck of a finish!
Heading into the fourth, Dallas led by 4. It was looking like LeBron’s hangover would be too much for the hapless Mavericks to undercome (I’m inventing this word and making it the official verb of tanking).
But then Rick Carlisle and Mark Cuban deployed their secret weapon, inexplicably leaving Dennis Smith Jr. and Harrison Barnes parked in sweats on the sideline for most of the fourth quarter! (They had torched the Cavaliers for 40 points in the first three quarters).
The secret weapon achieved its desired effect, as LeBron started to sweat out the liquor and regain some semblance of his MVP form. By the time Carlisle put his actual NBA players back on the court, the damage had been done. The Cavaliers led by nine and hungover LeBron had been vanquished.
So we learned a valuable lesson on this fine Sunday evening. Even ridiculously-priced vodka can’t overcome the ineptitude of modern-day tanking in the NBA.
Okay, maybe it’s not that serious. But it helped me cope with that atrocious excuse for a basketball game we were all forced to watch. I did what I had to do.