Scribbler's Highlight of the Week: LeBron Says, "Not In My House"

In Game 2 of the 2013 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat at American Airlines Arena, LeBron James wasn't having the most impressive game of his career.  He ended the first half with only four points, four assists, one rebound and was well under 50% shooting from the field.  However, after the Spurs had a 62-61 lead in the third quarter, the Heat just kept scoring...and scoring...and scoring...and never looked back on the way to a 103-84 trouncing of the Western Conference Champs.  Their defense turned up and forced 16 turnovers--which quadrupled the Spurs' impressively low turnover rate in Game 1.  LeBron ended up with 17 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, but shot 7-17 from the field.  Still not his most impressive stat line ever, but there were certain things that don't show up on a stat sheet such as the above play...

Although San Antonio was down 86-67 with just over eight minutes remaining in the game, Spurs' forward Tiago Splitter had a ray of hope for about one second.  Splitter took a beautiful pass from Tony Parker and just knew he had the dunk to give his team some kind of life.  Unfortunately for him and his team, I don't think he counted on King James showing him up in such Sports-Center-Top-10-highlight fashion.  LeBron just stuck his arm up as Splitter extended to attempt to posterize him and took a line right out of a Rick Ross song: "NO SIR! NOT ME!!"  I think every Heat fan, Spurs supporter and general spectator alike had to keep the flies out of their mouth from witnessing such a jaw-dropping rejection.

It doesn't matter that LeBron had his second straight game with less than 20 points.  When role players like Mario Chalmers, Ray Allen and Mike Miller do their job and then some, you can afford to "take a night off".  More important, when you can put exclamation points on tremendous scoring runs and killer defense with the above blocked shot, you can breathe a bit easier.  As a champion and competitor, you know that a play like this completely takes the air out of your opponents' tires and has them rolling on their rims to the nearest gas station.  Whether it goes down as the greatest block in the history of the NBA Playoffs or not, the King just made the eager Splitter look like a court jester nonetheless.