During the NBA’s indefinite hiatus, I will be rewatching every game of LeBron’s NBA Finals career. Every Finals game from the last 20 years is available to NBA League Pass subscribers on the NBA app or through apps like YouTube TV. We will be going chronologically through LeBron’s Finals career. 

Previous Games

Game 1, 2007 NBA Finals: LeBron’s first Finals game.

Game 2, 2007 NBA Finals: LeBron bounces back but falls down 0-2.

Game 3, 2007 NBA Finals: LeBron gets the last shot but it doesn’t go.

Game 4, 2007 NBA Finals: Staying home.

Game 1, 2011 NBA Finals: LeBron’s first Finals victory.

Game 2, 2011 NBA Finals: Heat blow 15-point 4th quarter lead.

Game 3, 2011 NBA Finals: Bosh game-winner helps put Heat up 2-1.

Game 4, 2011 NBA Finals: LeBron has 8 points in Finals loss.

Game 5, 2011 NBA Finals: LeBron bounces back, but Mavs shoot the lights out.

Game 6, 2011 NBA Finals: Jason Terry and the Mavs burn down the Heat in Miami.

Game 1, 2012 NBA Finals: Westbrook and Durant lead comeback to take 1-0 lead over Heat.

Chris Bosh is back in the starting line-up after coming off the bench but playing 33 minutes in Game 1, as Bosh appears to be fully recovered from an abdominal injury he suffered earlier in the playoffs. LeBron James came through with a 30-point performance in Game 1, but he and Dwyane Wade were outplayed by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in the opening game. By adding Bosh in from the jump, alongside Battier and Chalmers, they’re clearly hoping the additional space can open up the lane for a LeBron, but also for Wade, whose performances have come and gone with his health. A quick LeBron-Wade pick-and-roll gives the Heat a bucket early. 

This is a game that, unlike, the entirety of the 2011 Finals, I have a vivid memory of. It was the end of senior year, having just finished my Finals, just before college graduation and I had just returned from an amazing trip at Alton Baker Park in Eugene with some friends before calling my friend Chris, whom you may know from writing for this site because the 2012 Finals were the only thing on my mind after a sunny Friday afternoon with no school anymore. I am who I am.

To his house I went, where about 20 people came through by the end of the night and we were all locked in on this game while attempting to be social.  Wade got it going early, with a couple of assists and a dunk as the lane looked much more open. But then it goes to 20-5, as the Thunder are forced to call another timeout. Then it goes to 23-8 like they did in Game 1, the Thunder defense has to go into scrap mode. 

In addition to the defense, they need Harden to get it going because Westbrook has seemingly come back to earth after an incredible Game 1. Westbrook had 27 points and nearly a triple-double, but he starts Game 2 missing his first five shots. Then Wade gets a second foul on Durant, as he looks to be changing the game for the Heat. Harden has 5 early points in a minute, a sign of things to come, just not with Oklahoma City. 

And early in Game 2 we have a cameo from Norris Cole! Although I liked the move in Game 1 to go without a point guard on the second unit, the Heat needs Cole’s energy to combat the Thunder’s bulldog defense. Cole then gives an added plus by scoring a bucket in transition almost immediately to make it 33-17. It’s the biggest lead of the series so far for either team. But damn, Harden has been great in this game with 14 points to lead the Thunder. In the absence of their two stars playing well early, the third star has been the man for Oklahoma City, bringing them to within 10 at 35-25. Then Ibaka, the star that the Thunder chose over Harden, got his third block and a mid-range jumper to make it an 8-point game. A few possessions later, LeBron steals the ball before going end-to-end and getting the lay-up off the glass before Ibaka can get there, bringing out a frustrated yell from the man who would later do art with scarves.

ABC is now advertising the NBA’s FIRST EVER Social Media Awards. Turns out it would be the LAST EVER NBA Social Media Awards because we already have enough of that in our lives now and nobody needs to give an award for it. “I’ve heard Steve Nash has won the twitter award,” Mike Breen says. And now Wade hits another shot as he continues his strong play from the first half, pushing the Heat lead back to 15. 

Durant gets a few shots to fall and then Westbrook gets a drive to make it an 11-point game with 4 minutes left. Then a Heat turnover gets Durant to cut the lead to single-digits for the first time since the 2nd quarter. But this game and the one before it are LeBron’s two best games so far in his NBA Finals career. He’s taking over and letting his instincts guide him. LeBron is able to get the Heat into the 4th quarter with an 11-point lead. Westbrook hits out of the quarter to bring it to 9 before Durant picks up inopportune 5th foul with 10:39 left to go.

Then after a brilliant game for most of this night, Harden commits an offensive foul on Mario Chalmers, after Jeff Van Gundy says, “flopping around looking for the call.” If only Jeff knew what awaited him on the other side of this series. Luckily as Harden is sputtering out after a great game, Durant is ascending. He makes a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 10, then he dunks on Shane Battier with 8:20 left to cut it to 8. Then Harden drives to the basket it to cut it to 6. If I were Thunder a fan, this is one of the games that I would look back on with quite a bit lot of melancholy. All three of the MVPs had great games, but it just slipped away. What they could have had if they had just stuck it out together? What if they had won? What if the moneyed oil men who stole the team from Seattle had been okay to just pay a little luxury tax to have one of the greatest core groups in NBA history?

Then Westbrook gets a 3-point play a few minutes later, against LeBron no less, to cut the lead to 85-81 with 6 minutes left.

Shane Battier, as a reminder of what the Heat didn’t have the previous year in a floor-spacing forward who didn’t need the ball, makes a banked 3-pointer for his fifth of the game as he and LeBron have been the two biggest constants in the first two games. 

Durant, who picked up his 5th foul early in the quarter, has exploded in the 4th and has scored 10 points since picking up that penultimate foul. In order to tighten up the defense and add size, Scott Brooks brings in Sefolosha for Derek Fisher. Then Durant gets to the line with 3:20 left. Durant’s 4th quarter is one that several articles would be written about, had things gone the other way. Luckily for the Heat and for LeBron, things didn’t go that way. Wade hits a fading jumper to put them up by seven with just under 3 minutes left. However, the Thunder are able to claw back to within three to a couple of huge baskets from Westbrook. But then LeBron, seemingly taking a page from the book of Tim Duncan, who beat him in 2007, hits a mid-post angle bank shot to give the Heat breathing room at 96-91 with under 1:20 left. It wouldn’t be the last time his ghosts of Spurs past came back to aid him in this game. 

The Thunder go for the quick-2 on the drive from Durant, who was nearly the hero, and then the press works for the Thunder as Derek Fisher forces a Wade steal that leads to a 3-pointer by Durant and suddenly the lead is only 2 with 35 seconds left. Once again, Oklahoma City’s ability to put the shoe of the other foot of the Heat and force them to make turnovers is giving them a chance to go ahead 2-0. But Durant’s storybook ending comes up just short, thanks to what Thunder fans might call a dirty play that a more Machiavellian perspective may call smart. At least we Bruce Bowen would. 

Durant’s drive against James to tie the game down by 2 ends up with the jumper coming off the front rim and Durant looking for the call. Five years ago, before, LeBron looked for a similar call. It looked like LeBron swiped at the ball and then came down on KD’s thighs as he went up, disrupting the momentum on the jumper. Was it a missed call? Likely so, but James bet that the refs wouldn’t bail out Durant late in the game and he guessed right to give Oklahoma City their first home loss of the postseason. Also, here we see an example of one of the things LeBron often says: the greatest teacher in life is experience. Back in Game 3 of the 2007 Finals, Bruce Bowen was all over LeBron on a game-tying 3-point attempt and there was no foul called.

On this possession guarding Durant, LeBron appears to have remembered that lesson from his Finals past and from the refs swallowing the while back in 2007. But just as importantly, after getting shown up by Westbrook and Durant in Game 1, Wade, James and Bosh, as well as the rest of the Heat role players, were ready for the challenge in Game 2, even withstanding a big game from James Harden.

Now the Heat have homecourt advantage as they head back to South Beach for a pivotal Game 3.

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