Indiana Pacers: 5 of the weirdest stories from franchise history
By Josh Wilson
Lance Stephenson got inside LeBron’s head
Lance Stephenson is chaotic, yet peaceful. An impactful NBA player intertwined with some of the mid-2010s greatest playoff stories, yet mostly just a role-playing NBA player. He’s the yin and the yang all at once.
The Indiana Pacers, facing off with LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals, needed something out of the ordinary to have any shot of beating the powerhouse that was Miami. Enter Lance.
Stephenson was tasked with guarding LeBron James, an assignment that no man will ever wish to have the chance to take upon himself. James had just come off a regular season in which he was averaging 27.1 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 6.3 assists.
And Stephenson did an OK job of defending James, as well as one can do with such an impossible task. The Pacers, Paul George, and Stephenson would take James, Dwyane Wade and the Heat to six games in the Eastern Conference Finals.
In Game 6, the Pacers were facing elimination on their home floor. Stephenson would need to dive deep to find a way to get inside James’s head and keep him from scoring at such a blistering pace to save the season.
And so he leaned down and blew in his ear.
Speaking to TheScore, Stephenson talked about why he did it:
"A lot of serious moments in the season where we were talking junk and going at each other. I was really trying to get him mad. Like, really trying to win the game, trying to get him unfocused. And I was trying anything. For you to do something to somebody and they don’t respond, they keep continuing and playing hard, it’s like, how do I, I was just trying to find stuff. I don’t regret it, but sometimes I look at it like, ‘Why did I do that? What made me do that?’ LeBron was such a good player, you know. I was trying to do anything to get him frustrated. … It’s going to be different, just trying to be friends with LeBron."
It’s one of the most memorable moments of the last 10 years for Indiana, but still one of the weirdest. And you know what? It kind of worked.
James scored just 7 points that night, had 5 fouls, and 3 turnovers.
While we can’t say the blowing in James’s ear actually got to his head and had an impact, the body of work that Stephenson put together was a force in the way of the Heat.