Talent Trumps Talent

I guess I'm late here, but I'm finally ready to take this Miami Heat team seriously. All season I've ignored the stats, even though the team was ruling all the areas that best prove post-season success, because I'm a stubborn person. They led the league in point differential—which hoop junkies know is wildly prescient in terms of predicting champions—and finished the season as the only team in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. But I got hung up on what has turned out to be minutia. I thought, "Mike Miller doesn't do anything anymore except rebound and look like a surly lesbian"; or "Surely you can't expect much from a team that jumped to sign Mike Bibby and his giant headband because he was clearly an upgrade for them at point guard"; or "Jam Band Jones literally does nothing except for catch and shoot from behind the arc"; and finally "What is a Joel Anthony?"

I believed all these sorry parts, even next to Wade and LeBron, wouldn't amount to anything more than a second round exit.

But, as outrageous as this is going to sound, I forgot one important factor...

LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are better at basketball than everybody else. There's no need to outline the how and why they are so good, but I do feel it necessary to say this: They are underrated. Yeah, deal with it. Even with his tendency to settle for jumpers a bit too much and his refusal to master any post moves, LeBron James is three times as good as anyone else playing in the league. And yes, I'm speaking from the gut here and basing this not on stats or really even anything concrete, but watching him work last night once again validated the truthiness of my hyperbole. Anytime another player is mentioned as being close to his ability, it's insulting. He deserves the MVP award every season from now until 2017.

And Wade is just about as good.

This all comes back to a theory I've long held that all role players in the NBA are essentially at the same level in terms of skill. The only shifting variable that makes one bench player look better than the next is the talent level of the stars around which they orbit. The reason Big Baby has been so effective on the Celtics (up until the this year's playoffs, at least) is he's asked to do so little with KG, Pierce, Ray and Rondo managing the big accounts. But with those four guys struggling a bit during the playoffs, Baby is called upon to do more—and has looked like an unchained bulldog who's lost his eyesight.

Bron and Wade handle so much of the manual labor that their teammates are asked to do way less than the standard role player. Jughandle Jones is bad at dribbling and passing, so they've reduced his role down to a glorified practice player. Even Chris Bosh is only asked to hit a few jumpers from the elbow and get one put-back off an offensive rebound per game so he can make that face he loves so much.

This happens every year: The playoffs arrive and some teams who had great depth during the regular season struggle to get bench contribution, while several teams without much regular season firepower off the bench get a few wins solely because their substitutes outperform the other team's. Rarely is this the result of a Nate Robinson or an Aaron Gray suddenly finding or losing his game, but rather their respective ringleaders asking to borrow $1 instead of $20. Right now Wade and LeBron are taking care of their children. Garnett and the gang? Not so much.