The Birdman flew through the air swung his pale tattooed wing and swatted the orange ball off the glass window.

“Derek Fisher thought he had a lay-up,” Mark Jackson said later, in a head-shaking voice.

Mickael Pietrus drained five threes in a crucial Game 4 win, and has managed one of the hardest tasks in these playoffs:  guard King James.

“I’m not trying to say to myself that I’m going to stop him,” he said between games 3 and 4. “I’m just challenging myself, because I want to say I came from nothing to something, and there are only so many opportunities in life where you can be in this kind of situation.”

J.R. Smith sliced through the lane, 20 bets were made that he would put up a difficult runner.  Instead he flipped a no look pass to a wide-open Nene for an uncontested dunk.

“I didn’t think J.R. Smith had that kind of vision,” said an astonished Jeff Van Gundy.

Dwight Howard steps to the free throw line in overtime.  Superman stared down his supposed kryptonite and buried both.  Then as LeBron barreled down the lane, instead of remembering the previous terrible calls against him, Howard stepped up causing a crushing collision and forced a jump ball.

Only one of those players is an All-Star.  And none of them are named in the first sentence that answers the question:  “Who are the best players in the NBA.”

There were supposed to only be two trains on the track to the NBA Finals.  Yet those trains are in jeopardy of ever meeting because these hustling players haven’t drank any kool-aid in the last two weeks.

With the NBA and the rest of the country salivating over a Kobe Bryant-LeBron James Finals match-up, the Denver Nuggets and Orlando Magic scratched and clawed their way to victories.  As the Lakers and Cavaliers played with kingly arrogance believing they were predestined to be in the finals, their counterparts executed plays and hustled for 48 minutes a game.

“The bottom line is this is not the BCS, where people get to vote for who the best teams are,” said Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. “We actually get to play on the court to decide that.”

Unfortunately the Lakers and Cavs are still waiting for the votes to start being counted.

There is no question who the best two players are in the playoffs.  Kobe and LeBron have put on shows these playoffs that few can even conjure up after a few puffs of Mary Jane. But this isn’t Detroit or Utah.  It takes more than one player jacking up shots and playing 1-on-4 every possession.

The bigger culprit in the battle of “whose the best NBA player” is Kobe.  He should know by now that it takes more than one man to beat a team with both talent and determination.  Remember in 2004 when he went against a different Chauncey Billups-led team and decided he didn’t need Shaq or anyone else to win the series.  He decided that it was his Finals MVP after three going to the big man.  He failed miserably.

The past few years were supposed to be different for the self-proclaimed “Black Mamba.” He finally learned to play with his team.  He finally was becoming a leader.  He finally had an in-the-shadows big man who wouldn’t steal his MVP come finals time.

Yet it’s his team that is getting out-hustled, outwitted, outworked, and out-teamed. What has changed?

It’s more forgivable for LeBron.  He’s accomplished so much so young we forget that he still has to grow.  He forgets that some of Jordan’s highest scoring playoff games came in losses.  He forgot that Jordan made a point to get his sidekick more involved when games got bigger.

Many times the lost key in the “Who needed whom, Kobe or Shaq?” debate is that Shaq had already lost two NBA Finals before he won it.  He had gone through those growing pains, and learned he needed a sidekick.

Now that Kobe has lost two on his own one would think he’d have learned his lesson.  Yet Mr. Two-Four continues to try to carve out his own path. When his team is getting outplayed his response is to take forced jumpers and grim at teammates after a mistake.

In LeBron’s youth he still has yet to rely enough on his sidekicks.  In 2007 the excuse was that he didn’t have a sidekick in the Finals.  This year it was supposed to be Mo Williams, who has done a better job at disappearing than making threes.

If LeBron really is Magic Johnson-like he will find a way to better utilize his teammates.

If not, he might just have a few more years of growing pains.

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Kevin Patra lives by the adage: Those who can’t do, write. Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying Online Journalism, after spending four years at the University of Michigan obtaining a bachelors degree from the school of Language, Science & Fun. Patra still owns a teal Grant Hill jersey and is looking for his old FILA basketball shoes.

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