• Kirk Goldsberry has been using optical data to map the spots from which players like to shoot on the floor — all the way down to the square foot level and smaller. The charts are beautiful and provide a window into each player’s sweet spots. His charts on LeBron James over the last few seasons demonstrate how James’s shot selection has evolved. Great stuff.

• As I wrote in my immediate postgame recap of Game 5, the Heat destroyed the Thunder defense with a combination of newly refined approaches (mostly James’ post-up game) and classic sets they’ve been running since nearly the first game James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh played together. Sebastian Pruiti, writing at Grantland, went to the film to detail the devastating effectiveness of one of those classic Miami sets — a play built around screening action in the corners. Pruiti wonders how any opponent could defend this kind of fast-moving motion-style offense when all three stars are committed to playing with vigor and pursuing every counter. And it’s hard. But watch these clips, and you’ll see some glaring Thunder mistakes, including late rotations, miscommunication on potential switches, etc. This play is very difficult to defend, but the first step for Oklahoma City is to learn to play better defense. It will come.

• Scott Raab, the author of a very angry book about LeBron James, reacts to LeBron winning a title.

• I endorse every single word of this Kevin Arnovitz essay on the side benefits of LeBron winning a title.

• The NBA’s micro-movies from every Finals game have been great. Here’s the Game 5 movie. Stick around until the end to see a fun cameo from Shane Battier and a great shot of Chris Bosh wearing silly glasses.

• Bethlehem Shoals, writing at GQ, on LeBron James and “About damn time!”

• Tom Ziller of SB Nation on the redemption of Chris Bosh, one that really shouldn’t have even been necessary. Bosh had a killer Finals. I’m not sure if he has ever played better help defense, even if Oklahoma City’s non-threatening (as scorers) big men allowed him to rove more aggressively than he could have against other teams. Bosh wasn’t ever in peak form offensively, but the spacing, passing and pick-and-roll skills that he provided were crucial. A great series.

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LeBron James and Dwayne Wade celebrate on the sidelines in the closing moments of the Heat’s 121-106 series-clinching Game 5 victory over the Thunder. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

The evidence, decades worth of it, has been staring us in the face for a long time: winning even a single NBA championship is brutally difficult and requires the perfect combination of luck, health, matchups and talent. The Mavericks have had one of the 25 greatest players in league history in his prime for more than a decade, and it took a unique confluence to get them over the top last season, including health among the right players and a one-year rental of one of the league’s best defenders (Tyson Chandler), acquired via a savvy deal involving a bizarre non-guaranteed contract. Dallas had mammoth “everything has to go right” comebacks in both their second-round series against the Lakers in and Game 2 of the Finals against Miami, and, of course, benefited from the puzzling meltdown from the game’s greatest player.

The 2007-08 Celtics, a management-created Big Three that fans typically find less abrasive than the (partially) player-created Big Three in Miami, blitzed the league in their first season together. Since then, however, they have fallen short due to poorly timed injuries and the emergence of a better conference rival in Miami — factors beyond their control.

The list goes on and on, dating to the 1950s Hawks and the 1960s Lakers, the latter a team which suffered so many heartbreaking losses against Boston that a player literally nicknamed “Mr. Clutch” went ring-less until the very end of his career. The truly great teams who fell short of winning even a single championship or “only” won that first ring outnumber — by a huge margin — the teams that have been fortunate enough to form mini-dynasties. All the “asterisk” talk after Derrick Rose’s sad knee injury in the very first game of these playoffs — talk that, thankfully, faded weeks ago — ignores the fact that nearly every playoff season features multiple injuries, big and small, nagging and crippling, that alter title odds across the league.

Put simply: There is a ceiling on NBA greatness, and this Heat team was never going to break through it. The very best teams in NBA history have typically outscored opponents by between eight and 12 points per 100 possessions, with fewer than a half-dozen teams breaking double digits in scoring margin. And there are always one or two teams lurking just below the top dog, waiting to pounce if an injury, coaching mistake or some bit of inner team turmoil tilts the championship equation in their favor.

The Heat were always going to have to work hard for this, even if they didn’t realize it when they held that ridiculous welcome party two years ago. And they have worked for it as injuries, age, on-court issues and random luck have forced them — both as individuals and as a team — to become something altogether different than they were when this Big Three experiment began.

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• Couper Moorhead of the Heat’s official web site examines the development of LeBron James’ post game, complete with video analysis and insight from David Fizdale, the Miami assistant who works most closely with James (and Dwayne Wade) on post play. Great read.

• Beckley Mason analyzes the film from last year’s Finals and says that the difference between LeBron James’ post game then and now is not where he’s catching the ball, but what he’s able to do with it afterwards.

• John Hollinger notes that while the Heat have tightened up their three-point defense considerably in the postseason (a reversal that may or may not be linked to Miami’s extended use of smaller lineups), the Thunder have shot far more ineffectively from deep than we would’ve expected in this series. James Harden has missed some great looks, and Hollinger notes that Thabo Sefolosha is just 2-of-10 in the Finals. Sefolosha is so important to the Thunder — provided that teams actually have to guard him. He can defend both Wade and James, and in the regular season, Sefolosha nailed 31 of his 71 three-point attempts. That’s a small number of attempts, and that hit rate — 43.7 percent — represents a huge outlier in Sefolosha’s career as an otherwise below-average three-point threat. Before this season, Sefolosha hadn’t shot better than 33 percent from deep in any season since 2006-07 (his rookie year). In these playoffs, he’s shooting 33 percent exactly. We could simply be seeing some regression to the mean.

• Really enjoyed this line from Ken Berger’s piece about LeBron, on the threshold:

At 27, Michael Jordan had one league MVP award, no championships and no Finals MVPs — not even a trip to the Finals. If James and the Heat avoid something that has never happened in Finals history, blowing a 3-1 lead, LeBron at 27 would have three league MVP awards, three trips to the Finals, one championship and, unless LSD infiltrates the voting, one Finals MVP.

That’s not really the point, but it is a fact. Jordan won his first title and Finals MVP in his first trip to the Finals, at age 28 in 1991. It was in his seventh season; James is in his ninth. If James finishes the job — Thursday night, or back in Oklahoma City — this won’t be revisionist history. But perhaps it will be the strongest proof yet that the perception of James’ first eight seasons was a case of previsionist history, if I may.

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LeBron James’ efficiency from the block has lifted the Heat to within one win of a title. (NBAE/Getty Images)

Zoom out from all the noisy storylines about Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks’ lineup choices, the Thunder’s alleged crippling inexperience in the moment and whatever Magic Johnson says about point guard Russell Westbrook. Only then can you see the one big reason why the Heat are a victory away from an NBA title: In a series in which offense has triumphed over defense, the Heat’s offense has been a little better than Oklahoma City’s.

The Heat have scored 107.7 points per 100 possessions in this series, a number better than their regular-season mark and one that would have ranked only behind San Antonio’s. Oklahoma City, for all its struggles against a Miami defense taking away the first option on almost every possession, has scored a robust 105.8 points per 100 possessions. That mark would have ranked fourth for the season, even if it does represent a step down from OKC’s insane scoring totals through the first three rounds of the playoffs. The Thunder have made crucial mistakes in the last two games, but they also found a way to gut out points against the best defense they have faced, one that’s forced them into uncomfortable places. That shows grit and poise, even amid the late-game issues.

In a series so close, all those little things matter enormously. It matters that the Heat have outscored Oklahoma City’s starters by 17 points in a four-game stretch in which the total margin is just five points (in Miami’s favor). It matters that Nick Collison vanished for long stretches in Game 4 after providing the best combination of offense and defense among Oklahoma City’s three core big men. It matters that Thunder point guard Derek Fisher, the veteran leader on a team whose youth is apparent, has wasted crunch-time possessions with terrible shots in each of the last two games. It matters that Dwyane Wade, seemingly unqualified for first-option duties, has managed to hit just enough nutty shots to keep Miami (almost) afloat when LeBron James sits. It matters that Chris Bosh has supplied great help defense.

But what matters most is that the Thunder cannot stop LeBron on the block. James has evolved into the dangerous post-up presence that everyone clamored for him to become since he entered the league nearly a decade ago. If Oklahoma City cannot find a better answer than leaving James Harden to die in the paint against James, it will have a hard time extending this series beyond Thursday.

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LeBron James had some good and bad moments down the stretch of the Heat’s loss in Game 4. (Damian Strohmeyer/SI)

It is simultaneously the most fascinating and tiresome debate in the NBA: Is LeBron James “clutch”?

First, the entire concept of “clutch” is overblown for two reasons:

1. The first 45 minutes of an NBA game matter. Focusing only on “crunch time” is arbitrary and ignores the fact that every possession is meaningful. If your favorite team lays an egg on defense in the first half, that matters, even if it rallies in the second half.

2. There is a great deal of randomness in “clutch” statistics over the long haul. Sort the data by individual player or team, and you’ll see that year over year, these things swing wildly. Paul Pierce is monstrously clutch one season and a choke artist the next — by the numbers, anyway. The Lakers were shaky in the “clutch” last season but emerged as the league’s best clutch offense this season — right up until they went off the rails against the Thunder in the second round of the playoffs.

Where is the hard truth here? Is there any?

The same confusion can make it hard to judge individual “clutch” performances, an unfortunate obsession among NBA fans and talk-show pundits. James missed a potential game-winning shot in Game 4 on Sunday in Boston and threw several passes that appeared to be of the dreaded “hot-potato” variety. A certain subset of fans will thus brand the performance as “unclutch.”

The great and horrible thing about basketball is that it is complicated. What appeared to happen on a key possession might not be what you see once you take the time to re-watch the same possession three and four times. These judgments are important, in that they inform our collective evaluation of a player and play a part in deciding his place in NBA history.

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