[Article] It was supposed to be easy for Lebron...

... another reason Lebron is earning respect. The haters were mad because Miami built a superteam that was going to walk through everyone without a challenge... It's been anything but that.

LeBron nearing end of uneasy journey

It was supposed to be easy.

In the aftermath of last year's "The Decision" — despite the hate and anger and revulsion, despite violent blossoming of the drama and the boos and the haters — one thing alone had been agreed upon.

It was going to be easy for the Miami Heat.

LeBron James would average a triple-double. Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh would complete a Big Three that would trounce an entire league. This team would set records. This team would win multiple championships. This team would beat the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' regular-season record of 72 wins.

"They will break the single-season win record," NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy told the Miami Herald before the season started, a comment startling only because so many agreed. "And I think they have a legit shot at the Lakers' 33-game streak, as well. And only the Lakers have even a remote shot at beating them in a playoff series. They will never lose two games in a row this year."

How wrong he was.

How wrong everyone was.

LeBron himself had boasted of winning not one or two or six or seven rings (he had high hopes), and when November descended with all its turmoil, he was not ready for it. What he had helped create tore at his teammates, too.

Bosh was a mess. Wade turned suddenly and without preparation from a celebrated star to part of a band of bad guys.

"It obviously wasn't a smooth ride," Wade said. "We have had a lot of rocky — a rocky road throughout the way."

Never lose two games in a row? Please. They'd lost two in a row by Nov. 11. They'd lost three in a row by Nov. 24. Winning 73 games was a joke by December.

All of which was a warm-up for the bigger dramas yet to consume them.

The hate compounded. The mockery became a cultural norm. LeBron had to release a "What should I do" Nike commercial that addressed head-on the world's view that he was a selfish star and turncoat, rather than just a magnificent player.

Where LeBron had once been lampooned for taking the easy way out, he now was being mocked for how hard the easy way turned out to be.

There were late-game failures in which the Heat, and certainly LeBron, simply could not close out. It was as if a hex were upon them — as if some basketball god with a soft spot for Cleveland had touched The Chosen One with a curse for final shots and close games.

LeBron bumped Erik Spoelstra. LeBron's camp almost surely leaked a report to ESPN.com aimed at getting his coach fired. He endorsed contraction. He pouted. There was a four-game losing streak in January and a five-game losing streak as February turned into March.

They couldn't beat Boston. They couldn't beat Chicago. They were adrift, doubted and ridiculed. Udonis Haslem's injures stretched on and on. Mike Miller was hurt and then folded. Bosh became his own kind of joke. Late in the season, talk of Spoelstra's job security persisted.

Easy?

Forget easy. This had been a case study in a fall from grace. LeBron James was Icarus, and the world was given front-row seats to an 82-game season in which to watch his wings melt and his plan of domination and championships and greatness tumble downward.

"It feels like the roller coaster, like the world is caving in on you," LeBron said. "But you have to stay together."

Yes, the basketball world as they'd constructed it seemed too much for them.

And then an expected thing happened: The darkness and the struggle and the doubt turned out not to be LeBron's tormentors but his teachers.

The hardships made LeBron tougher. It brought he and his coach closer (a process Spoelstra and LeBron told me finally happened in March). It sealed the bond and friendship between he and Wade and that, in turn, fueled their on-court chemistry.

After one of the most difficult seasons of excellence we've seen in sports, the pain and isolation and anger turned the Heat into something a lackadaisical romp through the regular season never would have.

It turned them into brothers. Into friends. Into a battle-tested basketball team more than prepared for the regular season.

It turned LeBron into the thing his talent had always made the world demand of him — the playoffs' most successful basketball player. From his offensive acuity to his defensive ferocity, he has had no equal this postseason.

As a result, the Heat swept away the Philadelphia 76ers in five games. Then they did the same to the Boston Celtics, a team so dominant the Heat celebrated with frenzy afterward. Then they won, again in five games, the Eastern Conference finals against the Chicago Bulls.

And LeBron James?

He is suddenly not just the most clutch player in the game but, along with Dirk Nowitzki, currently its penultimate playmaker — in the clutch, in overtime, early in the game. Any time.

He is better than he's ever been.

All because this has been the most difficult and challenging season of the man's life. From it, he's emerged in the playoffs as a better, more determined, more clutch leader and winner.

A very talented LeBron James decided to take his talents to South Beach a year ago. A much more capable and finely hewn LeBron James has emerged on the other side, not through South Beach sunshine but through a fire of adversity of his own making.

Now forged, now stronger, the most talented player in the world is one series from showing he's now also its most capable.

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