"No one," teammate Mike Miller says, "understands what he has to go through. And the people that judge him have never been in those situations. It's tough. It's tough for him, especially for as talented as he is.

"It would be great for him just to get that chip off his shoulder and make it a little easier for him to play."

Last season, the rallying cry in the Heat locker room was to win it for "17," the nickname the team gave then-17-year-veteran Juwan Howard.

But with Howard now in his 18th season and with James having gone from up 2-1 to a 4-2 2011 Finals demise, this is all about No. 6, an undeniable reality in the locker room.

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"I've always felt," Howard says, "since day one, after last year, when LeBron signed with the Heat, dealing with all the adversity, more importantly, all the negativity from fans, media, I always thought it was unfair treatment. It's always that whenever there's a situation where he doesn't take the last shot at the end, he doesn’t have a good game, or he doesn't score enough points that the public feels that he needs to score in the fourth quarter, he's always taking heat for it. I think it's totally unfair.

"He's been to the Finals twice. Trust me, he wants to win it more than anyone wants to win it. He wants to win it more than the pressure people put on him. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet. But it will."

That's why "18" wants it for the player who dresses to his left an AmericanAirlines Arena.

"When he wins it," Howard says, "it's going to be a sigh of relief. But it's going to happen. Hopefully it happens this year."

That is the universal goal in this locker room.

"For him, and it's been like that for other great players," Wade says, "they're going to have that pressure until they win it first. And once they win the first, it's going to be like, 'Well, you got to win three; you've got to win another one.' I think, for him, we just want to get that first one out of the way and worry about the rest. I don't think he would probably really want it any other way.

"The high expectations have made him the player he's been his whole life. But I told him once he gets it, once he's able to win that championship, for that moment he's going feel great."

Thing is, he already knows it. June can't get here soon enough.

He must capture it.

Not, again, just let it slip.

It is LeBron James' mandate.

"For me," he says, "that's the only thing that I'm missing, to make the ultimate of happiness for me."

Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IraHeatBeat.