June 03, 2009
A Tough Week for the Chosen Ones
By Jeff NeumanIt’s been a rough week for Chosen Ones. LeBron is still looking for his Pippen, Sid came up empty in Hockeytown, and Rafa learned there’s not always a happy ending to his roman à clay.
Cleveland had plenty of reason to believe that its forty-five-year championship drought was in jeopardy this year. LeBron James and his teammates – to use the word that seems to mean the most to him – compiled the best record in the NBA, as well as the largest point differential in the regular season. They stormed through the first two rounds of playoffs, winning all eight games by double-digit margins.
In the Conference Finals, however, the Cavs had no answer for Dwight Howard and the Magic’s three-point shooters, who came alive after struggling against Philadelphia and Boston. When Cleveland doubled on Howard down low, he kicked the ball out to the arc; when they played him straight up, he used his speed and strength to get easy shots. The Cavaliers’ deficiencies against the Magic were defensive, not offensive; despite their poor shooting from downtown, Mo Williams and Delonte West outscored their season averages. The team allowed 103.7 points per game, a dozen more than their opponents averaged over eighty-two games.
After the final game in Orlando, LeBron left the court and the arena without congratulating his opponents or talking to the media, leaving his teammates to pick up the slack. “It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,” he said on Sunday. “I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
That’s the exact difference between a street fight and a sport. If someone beats you up in real life, you don’t congratulate him, but in the more civilized abstraction we call pro sports it’s not personal and it’s not life and death. LeBron’s role model may be Michael Jordan, but in his moment of defeat he listened to his inner Isiah Thomas. It was a definite misstep, but in his still-young career, it was one of his first.
Rafael Nadal’s misstep was literal, an uncharacteristic stumble in the third set that sent him down to the red clay dust and was followed soon after by a service break. Robin Soderling had already accomplished the unlikely simply by winning a set, the first one Nadal had lost in Paris since the 2007 final. When Soderling also took the third set, 6-4, Nadal’s fans wondered if they would at last see him play his first five-set match at Roland Garros. His streak of not going five sets remains intact, but his overall record at the French has fallen to 31-1.
Nadal, who turns 23 today, was as gracious as ever in defeat. “I congratulate him, and I’ll keep working hard for the next tournament,” Nadal said of Sodering, with whom he’s clashed in the past. Asked about Roger Federer’s chances now, Nadal said, “It would be good for him to complete his Grand Slam. Federer had the bad luck to lose three finals and one semifinal here, but I think that if there is someone who deserves it, it’s really him.”
If Federer, who faces Gael Monfils in the quarterfinals today, can at last win the one Slam that has eluded him, and has another Wimbledon title in him a year after losing The Greatest Match Ever, it will be a major jolt to Nadal’s assumptive reign over the tennis world, making Rafa’s seeming dynasty look more like an interregnum.
No matter how well Sidney Crosby plays, he can’t control the game by himself. Hockey demands a complete team effort, and a hot goaltender doesn’t hurt. Detroit’s Chris Osgood has allowed just two goals a game in the playoffs, aided by Nicklas Lidstrom and the outstanding Red Wing defensive crew. Bodies in red and white shadow Crosby, careful to give him a bump or chuck at every opportunity. The plotline may call for Pittsburgh’s explosive young talent (Evgeni Malkin, 22, Jordan Staal, 20, and Maxime Talbot, 25, along with the 21-year-old Crosby) against Detroit’s experience, but Detroit has also benefitted from 22-year-olds Darren Helm and Justin Abdelkader and 25-year-old Jonathan Ericsson.
Crosby has yet to score on any of his ten shots in the finals, though he did pick up his first assist on Sergei Gonchar’s power-play goal that broke a 2-2 tie in Pittsburgh’s 4-2 victory last night. The win put the Penguins in position to tie the series on home ice on Thursday in what is Sid the Kid’s second trip to the finals, which probably sounds pretty good to LeBron about now.
In quieter news, Baltimore catcher Matt Wieters – baseball’s Next Big Thing – hit .167 in his first five games in the majors. Good thing he won’t have to deal with playoff pressure for a long time.
