BOSTON -- Here's the question: Do you embrace doubts or ignore them? There's no right or wrong answer. But that's the question around the Heat after a loss sends the narrative around this team into sky-has-fallen panic.
The fascinating part is how differently LeBron James and Dwyane Wade live in the athletic biospheres they've constructed. You might not guess this, considering what good friends they are and what common games they share.
They both attack with the basketball. They both soar. They defend. They lead. They're unselfish teammates. They carry themselves like pros. On and on.
But there was a moment Saturday before the Heat's practice that told just how fundamentally different they are. Someone asked Wade what happened in Friday's Eastern Conference finals Game 3 loss to the Boston Celtics, why he didn't attack, what has happened in first halves - why, in short, he hasn't been Wade for stretches in these playoffs.
"I don't think like that - we didn't win," Wade said. "We didn't win Game 3 (against Indiana), when I had five points. We didn't win in Game 3 here. LeBron had 34 points, but we lost, so we're not patting him on the back. I've got to be better."
That's to be expected, that kind of answer, the one that puts the cathedral of winning above all. But this question about one bad night kept coming to Wade in various forms. And coming.
Wade, though always the pro in public, has found ways to embrace this anger. Make it an ally. Find purpose in it, on some raw level.
"I don't mind people doubting," he said. "I can use it."
This is the common way. Michael Jordan used getting cut in junior high school as NBA motivation. Tom Brady still channels being a sixth-round draft pick. The most obvious example, though, was the greatest career to play across South Florida.
Dan Marino found motivational fuel in all skeptics. The season after his Achilles' injury, he looked so bad in preseason the question was whether he should start. Marino's face turned red at his locker when I asked him.
"I'll be ready," he said.
He threw five touchdowns that first game.
That's Wade. He returned to form in Game 4 against Indiana, screaming as he left the court, "I did this before! I'll do it again!" Don't you expect that in some form in Sunday's Game 4?
LeBron is different.
"I don't listen to any of it," he said of the outside noise.
That's probably not true. He surely means he tries not to listen to it and be shaped by it. Last series, he claimed not to know Indiana reserve Lance Stephenson made a choking gesture at him, because, well, who is Lance Stephenson?
Last year, LeBron listened harder. He tried to embrace the hate, the anger, and mold it into coal to burn. That took him, as he said again in this series, to being someone "I wasn't comfortable with. I feel at peace with myself now."
There aren't many athletes walking this path. Tiger Woods comes to mind. He was great as America's hero. As a fallen man, he has not recovered. Questions can attack the area athletes need whole: confidence.
"I've had more questions about my shooting this year than the rest of my career combined," Heat forward Shane Battier said. "People are asking me if I'm ready to change my form or habits I've developed over the last 20 years.
"If I was younger, it would make me a little more crazy."
Wade finds use in such questions, as if no one should doubt him. LeBron finds deflation in them, as if people see his fears. As they walked off the court Saturday, their paths crossed.
"OK, you started talking (to the media) before me, and I'm done before you," LeBron said.
"That's 'cause I was asked about you scoring 34 points," Wade said.
"Hope you said it's about winning," LeBron said.
Wade smiled and said, "I did." They have that in common. But how they get to that point through the sea of questions is entirely different.
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