ew people remember how a nightmare starts. People usually pick it up already in progress, only to be tortured until they awaken.

Most people usually keep their nightmares, their personal demons to themselves.

This formality is an impossibility for LeBron James.

As millions upon millions of eyes dissect his every movement, and millions and millions of voices judge, mock and psychoanalyze his every game, the tales of his living nightmare are exposed to all, and he’s not even asleep yet.

Millions of eyes, opinions, assumptions, spotlights and cameras, and LeBron James has found himself alone at the epicenter of it all.

The biggest game of his career until the next one. This is the burden that LeBron James chose to carry 11 months ago. The burden he decided he could carry.

LeBron had a triple-double in game 5 – the first NBA Finals triple-double since Jason Kidd in 2002 – and it wasn’t good enough.

For James, not even great is good enough anymore. He had more assists than anyone on the floor (10), he had more made baskets than anybody in a Heat uniform (8) and he had as many rebounds as anyone who played (10).

It took all of 11 months, but finally, his burden has become as large as his talent, and is causing it to shrink.

Gone is the veneer of James and his all-star triumvirates invincibility, the swagger that has lifted them this far.

The mental drain of post-decision life has been seismic for James. With the emotional toll unrelenting and the pressure mounting, LeBron has been asked to log more playoff minutes than anyone ever, be the best player in the world every night and carry the most hated team in American sports – loved only in Miami, conditionally.

He hasn’t missed a minute of a second half in these Finals, so add the physical toll to the mental one.

LeBron looks like the guy at the amusement park that’s petrified of rollercoaster’s and got talked into riding front row of the millennium force by all his friends.

Good decision?

LeBron’s 11 points combined in five fourth-quarters is one fewer than the Boston Bruins have scored in their last two games against the best goaltender in the world (12-11).

How is this ongoing conundrum happening? LeBron has an indelible amount of talent, enough to vanquish anybody in the league.

He played so brilliantly, so poised up to this point, slamming the door shut on the ghosts of the T.D. Waterhouse in Boston, and then found retribution in Chicago.

Boston and Chicago were not the hurdle LeBron expected, needless to say, he soared to victory with ease.

Something clicked in James’ head during those battles against Boston and Chicago. He realized they couldn’t beat him. He played relaxed and carefree. He flourished.

The Dallas Mavericks are not the crippled and aged Boston Celtics or the kid-brother Chicago Bulls. They are a testy group of veterans, fueled by their own share of disrespect and skeletons in the closet.

They can beat him, and LeBron knows it. His dream, his goal, his validation is no longer the guarantee it seemed to be a month ago, and the fear of failure is terrifying – a living nightmare.

James is closer to his lifelong dream than ever before. This would be the happiest time in anybody’s life in a comparable situation. But James – as happy-go-lucky as he is – looks miserable. Only two victories away from harmony, LeBron is beleaguered and vanquished, and instead, only one game away from his dream seasons burial.

“He’s got more pressure on him than anybody in the history of sports,” Steve Kerr, TNT analyst and a six-time NBA champion said. “It is bizarre and unfortunate. I feel so sorry for him.”

LeBron’s NBA Finals – his ultimate opportunity for validation – has to this point, been an epic failure.

He has dissipated under the pressure of tight games, dispelling any notion that he has any Jordan in his DNA.

Stop right there, because that is exactly the problem.

Ever since Jordan amazed us with a barrage of astonishing playoff moments – which became an annual late-spring tradition – we have tried to fill the void with every “superstar” that has since entered the league, hoping they could bring back the Jordan nostalgia.

Iverson, Stackhouse, Marbury, Carter, McGrady, Hardaway, Francis. They all failed.

Only Kobe has been able to come close to replicating a Jordan persona – the jaw-dropping plays, the are-you-freaking-kidding-me moments and the stone-cold killer attitude – but at the time, Kobe wasn’t good enough.

We didn’t like Kobe then. We wanted LeBron.

Everybody loved LeBron. The high-school prodigy who didn’t bust. The hometown hero. He was the guy, the next Jordan, “The Chosen One.”

If this next sentence hasn’t registered yet, take a second to let it marinate.

LeBron doesn’t want to be Jordan. Sorry, it’s true and it’s obvious.

The only resolve LeBron can find in his quest to escape Jordan's shadow will be winning.

He wants to be liked and is afraid to be hated. He would rather high-five a teammate then punch them. He changed his number from 23 to six. He teamed up with his rival, becoming the ultimate frontrunner – a move Jordan would’ve never made – and took the heat for it (no pun intended). And his game becomes increasingly distant with each passing year.

He’s not Jordan, he doesn’t want to be Jordan, but he has to be Jordan.

Sometimes sports make us irrational, emotion trampling logic on the way to the party. We frame athletes, storylines and events with emotion, not logic, not perspective.

It seems as if – as a society – we choose to ignore perspective, letting ourselves become prisoners of the moment, always failing to ignore the bigger picture.

Magic, Bird and for most of Jordan’s career, never had to deal with talk-show radio, live SportCenter’s, social media and the 24/7 microscope that exists today.

But we liked Magic and Jordan, so we either ignored or found ways to validate their flaws.

So we forget that, despite winning four championships, Magic was actually horrific in a number of of them. In fact, after the 84’ Finals he was labeled “Tragic Johnson.”

We forget that Jordan was a gambler, a below-average “family guy” and a vile teammate, but most of all, that he QUIT the sport for two years.

He quit on his teammates, his coaches, his owner, and his family and friends to go play baseball.

He had his reasons. But we only like to remember that it was because of the death of his father. But really – and Jordan has been adamant about so – it was also about the enormity of pressure he faced, the open door to his personal life and the scrutiny that it all brought.

He couldn’t handle it anymore and he lost his desire to play, his love and passion for the game.

So he went and played baseball, then he quit that, too. Just as he became part owner and general manager of the Washington Wizards. And then he quit that, too.

We like Jordan and hate LeBron, so we validate all of Jordan’s flaws and magnify LeBron’s.

Sort of like, if your kid does something wrong, he’s a good kid that just made a mistake. But, if the neighbors kid did it, he’s a bad kid.

We don’t just hate LeBron because The Decision was a bad idea; we hate LeBron because he didn’t realize that The Decision was a bad idea.

So when LeBron gives us the slightest opening to criticize, jeer and expose his flaws – justified or not – we exploit it to no end.

We forget that the Heat have played 102 games with playoff intensity this year, and when you rely on the extreme nature of sideline-to-sideline defense – with such a constant, perplexing tenacity, it takes a toll.

So as LeBron falters, we reduce him to a loser with no heart, no poise and no resolve, and the series isn’t even over yet.

It is ugly, and it is beautiful, and it is sports — always tapping into emotions on the extremes – being a prisoner of the moment.

At the moment, LeBron has withered away in the most crucial times of these Finals, losing the biggest game of his career, until the next one.

The next one is Sunday night. It’s game six of the NBA Finals.

After his 2006 title, LeBron’s teammate and closest friend Dwayne Wade said “At the end of the day, you’re remembered for what you did at the end.”

On the edge of the cliff and on the brink of disaster, James still has an opportunity to avert a colossal failure that will rerun on ESPN Classic for decades to come.

The ultimate frontrunner has a chance to claim the ultimate comeback.

Will he still be a loser then?