LeBron’s teammate only thing standing in his way
Befuddled Smith passes up buzzer-beater as Warriors snare Game 1 victory in OT
The story of this NBA final was supposed to be pretty simple: even if LeBron James played out of his mind, his Cleveland Cavaliers just didn’t have enough talent to hang with the defending champion Golden State Warriors.
After one game: check and check. James put in an unstoppable performance that was the highlight of what has already been a remarkable playoff run for him, scoring 51 points, adding eight assists and eight rebounds and generally just reminding everyone that he has somehow elevated his game at 33 years old and despite playing in more games over the past eight seasons than one human body should be able to handle.
It was, in the end, not quite enough.
A frantic scramble off a missed George Hill free throw with four seconds left ended up sending Game 1 to overtime when Cleveland’s JR Smith mystifyingly decided not to attempt a potential game-winning shot off a rebound, possibly because he didn’t realize the score was tied at 107.
That mistake was immediately made very costly when the Warriors scored the first nine points of the extra frame on the way to a 124-114 victory in Game 1 that suggested this series might not end up the perfunctory Golden State win that was widely expected.
Where James carried the Cavs mostly on his own — Kevin Love had 21 points, but only Smith also made it to double digits — the Warriors got 29 points from Stephen Curry, 26 from Kevin Durant and 24 from Klay Thompson, plus another 13 from Draymond Green. Four future hall of famers make it tough on even the best player in the world.
If one were trying to come up with the ideal version of a Cavaliers first half, the one that unfolded Thursday night would be just about it. James was scoring from all over the place, totalling 24 points on a selection of finger rolls, free throws and one threepointer, which forced Golden State’s defenders to keep playing him close on the perimeter. It underscored something that Warriors coach Steve Kerr had noted before this series began: five years ago, when James was in the final with Miami against San Antonio, the Spurs backed off him over and over, daring him to shoot. The James of today can still score in the paint, but he also loves to shoot fadeaways and long jumpers and whatever else he can hoist up. He is a bloody handful.
Add in the fact that Thompson left the floor with what looked like a bad knee injury — Smith accidentally fell into him — and it was possible to envision the way in which the Cavaliers could actually make this a series.
All it would take would be a key Warriors injury or two and for James to almost never miss — he was 9-for-11 from the field in the first half — and this thing might not be a casual Warriors stroll to another title. With five minutes left in the first half, Cleveland was up 51-40.
The Warriors, though, have made an odd habit of this in this post-season. They spot teams double-digit leads and then they rouse themselves from their slumber and roar back into it.
The Warriors are like that friend who goes from pleasantly tipsy to fall-down drunk so fast that nobody noticed it happening. In one moment they are down by 11 and then, in a blink, the deficit has been erased. The crowd at Oracle Arena, it is worth noting, seems to be able to sense when these runs will happen even before they happen.
In Game 1, the place went nuts as the first half started to wind down and Golden State made up all 11 points in less than four minutes of game time, aided by three-pointers by Thompson and Durant and capped by a Durant dunk. Still, though, Cleveland fought back into the lead, which Curry promptly erased again with a 35-foot bomb just before the halftime buzzer sounded.
The Cavaliers fought and clawed for 24 minutes and James was otherworldly and then the Warriors just casually knotted things up at 56-56. If you were a Cleveland fan, this was rather daunting.
James, though, did not seem particularly daunted. He opened the second half just as he had done in the first, which is to say he kept pouring in buckets. He hit a midrange jumper and then a long three and then when Golden State finally stopped him with a Durant block at the rim, James gathered up the loose ball and calmly hit a fadeaway jump shot in the paint. He was, almost entirely on his own, keeping the game close and preventing the Warriors from going on the third-quarter burst that has been their signature move in this post-season.
But the enormity of the task before him was made apparent again when James’ shooting touch cooled off just a little. He missed five shots in a 21/2-minute stretch late in the third and the Warriors turned a three-point deficit into a seven-point lead. They would finish the quarter up six at 84-78.
That stretch summed up the night: James could simply not do it all on his own against a team as good as Golden State.
He sure came close, though.