Save the league, LeBron: We need the Cavs

[Windmill360]

The NBA is needy when it comes to salvaging this postseason.

A knockdown drag-out battle between the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons for seven games just won't do it. The NBA and basketball fans everywhere need LeBron James to keep the Cleveland Cavaliers on his shoulders for one more game to eliminate the Pistons. If that happens, and the Cavs make it to the Finals for the first time in franchise history, the rest of the sports world will follow the buzz.
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If not, say good night, NBA — see you next year.

Granted, the Spurs and the Pistons have clearly been the best teams in their respective conferences the past five years. That's been close to true most of this season as well.

But the prospect of them having a re-match from the 2005 Finals is a yawner. To be sure, it will be enough to draw interest from both cities, the families of everyone from the respective organizations and a handful of diehards who still aren't ready for the interminable season to end.

All the marginal fans will be lost, and even some of the good ones. And that's really what has happened since the first round — that is, until the Kings James Show of Thursday night produced an awakening that perked up the dormant fan.

It just wasn't easy getting there. Once we got past the first round — where the Golden State Warriors pulled off an extraordinary upset of the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls swept the defending champion Miami Heat — everything went downhill fast. There was nothing sexy about the Utah Jazz coming from behind to knock off the Rockets in Houston in Game 7 of the first round, with the exception of perhaps the national coming-out party for Jazz point guard Deron Williams.

And nothing was going on in the East. The Pistons won their first seven games and the Cavs their first six. They may as well not even played the first two rounds in the Eastern Conference and just let the Cavs and Pistons play the way the brackets broke.

On came the second round in the West, and what promised to be the de facto Finals between the Spurs and Phoenix Suns. Instead, it turned into a bloody mess with fingers pointing at the Spurs as cheap-shot artists. Commissioner David Stern then made it worse with suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw that were completely unnecessary and virtually took the Suns out of the series. And while that's not fair to the Spurs — who are once again proving to have the best trio in the NBA in Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili — that's not the point.

The league office ruined the only truly championship-caliber matchup of the postseason and eliminated the intriguing possibility of some fresh faces in the Finals.

Instead, we're guaranteed to be looking at the sullen, whining Duncan, the most under-appreciated superstar this side of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — mostly because he chooses to be a dullard to the media and public. All of that throws a wet towel on what an amazing performer he has been, an all-time great seeking the fourth title in nine years for the Spurs.

The Pistons are similarly unexciting, even if they don't agree. They get full of themselves far too often, and that's caused them to underachieve from the end of last season through ... right now. Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Chris Webber are a terrific starting lineup and at times move the ball so well you could swear James Naismith has re-surfaced just to stand and applaud.


Now hear this: LeBron James is the last hope to salvage these NBA playoffs. (Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

Consequently, basketball purists will be fine with the Spurs and Pistons in the Finals. Most people expected it anyway (including yours truly).

All of that was before Thursday night, when LeBron James decided to save the world.

When somebody has a transcendent performance as he did, it changes everything. Basketball fans are looking for magic in the postseason and James is the closest thing we've seen to the spectacular play of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. James scored 29 of the Cavs' final 30 points — including the final 25 — in their 109-107 double-overtime win at Detroit to set up Game 6 in Cleveland. He didn't get there by gaining free-throw attempt after free-throw attempt either, he did it by blasting through, running around or jumping over the vaunted Pistons defenders to the tune of 48 points.

The Cavs now have a chance to pick up Cleveland — a franchise with no championships in 43 years — from the doldrums. Even more special is that James is a 22-year-old who grew just a few miles down the road from the old Richfield Coliseum where the Cavaliers used to play before moving downtown.

He's fresh, exciting, and a new breed of athlete. It's what made last year's Finals fun with the explosion from Dwyane Wade, although too much of it was predicated by incessant fouls.

James is a 21st-century version of Jim Brown in basketball trunks — too big, fast, and powerful. He also has the genius basketball IQ to overcome the marginal talent and coaching around him. Not coincidentally, it was Brown who led the Cleveland Browns to the NFL title — in 1964, which was the city's last official championship.

What we don't know is how well James can sustain this to get his team over the hump. The first five games were all nail-biters, and either team could have won any of the games. The Cavs have outscored the Pistons by an average of 1.2 points per game.

It's likely the Pistons are much better prepared than the inexperienced Cavs to deal with a rested Spurs team, and give it a shot. It just wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

This has nothing to do with being realistic. Realistic is not what James did on Thursday night, so we don't know if he's through as a miracle-worker for the season, or just getting started.

For the sake of Cleveland, the organization and the league, let's just hope it's the latter.

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Spurs/Pistons is bad for the NBA. We don't need the spurts to win again. Besides, if the Cavs win this year, what are the chances of them being a serious contender for a championship next year? They might turn into the next Miami. You never know with the east. I say root for the Cavs this year. After all, they are searching for their first championship just like us. Who wants to live in a world where the spurts get labeled the championship dynasty of the new millenium? I'm a Mavericks fan, not a Michael Finley fan.