ometimes you don’t need complex metrics to determine an athlete’s value – to his team or to his sport. You simply need to review the critical segment of the critical game and look for his fingerprints.

LeBron James could have gotten away with murder last night in Miami, because his fingerprints were nowhere to be found.

There’s a curse that comes with limitless potential: everyone judges you against only that limitless potential.

For years, my father and I were lucky enough to see LeBron James play in person. For years, we left in jaw-dropping awe.

The late great Jack Buck coined the phrase, “I don’t believe what I just saw.”

Truer words never spoken – not then, and unfortunately, not now.

It’s fitting that the abbreviation for Miami is M-I-A, because that’s exactly what LeBron James was during these NBA Finals. Forget quitting, forget choking, – both of those terms don’t serve LeBron’s performance justice – if anything, a new word must be created because there is no historical context to explain LeBron’s no-show.

The word has to be a new word defined in sports, a combination of: terrified, petrified, bizarre and the use of LeBron’s name.

Bizbronified?

Once again, LeBron James had no answers for his mysterious floundering on the big stage.

Maybe something we can more clearly define, like LeBronaphobia: the ultimate fear of the sports moment.

For LeBron, this is the sad and unfortunate world he has created for himself, because he obviously wants no part of ours.

To hear James arrogantly and gaudily suggest that the mere mortals of the world must return to their sad, pathetic and ordinary lives filled with problems and that he is still LeBron James was a cordial invite into his distorted, fragile psyche.

To be honest, it was more sad and depressing than upsetting, and signified how detached from the world he truly is.

“They have to wake up and have the same life that they had before they woke up today … the same personal problems,” James said. “I’m going to continue to live the way that I want to live. … But they have to get back to the real world at some point.”

Just like The Real World – this time South Beach – there’s nothing real about James’ world, and never has been. LeBron is a prisoner of a life scripted by his insatiable handlers and enablers, greedy CEO’s and the Reality-TV culture has created for him – a real life Truman Show.

He is the victim of endless comparisons to the greatest the games ever seen – to this day, an impossible expectation to fulfill.

At the ripe age of 16 Michael Jordan was being humbled – cut from his high school basketball team – whereas LeBron James was being dubbed “The Chosen One,” on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Sadly, James is now closer to “The Frozen One.”

If anything is to be learned, it is that championships are won in June – not July – so why do we struggle to pay homage to the true basketball champions of the world, instead consuming an insatiable appetite of LeBron we can no longer digest?

Because money buys you talent, talent makes you interesting and super talent makes you polarizing – but, it doesn’t make you champions.

“Come on, how often do we have to hear about the LeBron James reality show and what he is or isn’t doing,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said in his post-game interview. “When are people going to talk about the purity of our game and what these guys accomplished?”

Right now, Rick. And forever.

Because Dirk did not just lead his team to an amazing playoff run capped off by an incredible Finals series. He elevated his game, the game of his teammates, his legacy and history.

Not just his own history, but also the final chapter in one of the most historical years in the NBA’s captivating chronicle, rewriting it to read team, not talent.

A story of a motley collection of journeymen, united in failure, bonding together in pursuit of a common goal – the ultimate goal – and succeeding.

A collection of journeymen, no player on the Mavericks has ever been a champion. Now, they all are.

During Sunday nights NBA finale, after an abysmal 1-of-12 first half, Dirk did what LeBron James has proven he cannot: embracing the enormity of the moment, channeling every bit of talent and determination, and taking control of his destiny.

Not consistently passing the ball off – giving up open shots – to Mario Chalmers and Eddie House.

He stuck to his game while letting his teammates play theirs.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt after this series that Dirk has certainly earned the clout of being one of the all-time great players,” Carlisle said. “His versatility, how he’s done it in the clutch. He goes 1 for 12 in the first half and then in the second half he was just absolute money.”

The fourth quarter was a beautiful site; just follow the path of the ball. From Dirk to Jason Kidd to Shawn Marion to Jason Terry to Tyson Chandler to Dirk again.

Five hopeless veterans longing for their chance at basketball lore, forging a pathway leading all the way to an NBA championship.

Their failures will no longer define the Mavericks, but they will complete them.

Kidd, the ultimate example of composure on the floor, looked lost Sunday night in a mob of teammates.

“It’s not real right now,” the oldest player to ever start in and win an NBA championship later explained. Kidd was granted a second act, a renaissance of sorts that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The focus of many jokes – “Ason” Kidd was the nickname he had been dubbed because he once had no “J” – and the centerpiece of a controversial trade, Kidd beat the odds.

“Do you think we won that trade now?” Mavs owner Mark Cuban asked in delight during his teams celebration.

At age 38 and with most of his peers out of the game, Kidd was not supposed to be the point guard hoisting the Larry O’ Brian trophy. The game has been turned over to Chris Paul and Derrick Rose, Deron Williams and Russell Westbrook, the electrifying youth of the league.

But Kidd never stopped grinding, fighting off age with every game, every off-season abruptly ended at the hands of defeat.

Seventeen years Kidd has been grinding toward this moment, seventeen years culminated by one moment late Monday night. With an aroma of champagne and the aura of a champion, Kidd found himself alone in the back hallway of the American Airlines Arena.

He didn’t know where he was headed, only how far he’d come.

And there lies the humbling lesson for LeBron James and these Miami Heat: perseverance pays off, shortcuts do not.

How do you go from where you are to where you want to be?

As the infamous words of the late Jim Valvano elude, “You have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it.”

There was no enthusiasm in LeBron, no resolve in his eyes as he kept deferring to the players looking to him for leadership.

Dirk is the real deal because he helped make sure LeBron James is not.

Dirk doesn’t do endorsements, doesn’t do Hollywood. He never cared about being a “brand,” he always cared about being a champion.

On the other hand, LeBron decided that being a champion would make him a brand. Being a brand is what he is working towards, not being a champion.

Happiness is all about managing expectations. The higher your expectations, the more profound your disappointment.

When LeBron made it clear last July that being a champion was merely a vehicle to becoming a bigger brand – devaluing its worth to an astonishingly low level – he failed to quantify the enormity of which his expectations would leap.

These expectations fueled an unprecedented burning hatred, a yearning to see him fail.

49 of 50 states didn’t vote that they were rooting for Dallas on Sunday’s ESPN.com poll by sheer coincidence.

James did not quit, he did not choke, he drowned. He drowned in the perception of being an egotistical, larger-than-life, better-than-you narcissist.

The price paid for such did not come in perception, but in reality.

The reality that Dirk – not James – took his team, his talents, and his ring from South Beach.