Best of 3

The NBA finals is now down to a best of 3 series. Thats good news for the Dallas fans since the Mavs won game 4 to tie things up. But the bad news is, they got to play 2 of the 3 in Miami. Not the toughest place to play, but these are still finals games on the road and are no joke. May be the Mavs look for some poetic justice here. In 2006, they chocked away the home court to Wade and the Heat. They came from ahead to lose after a 2-0 start to the series. May be now, they win it all in Miami on Wade's home court and erase some bad memories. They had a lot of complaints back then about some serious home-cooking served by the referees to D-Wade. Dallas thought they couldn't even breathe on Wade without being whistled for a foul that entire series. Some agreed that it was the best treatment a superstar got from the NBA officials since MJ retired. The scary part for Dallas is that Wade has really stepped up his game lately in these Finals. And going back to Miami, he will be a load to handle in those games 6 and 7. Mavs better be prepared.

As Wade asserts his influence on his team and this series, LeBron has faded into the background and almost the oblivion in game 4. 8 points in game 4 is not king-like for sure. He is getting a lot of attention in the media and also some trash-talking from DeShawn Stevenson. I don't know why DeShawn is yapping and adding fuel to LeBron's fire. He did the same back in his Washington days and is now compensating for his boss Mark Cuban, who has surprisingly gone quiet this playoffs. Now the media is talking about this game 5 as being the biggest game of LeBron's career. He is expected to come out firing on all cylinders. Honestly, I find all this criticism a little over the top. Granted, the standards for LeBron are high, but isn't this the whole point of becoming the "big 3", so that one of them can afford to have nights like this? Especially when the other 2 are going great like Wade and Bosh were in game 4 - Wade had 32 and Bosh had 24. This is not the same as LeBron scoring 8 for a Cleveland team where he was the only scorer.

Actually, I expected a lot of such nights for LeBron with the Heat. I thought LeBron would be their best player all-around, but Wade would be the premier scorer for them. It turns out that I under-estimated LeBron's effectiveness as a scorer. He surprised me by becoming option number 1 for the Heat throughout the season and leading them in scoring by more than a point over Wade - known as a more prolific scorer. I guess he raised the bar higher for himself by being such a consistent scorer throughout the season and this is not the time to be dropping just 8 points! It would be interesting to see how he responds. The media is putting all sorts of pressure on him, but Wade has got it going right now and the last thing LeBron should try and do is hog the ball to save his image. This game 5 might very well be decided on how Miami and LeBron react to these criticisms. As for Nowitzki, he will be there for Dallas in game 5 - sick or not, fever or not. And he will be very interested in finding out which LeBron shows up just like us. This finals just keeps getting better!