LeBron as a good as gone

There was an overwhelming feeling over the past three days that we were witnessing a murder of sorts. Nobody personally died, but a city might have figuratively bit the dust with the Cleveland Cavaliers Game 5 loss at home on Tuesday and then Thursday night’s 94-85 loss at the hands of the Boston Celtics.

Yes, the Cavs, the NBA’s No. 1 seed, just couldn’t come through in the playoffs again. They fell apart and couldn’t handle a team that had sleepwalked through almost all of the regular season. They made brutal coaching errors and they were clearly outplayed. When you have the league’s MVP and supposed child of destiny, and he wasn’t the best player on the court, something is definitely wrong.

LeBron James can’t blame this entire on his teammates either; he was nothing special in two of the games of this series. No, the honour of best player from this series had to go to Rajon Rondo, who has proved that there’s no Big Three in Boston any more. If anything, it has to be a Big Four, or even just Rondo as a headliner. His ridiculous 29-18-13 in Game 4 will go down as one of the best all around playoff performances ever. It’s pretty hard to outplay King James, but young Rajon clearly did.

Cleveland’s coach Mike Brown did his team absolutely no help during this season either. I’m sure that given the players he had at his expense this season, any amateur could have racked up 50 wins and probably had a better shot at winning this series. It became fairly obvious fairly early that playing Shaq and Big Z wasn’t working – and might have been exactly what the Celtics wanted. Why play into their style of game when going small and playing athletically would have decimated the aging Celts? Brown probably just coached his way out of a job.

So what’s next for LeBron? That will be the question that’s asked for the next month and half while we prepare for free agency and the big sweepstakes for superstar free agents. The bigger question might actually be: Where’s next for LeBron? After the past two seasons of having to single-handedly drag his teams to this point and then be let down be those around him, I think nearly every destination is looking better than Cleveland right now. Except for New Jersey that is.