Former Chicago Bulls legendary shooting guard Michael Jordan and his greatness shows just how hard things can be for LeBron James in this NBA Finals.
It was a difficult run for the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in a huge Game 5 battle with the five-seed Miami Heat and former Chicago Bulls star shooting guard/small forward Jimmy Butler. The Lakers’ two biggest superstar, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, were great for them when it mattered. But the supporting cast for them once again came up short.
The likes of shooting guard/wings Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, etc. couldn’t get much going at all for the Lakers. And it really cost them in the end.
But this proves a bigger point of how hard it can be to win an NBA Championship when you’re facing a desperate team like the Heat were in this game. And “Jimmy G. Buckets” and the Heat are definitely going to play with that same level of desperation moving forward. They put up a great performance as a team to send the NBA Finals to a Game 6.
LeBron had a great game, with a double-double that likely should’ve won the Lakers Game 5. He registered 40 points, 13 rebounds, seven assists, and three steals. That was even better than Butler in the scoring department, who registered 35 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals, and one block. It is easy to argue that Butler had the more well-rounded performance of these two superstars.
Moreover, anyone saying that getting a fourth title means that LeBron is in fact the GOAT needs to take a seat. How difficult this Finals run is for LeBron just proves that it was never easy for the Bulls legendary shooting guard Michael Jordan to get it done in crunch time.
Sometimes you just have to find a way, And that was something that LeBron and the Lakers were not able to do on this night. A lot of the blame will, and should, fall on the shoulders of Green. He missed a wide open three-pointer that could’ve won the game for the Lakers in the dying seconds of the fourth quarter. But he missed.
There’s really no fault to LeBron here, but his team just couldn’t get it done in crunch time. We’ll see if his squad can get it done in Game 6. But not being able to close it out in a game-clinching situation for the first time in his career shows that LeBron can be overmatched. That was really something that Jordan ever found himself in during any NBA Finals series he ever played in.
Game 6 of the 2020 NBA Finals between the Lakers and Heat takes place on Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. CT. There is still a lot on the line in Game 6. If the Heat are able to push it to a pivotal Game 7, then all eyes would fall on seeing how LeBron could cope with that type of situation.