LeBron James is one of the greatest players to have ever played the game and we have seen him dominate the last 2 decades of basketball. However, LeBron was just another superstar who couldn’t get over the championship hump back in 2011.
The world of basketball was stunned when the Miami Heat fell to the underdog Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals. The Heat were a dominant force that ran through the Eastern Conference and took a quick 2-1 lead in the series. However, they would drop three consecutive games after a cocky Dwyane Wade and LeBron James mocked Dirk Nowitzki’s cough when the German was sick heading into Game 4.
Fans took LeBron’s failure after making the Big 3 in Miami and being extremely cocky about Dallas as a catastrophic mistake. Even Damian Lillard, who was playing for Weber State in 2011 decided to pile onto his ‘favorite player’ with a scathing tweet that nobody saw at the time.
https://twitter.com/ownhimpg/status/1534277534195634180
Naturally, Lillard decided to delete the tweet over time considering the status LeBron holds within the league circles. But in 2011, there was no status for LeBron to hide behind when they lost. It is one of the most glaring flaws in his career and it is one that he can never rectify.
Even though James has won 4 championships since that loss, his detractors continue to bring that up. Considering the margins are so thin when it comes to trying to compete against Michael Jordan, a loss like that will never be erased from anyone’s memory.
Out of the 6 Finals losses in LeBron’s career, 5 of them are perfectly explainable. 2007, 2014, 2017, and 2018 they were outmatched, and in 2015 his co-stars were all injured. 2011 cannot be explained no matter what you try to do. Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks winning a title was joyous for the NBA because it proved you need more than just a super-team to win a title.
