Mario Chalmers: 'We all just took too much of a back seat in the Finals'
The ballad of Mario Chalmers has been a fascinating one. He was the guy who hit the big shot to beat Derrick Rose in the national title game back in 2008. He had a promising couple of years as a point guard playing with one ball-dominant guard in Dwyane Wade, before having his role completely changed when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the Miami Heat. His confidence has often been unwavering, a signal to his coaching staff and his teammates that he can take the criticism in the tensest of moments. It wouldn't stop him from taking and making that big shot.
However, that confidence wasn't there during the final days of the LeBron era in Miami. Chalmers, like many of his teammates during the drubbing the Spurs put on them, didn't have the same fight we were used to seeing. As Ethan Skolnick of Bleacher Report tells us, Chalmers says he couldn't figure it out and that everybody on the Heat took a back seat in that series.
"You know, for the first time in my career, I felt like I wasn't...yeah, my confidence wasn't there," Chalmers said. "Going through that whole San Antonio series, I just felt like in the playoffs I kept getting worse and worse every round. I just couldn't figure it out."
Even as others—coaches, teammates, family, friends, reporters—had all the answers.
"Yeah, that's the worst thing, because you never know," Chalmers said. "Everybody in my ear, talking about 'We need you, we need you to do this, we need you to do that.' And then when it comes to the game, I didn't feel involved. Like, you all talk about how y'all need me, but y'all didn't put me in position to do anything. In previous years, if I was in that position, I would make sure I would go get the ball, I would put myself in position to score. I felt like this year, we all just took too much of a back seat in the Finals."
Chalmers was really bad in the Finals, but so was everybody on his team. It's hard to single him out as the problem, even if that's what we're used to seeing. The criticism didn't fuel him to overcome because the Spurs never let that moment of confidence building arrive for Miami. They just obliterated them game after game once it headed to Miami for Games 3 and 4. The spot-up point guard was so bad that he told Skolnick, "I didn't even think the Heat would want me back, to be honest."
With the change in personnel following LeBron's return to Cleveland, the opportunity for Chalmers to return to the confident shot-maker we used to know. He re-signed with the Heat on a two-year, $8.3 million contract and will be asked to do much more this season than we saw in the past. This will be a team banking on Bosh and Wade proving they can be a top scoring duo while Luol Deng, Josh McRoberts, and Chalmers show proper play-making and support. After what we saw in the Finals, it can't get much worse for Chalmers.
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