SAN ANTONIO – LeBron James strolled out of an inferno for a building, flanked by his representatives and team public relations men, a slight limp on his walk to mask the anger welling inside him. The most dominant player on the planet has also been the most indestructible, treating injuries with tape and pressure, not rest – and suddenly, on the grandest stage of professional basketball, a catastrophic malfunction left James at his body’s mercy.

This is pro sports, a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation, and here the AT&T Center welcomed basketball’s most renowned victim of leg cramps. James tethers on the court with elite durability, vanquishing opponents and teams with a reign on the NBA increasingly resembling Michael Jordan’s dominance, and still everyone understands his body’s retention to cramping. When James had succumbed to cramps in the NBA Finals two years ago, he was given a lesson in the body and how elevating his fluid intake allowed necessary time to compensate for stiffness.

How convenient that the AT&T Center’s air conditioning crashed Thursday on the night of the Finals opener, where every facet of the game production is triple checked, and had unleashed a 90-plus degree grip of the arena. For multiple long-tenured arena workers, never had they seen a sight like this: The building’s cooling system cratered and no one found a solution. Here were staffers of years upon years of service, perspiration dripping the shirt and assuring this wasn’t simply a flip-switch accident but a problem that resided on the desks of AT&T.

Whatever. James had ripped apart his jersey, shorts and gear for a new uniform and had requested more liquids at halftime. Suddenly, it all went to hell. The left leg of perhaps the most impressive specimen in NBA history gave out and locked on him, and James was relegated to sit the final four minutes of the Miami Heat’s 110-95 loss to the Spurs in Game 1. Without James, teammates wondered whether he had simply suffered minor spasms or his old cramps. And then, San Antonio delivered a fourth-quarter clinic – draining three-pointers with precision passing and scoring 36 total points on Miami’s defense.

No one will publicly state this disaster surfaced out of a plan to sabotage James and his body, but here was Miami’s front office contingent shaking heads and watching the sequences over on a television late Thursday. Ice packs covered dressed players in the locker rooms; team officials sweated everywhere.

“The heat’s something … you know … we’ll be ready to adjust to,” Mario Chalmers told RealGM. “It took [James] out of the game, and that’s one of our best players.”

Rest assured, James will recalibrate his body and play in Game 2 on Sunday. He’ll listen and discard the foolish notion he should have played through cramps, that he should have continued his brisk pace under the restricted leg from the lower calf and up. From recreational courts to NBA courts, that’s nonsense.

Those powerful legs cramped stronger than ever, yes, and surrounding actions continued to reinforce the humidity here. As if they’d plotted a reminder, the arena repeatedly boomed Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” in the second half and gave several announcements of the defected air conditioning. As if James’ body hadn’t revealed and regressed enough.

Gregg Popovich had stared down the Heat’s bench as the buzzer sounded on Game 1, raising his right hand in acknowledgement as coaches reciprocate after games. Only, no one looked his direction – perhaps feeling part of a nasty scheme – and Ime Udoka consoled a smiling Popovich to just walk into the tunnel.

For all these international Spurs, this playing climate was straight out of Europe, straight old school hoops.

“Me, I felt like in Europe playing in the European Championship,” Tony Parker said. “We never have AC in Europe. In Europe, we’re used to it.”

No one was used to LeBron James faltering down the stretch like this, not after back-to-back championships and Finals MVPs. He’s earned the benefit of the doubt – with titles and the dragging of the NBA past moments of ineptitude this season. Donald Sterling. The Indiana Pacers – and their poor challenge of the Eastern Conference champions in the last round. James has kept a pulse on Sterling’s ownership saga, and he had to smirk when speculation spread last week that Sterling could try to bid for an NHL team after his ban from the NBA. LeBron’s influence is so wide reaching now, his input placed on social issues and other leagues.

On the eve of these Finals, Sterling finally put to rest his lame court battle with the NBA, dropping the $1 billion lawsuit. Now, Sterling will whisk away, and the 80-year-old has no interest in pursuing ownership of another pro sports team, a source with knowledge of his thinking told RealGM.

“It was inevitable for me tonight, throughout the conditions out there on the court … everybody could feel it,” James said, and soon he got on his shades and exited through a back door of the AT&T Center. He gave San Antonio credit; its team exhibited a shooting and passing flurry and its arena’s air conditioning outage transformed a body’s weakness into bursting on James in only a matter of time.

The NBA had Adam Silver and Rod Thorn releasing statements on the arena glitch, and mostly to query on how the sturdiness of LeBron James had been shattered in a state like you’ve never seen the league’s best player. Diminished and at his body’s mercy.