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Cavaliers Let Opportunity Pass Them By
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: June 13, 2007

CLEVELAND, June 12 — LeBron James drove desperately to the basket with just under 15 seconds remaining and with his Cleveland Cavaliers trailing by a basket. Running into San Antonio’s best two defenders, Bruce Bowen and Tim Duncan — the savvy veterans who have confronted him at every turn in these N.B.A. finals — James spun to pass the ball to Anderson Varejão
Fans in Quicken Loans Arena let out a groan, as if their city’s long history of sports suffering had led them to this inescapable moment of defeat. Wasn’t James supposed to be over his unselfish passing phase at the end of games?

James said later that he thought Varejão would pass the ball back. Instead, Varejão flung up an awkward layup in the lane. And missed.

Manu Ginóbili, who had not made a shot from the field all night, made three of his four free throws in the final 10 seconds as the Spurs squeezed a 75-72 victory Tuesday night in Game 3 of the N.B.A. finals.

Even without Duncan and Ginóbili at their best in a ragged game, the Spurs, up by 3-0 in the series, are a victory from clinching their fourth title in nine years. Tony Parker hit a clutch 3-pointer with one minute remaining and led the Spurs with 17 points. Duncan had 14.

When James missed a wild 3-pointer before the buzzer and did not draw a foul from Bowen, the fans who were furiously waving their white towels to support the Cavaliers’ first finals appearance dropped them in near-surrender. No team has come back from a 3-0 deficit in the finals.

“We can’t live on history,” James said. “But at the same time we have dug ourselves a big hole.”

There have been seven sweeps in N.B.A. finals, and the past two teams on the receiving end were franchises making their first appearance on the league’s biggest stage. The Los Angeles Lakers swept the Nets in the 2002 finals and the Houston Rockets swept Shaquille O’Neal and the Orlando Magic in 1995.

“You know, the experience factor, we don’t like to make any excuses, but it definitely played a part in this finals against a world power team, a great team, in the Spurs,” James said.

James has committed 17 turnovers in the first three games of the finals (he had five in Game 3), and he has shot 36.7 percent, appearing to be unable to impose his will as he did at the end of the conference finals.

“I think he’s trying, he’s definitely trying,” Duncan said. “We’re a pretty good defensive team. Whether he tries to impose his will or not, we’re going to be standing in front of him.”

Unlike Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, who all won championships in their first trips to the finals, James cannot rely on a talented supporting cast.

James scored a game-high 25 points, but the Cavaliers rookie guard Daniel Gibson, starting for the injured Larry Hughes, missed 9 of his 10 shots in his first playoff start. Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the longest-tenured Cavalier, grabbed 18 rebounds and scored 12 points.

James has not been the same since his eye-popping Game 5 performance in the conference finals; he scored 48 points against the Detroit Pistons and 29 of his team’s final 30 points in the double-overtime victory.

“I kind of envisioned it being tough,” James said. “I think the Eastern Conference finals was tough and I knew it was going to pick up another level. I think our team senses that, too.”

It is clear, however, that the Cavaliers are not in sync with one another.

As James drove to the basket for that key possession in the final 30 seconds, Cavaliers Coach Mike Brown was yelling for a timeout.

“I’m more tired from yelling timeout 18 times in a row than from the game,” Brown said. “It was so loud, nobody heard me.”

Instead, James raced up court like a headstrong 22-year-old, and the next thing Brown saw was Varejão’s miss.

“I definitely wanted to try to get a good look at it or give my teammate a better look at it, but it was just miscommunication,” James said.

Unlike in San Antonio, where the Spurs took leads of 18 points in Game 1 and 29 in Game 2, the Cavaliers made this one closer, but to no avail.

The Spurs are on the verge of winning their third title in five years, and according to Parker, that has everything to do with their coach, Gregg Popovich, preaching perfection and consistency in every practice. “I can honestly say these three games is the best defense we’ve played all season,” Popovich said, giving special credit to Bowen’s work on James and complimenting his 4-for-5 shooting night from 3-point range. Bowen added one free throw to bring his total to 13 points.

“I thought Timmy and Tony and Manu would have to be great to win these games, but that’s not going to happen all the time,” Popovich added. “That’s why I think Bruce picked up a lot of slack.”

Parker, who totaled 57 points in the first two games, is making himself the leading contender for most valuable player of the finals.

This game will not garner any awards — it was so full of sloppy play, missed shots and turnovers. The combined total of 147 points was only 2 more than the post-shot clock finals record for fewest points. (Fort Wayne defeated Syracuse, 74-71, in 1955.)

The teams combined for 4 fast-break points. Cleveland shot 3 for 19 from 3-point range. Even the officials made a mistake on a call.

At the start of the second quarter, with James driving to the basket, the officials called a foul on Jacque Vaughn but put Gibson on the line. He made both free throws.

Then the officials reversed the call, erased the 2 points and put James on the line. James made the first and missed the second. It was that kind of night for the Cavaliers, and it has been that kind of series.

If the first half was difficult to watch, the third quarter, when the Spurs outscored the Cavaliers, 15-12, was utterly forgettable.

“It was 40-38 at halftime; we set the Western world of offensive basketball back 10 years,” Popovich said.

In the process, however, the Spurs are on the verge of advancing into the hallowed territory of a dynasty.

Feist is mellow enough for Starbucks but tough enough to hurtle through a taut song.

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By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: June 13, 2007

There are plenty of singers who inspire their fans to sing along. And then there is Feist, the indie-rock chanteuse from Canada. She is a restless polymath with a catalog of great songs and a voice like carved steam. At Town Hall on Monday, during the first of two sold-out shows, she encouraged audience participation, but no one seemed eager to drown her out. When Feist opens her mouth, there is only one reasonable reaction: shut up.

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 Audio: Q & A With Feist by Jon Pareles (mp3)
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Just Feist. Just Wait. (April 15, 2007)
Feist built her American following gradually. For a while she was best known for singing with the indie-rock group Broken Social Scene. Then import copies of her 2004 breakthrough album, “Let It Die,” began trickling into shops; the CD finally got an American release in 2005 and slowly became a word-of-mouth favorite.

Last month the follow-up, “The Reminder” (Cherrytree/Interscope), arrived with a bang: glowing features, rave reviews and a spot on the Starbucks CD rack. And Monday’s concert felt like validation of her prominence: she’s still a long way from being overrated.

Although her music is (apparently) gentle enough to be sipped through a green straw, Feist herself seems to be easily bored, and that’s one of her greatest assets. One minute she was inviting an audience member onstage so she could sample his birdlike whistling. (She used it to accompany her hushed version of “The Park.”) The next minute she was hurtling through “I Feel It All,” which emulates the tautness (but not the noise) of punk rock.

In some sense “The Reminder” is a concept album: nearly every song seems to be about two lovers “divided by the ocean,” though it’s never quite clear whether the ocean is a literal one, or whether the division is permanent. But it doesn’t really feel like a concept album because Feist declines to stick to a single mood or style. This is a meticulously made album, but it has the pleasantly casual feel of a sketchbook.

Monday’s concert felt casual too. She happily shared the spotlight by covering the New York singer-songwriter Tony Scherr and by inviting Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew onstage for a torchy version of that band’s “Lover’s Spit.” (She loves covers; the second half of “Let It Die” consisted of nothing but.)

And she kept trying to include the audience; at one point she demonstrated how to sing a three-part harmony. This shrugging humility can be frustrating, but it’s probably inseparable from the unfussy attitude that makes her songs — even ones you know well — feel like pleasant surprises.

Just about everyone suffers in comparison with this singer, even the musicians who formed her band; all she really needs is a guitar, a keyboard and a sampler. (While touring to promote “Let It Die,” she often performed solo.) For “1234,” her current single, she asked the crowd to add some backing vocals: “Ba-da, ba-da-da, ba-da-da, that’s-your-part,” she sang.

People did their best, falling in alongside the drummer, the trumpeter, the bassist and the banjo player. That made 1,504 people, or thereabouts, all accompanying Feist, all doomed to be pretty much superfluous.

The charred home of Jamal Abu al-Jediyan in northern Gaza. Mr. Jediyan, part of the Fatah leadership, was killed Monday by Hamas fighters.

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By STEVEN ERLANGER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 13, 2007

JERUSALEM, June 12 — Gunmen of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah sharply escalated their fight for supremacy on Tuesday, with Hamas taking over much of the northern Gaza Strip in what is beginning to look increasingly like a civil war.

Five days of revenge attacks on individuals — including executions, kneecappings and even tossing handcuffed prisoners off tall apartment towers — on Tuesday turned into something larger and more organized: attacks on symbols of power and the deployment of military units. About 25 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded, Palestinian medics said.

In one Hamas attack on a Fatah security headquarters in northern Gaza near Jabaliya Camp, at least 21 Palestinians were reported killed and another 60 wounded, said Moaweya Hassanein of the Palestinian Health Ministry.

After a senior Fatah leader in northern Gaza, Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, was killed Monday, Fatah’s elite Presidential Guards, who are being trained by the United States and its allies, fired rocket-propelled grenades at the house of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, in the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City.

An hour later, Hamas’s military wing fired four mortar shells at the presidential office compound of Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, who is in the West Bank, a Fatah spokesman, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, said in a telephone interview.

“Hamas is seeking a military coup against the Palestinian Authority,” he said.

Hamas made a similar accusation against Fatah. Hamas, which has an Islamist ideology, demanded that security forces loyal to Fatah, the more nationalist and secular movement, abandon their positions in northern and central Gaza.

Fatah’s leaders said Tuesday night that they would suspend participation in the unity government with Hamas, which began in March, until the fighting ends.

That agreement to govern jointly, negotiated under Saudi auspices, put Fatah ministers into a Hamas-led government in an effort to secure renewed international aid and recognition and to stop what was already serious fighting between the two factions.

But the new government has failed to achieve either goal, and it appeared to many in Gaza that the gunmen were not listening to their political leaders. Mr. Abbas is under increasing pressure to abandon the unity government he championed and to try once again to order new elections, which Hamas has said it will oppose by any means.

The head of the Egyptian mediation team, Lt. Col. Burhan Hamad, said neither side responded to his call on Tuesday to hold truce talks. “It seems they don’t want to come,” said Colonel Hamad, who has brokered several brief cease-fires between the two. “We must make them ashamed of themselves. They have killed all hope. They have killed the future.”

He said neither side had the weaponry required to produce “a decisive victory.”

Talal Okal, a Gazan political scientist, described what could be coming. “Tonight, we may find ourselves at the beginning of a civil war,” he said. “If Abbas decides to move his security forces onto the attack, and not to only defend, we’ll find ourselves in a much wider cycle.”

Fatah forces were ordered Tuesday evening to defend their positions and counter “a coup against the president and against the Palestinian Authority and national unity government.”

The streets of Gazan cities were once again empty of pedestrians and cars. People ventured out to buy food, but only to the next building, and parents kept children out of school.

At Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which Hamas gunmen patrolled, bodies of four Hamas fighters lay on the floor of the emergency room, including Muhammad al-Mqeir, 25. His closest friend called him a martyr, even though he was killed by another Palestinian, from Fatah. “They are not Palestinians, they are lost people,” the friend said of Fatah. Doctors said that the emergency room was overloaded and that the hospital was running short of blood.

After warning Fatah, Hamas attacked a Fatah-affiliated security headquarters in Gaza City, and declared northern Gaza “a closed military zone.”

An estimated 200 Hamas fighters surrounded Fatah security headquarters there, firing mortar shells and grenades at the compound, where some 500 security officers were positioned. The headquarters fell to Hamas. Hamas gunmen also exchanged fire with Fatah forces at the southern security headquarters in the town of Khan Yunis. There, the two sides fought a gun battle near a hospital. Fifteen children attending a kindergarten in the line of fire were rushed into the hospital, which is financed largely by European donations.

Angering Hamas, Fatah militants abducted and killed the nephew of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in April 2004.

Hamas gunmen attacked the home of a Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, killing his 14-year-old son and three women inside, security officials said. Other Fatah gunmen stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it down.

Fatah forces also attacked the headquarters, in Gaza, of Hamas’s television station, Al Aksa TV, and began to broadcast Fatah songs, but Hamas said later that it had repelled the attack.

In the West Bank, where Fatah is stronger and the Israeli occupation forces keep Hamas fighters underground, the Fatah Presidential Guards took over the Ramallah offices of Al Aksa TV and confiscated equipment.

Also in the West Bank, Fatah men kidnapped a deputy minister from Hamas, one of the few Hamas cabinet members and legislators not already in Israeli military jails, part of Israel’s effort to keep pressure on Hamas.

Since Monday morning, at least 43 Palestinians have died in the renewed fighting. More than 50 had died in the previous outburst last month that ended in a brief cease-fire mediated by the Egyptians.

A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, accused Fatah, in alliance with Israel and the United States, of trying to destroy Hamas and overturn the results of elections held in January 2006, in which Hamas won a legislative majority.

“They crossed all the red lines,” he said of Fatah after the second straight day that Prime Minister Haniya’s house was fired upon.

Sami Abu Zuhri, another Hamas spokesman, said: “Those we sit with from Fatah have no control on the ground. These groups have relations with the U.S. administration and Israel.” Hamas says it believes that Mr. Abbas’s aide, Muhammad Dahlan, is controlling the Fatah forces, and Mr. Zuhri said, “It’s an international and regional plan aiming to eliminate Hamas.”

Israeli officials are debating whether Fatah can stand up to Hamas in Gaza. They say they have been asked by Washington recently to approve another shipment of armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition to the Presidential Guards. But a senior Israeli official said Israel was worried that the weaponry would just be seized by Hamas, as much of the last shipment was.

“Hamas now has two million bullets intended for Fatah,” he said.

Israeli officials are explicit privately about their intention to damage Hamas and its military infrastructure in Gaza and try to give Fatah a boost at the same time. Israel, in retaliation for rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, has been bombing the buildings and facilities of Hamas’s Executive Force, a parallel police force in Gaza, that has not been firing rockets. Israeli officials argue, however, that the Executive Force and the Hamas military wing “share a command headquarters.”

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which deals with the 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million people who are refugees or their descendants, said its ability to provide needed aid had been severely hampered by the fighting. Three of its 5 food distribution centers and 7 of its 18 health clinics were forced to close Tuesday, said its Gaza director, John Ging.

“The violence is compounding an already dreadful humanitarian situation,” he said, with 80 percent of the refugee population already dependent on aid.

Mr. Okal, who is now on the board of trustees of the Fatah-affiliated Azhar University in Gaza, said he would oppose Fatah’s pulling out of elected institutions, but added that he was not optimistic about Gaza. “We are heading toward a collapse — of both the political system and society,” he said.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza City.