The Thunder look lazy to me in a lot of ways. Nobody seems to want to box out or run the floor on defense. Maybe its just because I watched the Bulls all year, but to me their level of effort just seems unacceptable in certain areas.

Lebron put on a show for the cameras after hitting that big three. Delayed limp. What a self conscious douche. Props to him for finally stepping up and getting the job done. But seriously, screw this guy.

cause noone in chicago has EVER done that

Haters gonna hate...

I feel like I've known you for years.

I'm disappointed this is all coming to an end. I enjoyed posting in this thread over the course of what was a compact season where the action came fast. Being a Bulls fan it was actually nice to have a few Heat fans in here who are somehow not bandwagon frontrunners or Bron worshipers to banter with. And the token self loathing Knicks fan.

I'm looking forward to next season even though it will be rough without dRose. Should be some good storylines. Will the Heatles lose the fire now that they have a title under their belt? Can the Thunder mature and gel into a championship team? What teams will step up as contenders with the Mavs, Lakers, Spurs, C's aging? How many "fuck you Boozers" will I average during a 2012/13 Bulls game?

Team Haterade!

he sure limped a lot more during timeouts.

In case anyone was wondering, Heat are ~5-1 favorites in betting lines for the series now.

that makes sense. i've had similar experiences, where i can keep the pain away while in the game but it becomes overwhelming on the sideline.

video games don't count, dk.

Adrenaline.

My theory is that he was faking it to try and get Snuffleupagus to play him tight, then drive to the hoop on him. When he still played off, LeBron threw up a prayer 3 and got lucky.

In all seriousness, What would be the point of faking a cramp really?

If it was anyone other than LeBron, this would be a non-issue.

The reason I indicated above, or simply as an excuse if you fail or to remove the pressure from you in a late game situation.

How about how quickly that 17 point lead by the vaunted Thunder evaporated? Less than 4 minutes, Miami went from 17 down to all square. That was pretty impressive.

Also, in this series (even before game 4) Westbrook >>> Durant. And it's not even close.

he looked pretty bad in the first half of game 1, but since then he's been on

Well, in fairness their whole team looked bad in the first half of game one. He's obviously taken some undesirable shots at times, but that's how he plays. He didn't do anything in game 4 he didn't do the first three games, the difference was that he made more of those shots than previously. He was attacking the basket before, just not converting as much. But he hasn't had many turnovers, he plays as hard as anybody on the floor, has rebounded well, and even played aggressive (if not always effective) defense.

Durant, on the other hand, has disappeared for long stretches of the game (besides foul trouble). Some of that is a credit to Miami's defense, which for most of games 3 and 4 has done a good job making it difficult to even get the ball into Durant's hands. They've done a great job denying entry passes. But he hasn't stepped up doing the other things. He's nonexistent as a passer, not setting up other guys, has been mostly a non-factor on the boards, and has been pretty much torched by whoever he's covering defensively. I'm sure he'll come out tonight and do all of these things well and the Thunder will win going away, but thus far I haven't been impressed by his all around game. He looks like a one-dimensional player-- granted that one dimension is probably the single best dimension of anybody in the league. And he's young, tough, steps up HUGE in the big spots, all that stuff. He's scary good at what he does do well. I'm just saying, that so far in this series he hasn't blown me away.

Am I still terrified that he could get hot and win 3 straight all by himself? Absolutely.

Also, about the foul trouble real quick. That 4th foul in game 3 was obviously not a foul. But he left his feet on the pump fake, and more often than not, right or wrong that will get called. IMO the major reasons he was in foul trouble in those games was first off, that he simply can't cover LeBron and was getting beat. Those fouls you can live with, even if sometimes they're 50/50 calls. But those weren't the ones that got him in trouble. In both games he also picked up one or two really stupid fouls. Like a loose ball foul on Haslem after Haslem had already gotten the rebound. There was no reason to risk a foul there. When you're trying to cover LeBron or Wade you can't pick up those type of fouls. At least Brooks finally adjusted and put him on Chalmers Tuesday night. That didn't work out so well defensively, but at least he had his guy out of foul trouble late.