Seven seconds.
The Miami Heat was seven seconds away from losing its NBA crown and watching the San Antonio Spurs celebrate a championship on its home court.
Heat fans were seven seconds away from having their hearts ripped out of their chests and their souls condemned to a weary and sullen existence, pondering the cruel fate of their beloved team.
This thing was over. Done. Kaput. The home crowd was exiting the building, the Spurs locker room was being covered in plastic for the champagne celebration, the ministage was being readied to be rolled out onto the court for the trophy presentation, yellow tape was being put out to keep nonessential personnel from walking onto the court during the Spurs coronation.
And then, it happened.
The comeback.
It has been something of a maddening series for LeBron James. The Spurs have done everything they can to make him uncomfortable: clog the paint, throw a chicken-wing-breath Boris Diaw at him, poke him with a stick, toss midgets at him, fill his car with popcorn, crank call him at 3 a.m., flush the toilet while he's in the shower, literally throw a kitchen sink at him.
The result has been LeBron turning in erratic performances and playing below his Cobradickish standards.
But you can keep the greatest player on the planet bottled up only for so long. If history has shown us anything, it's that LeBron is perfectly capable of going supernova on the opposing team's faces at any given moment. And in a game where everything was on the line, that's exactly what he did.
All it took was the Spurs knocking off his headband.
Since midway through the second quarter, the Spurs had been punching the Heat in the balls again and again until they puked out a newborn moose. San Antonio, as it has been all goddamned series, was relentlessly raining down buckets and thundered their way to a 13-point lead with less than four minutes to go. LeBron looked shaken and rattled and very much had 2011 Finals written all over his face.
Then the fourth quarter started, and he slammed home a dunk as Tim Duncan's contact knocked off his headband.
And it was LeBramageddon Time.
The next nine minutes was simply carnage.
LeBron, the hard-driving storm of chaos who rains down destruction from the heavens, simply took the fuck over. He did what we all begged him to do. He attacked the rim with the ferociousness of a man possessed, thundering through the Spurs' defense like an angry cyclone, devastating and laying waste anyone who dared get between him and the basket.
He crushed the rim and blocked shots. He ate Tony Parker, shat out Tony Parker, and then stuffed Tony Parker into a paper bag, lit it on fire, and placed it on Gregg Popovich's front porch.
LeBron led the Heat back from oblivion, as Miami took a late 84-82 lead.
The Spurs fought back and took back a five-point lead.
But LeBron was not yet done sewing people's asses to their own faces.
LeBron proved, again, that he's not just a wanton, mindless rim-killing machine. He can knock down the FUCK YOU J at any time. And with 30 seconds left and the season slipping away and the Haterz stupidly mocking his lack of clutch pants or whatever other ridiculous narrative they love to spew to make themselves feel better about their hollow existence, James nailed a three-pointer and kept Miami's grip on the ledge of the skyscraper like Harrison Ford at the end of Blade Runner.
Before that, the Heat had its moments of showing its championship testicles. Even as the Spurs continued to be the relentless mindless dark maw of oppression that sucked the souls out of Miami whenever they made a run, guys like Shane Battier, Mike Miller, Birdman (THE FUCK YOU BEEN?), and Mario Chalmers kept things in the flow.
(It was Ray Allen, Chris Andersen, Mike Miller, Mario Chalmers, and LeBron that gave the Heat its huge run to make this a game. Dwyane Wade, for all his Game 3 heroics, was a liability... just something for Erik Spoelstra to consider when he reads this recap!)
There was Birdman, banished to the bench the last two games for reasons only Spoelstra knows, rebounding, defending, and diving into the stands for loose balls, where he may have murdered an old lady.
(Ha. Ha. Chalmers gonna Chalmers.)
There was Shane Battier, AKA PROFESSOR HORSETRONAUT, who got the fourth-quarter rally started with a big-balls three and then probably gave the Spurs defenders a good talking to with his Battier trash talk.
There was Mike Miller hitting that clutch three in the fourth quarter without a shoe!
And there was Chris Bosh, struggling with his game, hearing the whispers of people shipping him off to the Bobcats for a box of socks, literally saving the Miami Heat's season with a clutch offensive rebound that gave Ray Allen The Shot and a rejection of Heat Demolisher Danny Green to preserve the win with 1.9 seconds.
Chris Bosh.
Chris Bosh!
CHRIS BOSH!!
And then...
...We looked, and there before us was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the Earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the Earth.
The rider wore a robe dipped in blood. From his mouth came a sword, which was his three-point shot. And the heavens shook, and the Abyss was threatening to overspill....
But then....
Yet it was LeBron's nine-minute stretch of straight up kicking the Spurs in the balls repeatedly until their testicles popped out of their noses and bounced away like Ping-Pong balls that had just been spilled out of their box that put Ray Allen in this position and gave Miami the eventual 103-100 win in overtime.
During the ESPN postgame show, analyst and transparent Heat Hater Bill Simmons tried to think of another event in sports that could match what the Heat did. Simmons, a Red Sox fan, came up with one: the 1986 World Series in which the Sox had the lead and were one out away from winning the championship. Then some dude on the Mets named Mookie hit the ball, the ball went between Bill Buckner's legs, and the Mets rallied to win that game and eventually Game 7 and the World Series title.
Ray Allen's shot may have Mookie'd the Spurs.
And it was all thanks to LeBron James' refusal to go down.
LeBron not only took over in the fourth quarter. He was the fourth quarter, en route to a triple double as he slammed the Spurs, Bill Simmons, Michele Beadle, Skip Bayless, and that dickhead Bulls fan on your Twitter feed asshole-first into a fire hydrant on Biscayne Boulevard.
Game 7 is on Thursday at the American Airlines Arena. Tip-off is at 9 p.m.
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