By Shandel Richardson, Sun Sentinel –
MIAMI — Throughout his career, Miami Heat forward LeBron James has never dealt with being in the role of secondary player.
With so much talk about who is the Heat’s closer, James has no problem taking a back seat to Dwyane Wade in situations when the game is on the line.
He showed that Saturday when he signaled for Wade to come get the ball for the final shot against the Indiana Pacers.
Wade hit an off-balanced jump shot to seal the Heat’s 93-91 overtime victory at AmericanAirlines Arena, continuing a streak of 12 consecutive wins at home. While critics may fire at James for being passive, he’s fine with being the distributor in these moments.
“It is what it is, honestly,” James said.
“I understand what comes with it. I’ve made game-winners, and missed game-winners, made passes for game-winners, made passes that didn’t go in. I’m not too concerned about (opinions) out there. I’m concerned about what happens in the locker room, what happens on the floor.”
The Heat have repeatedly said they have no blueprint for who takes the final shot. After the game, James reiterated “it doesn’t matter for me.” He was content with what he had already done to help the Heat stay alive.
He made a 3-pointer near the end of regulation to force overtime. He also hit another 3-pointer in the extra session that cut into the Pacers’ five-point lead and assisted on a key basket by Chris Bosh.
James missed a potential game-winner, but the Heat were given a second chance when Udonis Haslem grabbed the offensive rebound.
When the ball made its way to James again, he called for Wade.
“I don’t second-guess it all,” James said.
“As soon as we got the offensive rebound and it got kicked to me, I told D-Wade to come get it. I had enough opportunities in the game to make plays. I made a few to put us in position to win. That’s all I want to do.”
James’ impact went beyond hitting a game-winning shot. Teammates referred to him as the quarterback for calling the plays, sometimes going against coach Erik Spoelstra. James twice made changes against the Pacers that resulted in baskets.
“He’s like the quarterback-coach out there,” center Joel Anthony said.
“Whether it’s timeouts, during games, he’s telling us what to do. It’s great to be able to play with somebody like that. You don’t have a lot of players like that in the league that have so much input in terms of what’s going on.”
It was James who called the play for Bosh that tied it at 91 with 1:03 left in overtime. James found Bosh at the top of the key for the 20-foot jumper.
While Wade said James is given free rein to make changes, it’s never a case of overdoing it.
“He’s not like Willie Beaman or anything, where he’s just changing plays,” said Wade, referring to a quarterback character from the movie Any Given Sunday who often called plays against the coach’s orders.
“Sometimes, it a read of the game. Like I said, coach has been great with letting the players freelance in certain situations. It’s just sometimes how the game is going. I wasn’t in the flow in the second half. When I got back in, ‘Bron called a couple plays. He wanted me to have the ball. That’s him being a quarterback, him being a leader and looking and saying, ‘I’ve got to get my guy some shots.’ “
Spoelstra actually wanted to extend the game by going for a two-pointer on the final regulation possession. The Heat instead were patient enough to work the ball around long enough to find James for the open 3-pointer in the corner.
Spoelstra said it’s a matter of the team become more familiar with each other.
“Those last three or four possessions (in overtime) we ran something before that we had diagramed,” Spoelstra said.
“But once we got a stop, LeBron wanted to run something with Chris. I let them go with it and we got a couple good looks out of it. Then out of a timeout, they made an adjustment on their own as well. That comes with time. You can’t expect to have that type of continuity necessarily right off the bat, but everybody is gaining more trust.”
