LeBron James is one of best basketball players to ever live, but his career has hardly been perfect. The most jarring example of this came during his first season in Miami, when the Heat made the NBA Finals and were taken down in six games by the Dallas Mavericks. It wasn’t a result that many saw coming at the time, and part of the reason why Dallas got the job done was the brilliant job the team did against James.
The six-game stretch James had against the Mavericks might have been the worst postseason series of his career. James averaged 17.8 points on 47.8 percent shooting from the field and 32.1 percent shooting from three. These aren’t the numbers that you expect out of James, but Dallas’ defense on him kept him guessing and uncomfortable.
The architect of that defense was none other than current Raptors coach Dwane Casey. After that series, he became the head coach in Toronto, and is now trying to figure out a way to defeat James again in the postseason.
After his dominant performance in Cleveland’s win in Game 2 over the Raptors on Thursday night, James was asked about how that 2011 series helped shape him as a player. The best player in the world took it as an opportunity to credit Casey for making him get better at stuff he “wasn’t very good at” to become a “complete basketball player.”
LeBron credits Dwane Casey's gameplan with the Mavericks in the 2011 Finals for helping turn him into the player he is today. pic.twitter.com/VofOWUihOV
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) May 4, 2018
“I wasn’t that good of a player in that series,” James said. “I wasn’t a complete basketball player. Dwane Casey drew up a gameplan against me in that ’11 series in the Finals when I played Dallas to take away things that I was very good at and to try to make me do things I wasn’t very good at. He’s part of the reason he is who I am today.”
It’s high praise from James, who has owned the Raptors recently. His teams have eliminated Toronto in each of the last two playoffs and look like they’re on their way to doing it again this year. The good news for the Raptors is there’s still time to turn things around, and even if it’s been a while, they have a coach who has found a way to confound James in the postseason in the past.
