
Where to begin? Right, let's begin at the end. The fourth quarter. The stat line says LeBron didn't choke in the fourth quarter last night. He had 7 points in the final 12 minutes as the Heat was extinguished by the Mavericks in one of the best and most compelling NBA Finals we can recall. That gave LeBron 18 fourth-quarter points in the six games of the series. He finally made his first three-pointer of the fourth quarter in the entire series with his team down by 12 and two minutes left on the clock.
Fitting.
It might have helped pad his stats and made revisionist history not judge him quite as harshly, but we all know better. James succumbed to the pressure. He did it in a way that is very familiar, and very much a part of human nature. He chose an error of omission over an error of commission.
That's a relatively new phrase to us -- brought to light by a TwinsGeek post on a sports book called "Scorecasting" that we definitely need to read. From that post:
We are more willing to forgive an error caused by doing nothing over an error caused by doing something. And thus humans are for more willing to commit an error of omission over an error of commission, because it gets us into less trouble. I'll give an example from the book:
"In a well-known psychological experiment, the subjects were posed the following question: Imagine there have been several epidemics of a certain kind of flu that everyone contracts and that can be fatal to children under three years of age. About 10 out of every 10,000 children with this flu will die from it. A vaccine for the flu, which eliminates the change of getting it, causes death in 5 or every 10,000 children. Would you vaccinate your child?"
Most parents opted to NOT to vaccinate their child, despite it halving the chances of their child dying. The thought of doing something to the child which would cause his or her death was worse than the though of doing nothing and doubling the chances of death.
LeBron knew that if he tried to take over and failed, that would be a clear failure. The upside was that he could be the hero, but he decided the risk was too great. He opted for another fourth quarter game of hot potato, firing the ball around the perimeter while Dirk Nowitzki wrote the final chapter in his emerging legend by scoring 10 points and willing his team to victory in spite of missing shot after shot for three quarters. Now LeBron can look back at the box score, tell himself he scored 7 of his team-high 21 points in the fourth quarter, and say, "Hey, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't the one missing all the shots."