Why LeBron James' 49-point performance was classic LeBron

It wasn't an NBA Finals game, it wasn't at Madison Square Garden, and something about the Monday night, Game 4 vibe in a quiet Barclays Center seemed to diminish the moment. Nevertheless, LeBron James added to his already legendary playoff legacy with a 49-point, six-rebound, three-steal, two-assist playoff performance in New York.

James came up a point short of becoming the first 50-point playoff scorer in over five years (Ray Allen scored 51 for the Celtics on April 30, 2009), but he did manage to tie Allen Iverson for third on the list of career 45-plus-point playoff games with seven, behind only Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.

If LeBron was going to add another page of his own to the history books, this was as quintessential of a classic LeBron performance as it gets. How so?

Balanced dominance - Sometimes you'll see a big individual scoring night start with a huge first quarter or huge first half before the player in question cools down a bit. Sometimes it's a massive second half that propels them to a career night, but there's usually one outlier of a quarter in there somewhere. In LeBron's case on Monday, he pretty much dominated from the game's opening minutes to the final ones, with plenty of peaks and few valleys. James scored 25 points in the first half and 24 in the second, and his quarter-by-quarter breakdown was as balanced as a 49-point performance gets, with James scoring 12 in the first, 13 in the second, 15 in the third and nine in the fourth.

Efficient - The 49 points poured in by LeBron were the most by a player attempting 25 shots or less in a playoff game since Basketball Reference started tracking field goal attempts in 1985-86. James shot an incredible 16-of-24 (67%) from the field, 3-of-6 from beyond the arc, and added 14 made free throws on 19 tries. Add it all up, and James finished the game with a video game-like True Shooting Percentage of 75.7 and an Effective Field Goal Percentage of 72.9.

He also left Barclays Center with a shot chart that looked like this:

Selfless - We've spent much of the last week or so raving about Kevin Durant's selflessness off the court. On Monday we were reminded just how selfless LeBron James can be on the court. James will usually make the right read and is always going to make the right pass if it leads to a better shot, no matter how hot he is himself. There were two great examples of this in the final minutes of Game 4.

With the score tied at 94 and LeBron sitting on 48 points, he got the ball in the paint and got to about the edge of the restricted area with the Nets defense collapsing around him. He could have tried to force up the potential go-ahead basket and 50-point capper through a swarm of bodies, relying on the officials' whistles as a fallback plan. Instead, James recognized the situation and kicked the ball out to Mario Chalmers, who then found an open Chris Bosh in the corner as Brooklyn's D scrambled:

James was the driving force behind the game-winning (and likely series swinging) bucket in a game that saw him put together one of his finest performances, and the only boxscore credit he'll receive for that bucket is a 'hockey assist' in player tracking boxscores, which most people will never even see.

Later, with the Nets down three and looking to intentionally foul to prolong the game and their chances in it with only 10 seconds left, LeBron again held the ball in his hands while sitting on 48 points. He could have held onto it and gone for 50 at the free throw line, but instead made the smart decision to find the historically competent free throw shooter on the floor, firing a pass to Ray Allen. Ray made both free throws and the Heat were on their way to a 3-1 series lead.

Open for criticism - It just wouldn't be a classic LeBron performance without an opportunity for LeBron haters to find something to nitpick about, and a missed free throw in the final seconds that would have given him 50 points was that golden opportunity. Twitter immediately filled with tweets regarding how easily Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant would have made the 50-point free throw, and there are surely still some out there who lament the aforementioned selflessness as being afraid of the moment, or some such nonsense, instead of praising it as awareness.

In any event, without Bill Russell's 11 rings, Jordan's mentality or Bryant's 81-point game to his name, some will never be satisfied with LeBron James - not even after a 49-point performance in a road playoff game that saw him shoot 67 percent from the field.

In that respect, given how meaningless his last free throw trip was anyway, perhaps missing the last one and finishing with 49 instead of the arbitrarily magic number of 50 was the perfect way for LeBron to unintentionally make this performance his own - as classic LeBron as they come.