Shadows and Dust

LeBron got two new tattoos before these playoffs. One on the right arm says, "What we do in life," while the one on the left arm completes the phrase with, "Echoes in eternity." Well, game five definitely will at least.

Since that quote is from Gladiator, here are a slew of other quotes from Gladiator that would also be fitting right now:

"You have a great name. You must kill your name before he kills you."
Yes, this is the question we have to ask following that loss: What does "LeBron" mean right now? Since his days at St. Vincent-St. Mary's, he has existed as potential personified; the name "LeBron" standing for the coming roundball epoch when he would raze the league then rebuild it in his image without letting any of the crumbs touch the ground. But a game like he played in game five is nowhere to be found in the scriptures.

Of course we're judging him harshly; that's what you do to supposed saviors. So no, this was not just another bad game. That cannot happen with this man. If he wants to fulfill the prophecy, he has to always be the best, always. And he needs to do this all the time, and never not do this. Additionally, he can never not be the best. He was way not the best in game five.

And if it happens in game six, the name "LeBron" may start to stand for something else.

"The frost, it sometimes makes the blade stick."
This Angry LeBron thing? I don't know if that's his jam. Seems like he just saw that Kobe does the angry face, so figured he should do the angry face. Nah. This is Lebron:



Or this:



"I may die here in this cell or in the arena tomorrow. What possible difference can I make?"
I know LeBron, it must be hard to have your impact pretty much negated by Mike Brown's choice of lineups. Because Mike Brown doesn't seem all that good at choosing the most effective lineups, does he? How about Delonte or Varejao or Hickson? But most importantly, Mike Brown needs to remember that the better team is the one who is supposed to impose their style and character on the game. But who knows who the better team is here.

"He sleeps so well because he is loved."
This is the dude who dressed like this after getting bounced from the playoffs last year:



Losing needs to start mattering to him if he wants whatever legendary basketball players are supposed to want.

"I don't pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people."
I don't speak for each writer on this Website when I say that LeBron James will never be in my Fave Five (and, actually, I know I kind of am speaking for the other writers on this Website, but we all have our own reasons).

But: I love watching him when he asserts, I love that he can turn every muscle twitch into an event and, as a life-long fan of this semi-niche professional league, I love his importance. I love that he developed his own calling-card dunk (you know, his arm juts out perpendicular to his body, his legs just about cross and he freezes for like a minute before putting it through), because I love dunks. I love that he's the first true NBA icon that I've been able to watch from day one and truly digest every nuance of his sprawling narrative as it happens (although I was there for Kobe and Iverson's entrance, I was a touch young to really grasp the meaning).

"He will bring them death, and they will love him for it."
I don't want to get into what this means for free agency too much, but those catty comments in the post-game press conference—"I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have a bad game here or there, you've had three bad games in a seven-year career, then it's easy to point that out."—are really helping his bid for league supervillain if he does decide to go to the Knicks.

"Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how, but what we can decide is how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered as men."
A win in game six does not wash this performance away. The only mouthwash for this is a championship.