Warriors’ mission to stop James

CLEVELAND superstar LeBron James, as versatile and dangerous as any NBA player, is a focus of the Golden State Warriors as they prepare for today’s start of the NBA Finals.

The Cavaliers are defending champions after James sparked the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, rallying Cleveland from 3-1 down to win last year’s best-of-seven series in a dramatic winnertake-all showdown at Oakland, California.

James became the first player to lead an NBA Finals in every major statistical category with 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds, 8.9 assists, 2.6 steals and 2.3 blocked shots a game last year.

This season, at age 32, James averaged 26.4 points plus career highs of 8.6 rebounds and 8.7 assists as well as a league-high 37.8 minutes on the court a game.

As dangerous a scorer as he is from outside or driving to the hoop, James also threatens by being able to find teammates such as Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love with passes when defenders focus too much on him.

“You can’t stop LeBron,” said Mike Brown, the Golden State assistant coach said.

“He’s going to score. He’s going to get other players involved in the scoring by passing the ball off.

“So you’ve got to make him work as hard as he can. He can’t have an easy game.”

Brown, who once coached James with the Cavaliers, has emphasised perseverance when dealing with James, especially since Kevin Durant will be dealing with him much of the time.

“LeBron is going to get his points and so is Kyrie. You’ve just got to try and make it tough on them,” Durant said. “You can’t get discouraged.

“They are a strong team and they are playing well. They have chemistry. It has only gotten better all year. ”