NBA Playoffs 2012: LeBron James Has a Date with Destiny and a Familiar Foe

A Game 7 with the Boston Celtics, the NBA’s historical standard of excellence, blocks the path of LeBron James and his Miami Heat to the validation offered by a championship.

It shouldn’t happen any other way—for us, or for him.

Boston’s season has been so inconsistent that Thursday’s “stinker,” while disappointing, is hardly a stunning development.

The basketball gods have been generous to us this postseason.  It’s been a full decade since the NBA playoffs have offered more “ultimate” games—and four of those five 2002 encounters were opening-round Game 5's.

The pomp and circumstance—not to mention pressure and challenge—of a Game 7 in an extended playoff run is unique in our games.  A “Do-or-Die” performance on the heels of six very real dress rehearsals.  On with the show.  This Is It!

James has twice ended his season with a Game 7 loss.  During his initial trip to the playoff buffet in 2006, a tasty 3-2 second-round edge over the veteran Detroit Pistons evaporated.  Two years later, again in the Conference Semifinals, the Cavs extended the title-bound Celtics to a Game 7 Garden Party.

LeBron and his mates seemed to learn from that early Detroit disappointment, as they closed out the Pistons and later Orlando in pivotal Game 6's en route to the NBA Finals.

Dwyane Wade’s NBA playoff baptism was a first-round seven-game victory over the New Orleans Hornets in 2004.  A year later, Coach Riley’s Heat would squander a 3-2 lead over those grizzled Pistons.  Wade scored 20 points in the season-ending defeat but needed 20 shots to turn the trick.

Despite winning championship gold in the interim, Wade would not feel Game 7 pressure for another four years, losing a first-round Game 7 in Atlanta despite a 31-point effort.

Now, no disrespect to the fine franchises of Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans, but Celtic mystique and a ticket to the championship round crank up the intensity another level or three.  The Men in Green have craved this moment ever since falling to this Heat outfit nine arms to 10 last spring.

Let’s not forget that ‘twas Coach Rivers and his boys who sent both Wade and James out of the 2010 playoffs and into their summer of decisions.

Heck, it was a rather dysfunctional bunch of Boston Celtics playing for an interim coach that deprived Cleveland of a playoff spot by one measly game in LeBron’s rookie year.

Naw, a seventh-game stare down with the plucky 76ers just wouldn’t have quite the same ambiance.

The stage seems set for LeBron.  He’s produced big numbers in his prior Game 7’s.  No one has scored this prolifically in the playoffs against a Celtic team since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Milwaukee hey-day back in 1974.

But here’s one last thing not to forget.

Coach Tom Heinsohn’s Celtics won Game 7 in 1974—in Milwaukee.

Does the Truth have one more Havlicekian performance for us?

Can KG again inspire comparisons to Cowens as he did in the Atlanta series?

Will Rondo continue to step up his game under the brightest lights?

Game 7.

This shouldn’t happen any other way.