Cavaliers won’t go quietly
CLEVELAND — Go ahead, back them into a corner. Call them names. Write them off.
The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t care. For the fourth time in two years, they fought off elimination in the NBA Finals by winning just when it appeared their season was over.
The Cavs turned anger regarding comments made by motor-mouthed Golden State forward Draymond Green into energy and their best performance this season. They broke scoring records in a stunning 137116 victory Friday night that shoved this “three-match” between new-school rivals back to the West Coast for Game 5 on Monday.
While most teams would prefer not to live on the edge, the Cavaliers seem to thrive there. The only team to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the title series, LeBron James and his buddies are basketball’s high-wire, highrisk act with no net to break their fall. It’s dangerous, and not for the faint of heart.
“I don’t like it,” James said after Friday’s win, drawing laughter. “It causes too much stress, man. I’m stressed out. Keep doing this every year. But listen, at the end of the day we’ve just got some resilient guys.”
James is one of them. With 31 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds Friday night, he passed Magic Johnson in the record book with his ninth career triple-double in the NBA Finals.
Now the Cavs will try to do what no other team has ever done in the NBA playoffs — rally to win from a 3-0 deficit.
It’s been done on big stages in other sports, perhaps most famously by the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who strung together four wins against the New York Yankees to win the American League pennant on the way to their first World Series title since 1918. But in the 126 instances in which NBA teams have fallen behind 3-0, none have recovered to win the series.
Maybe these chaotic Cavs are just the team to do it. Stack up the odds, and Cleveland conquers them.
“We’re a resilient group, resilient team,” said Kevin Love, who shot 6-for-8 from 3-point range in a 23-point performance Friday. “We have been in this situation before. Every year’s different, every playoff series, every game, but we just are a team that never count ourselves out. We feel like any game that we walk on the floor, we have a great game plan and we expect to win.”
But beyond their confidence and resilience, the Cavs have been mentally tough through all kinds of adversity. Over the three years since James returned from a four-year stint with the Miami Heat that included two championships, they’ve handled injuries, constant scrutiny, drama — much of it selfinflicted— and even a midseason coaching change.
There doesn’t seem to be anything that rattles them, so it should be no surprise that on the verge of being swept by a team James called a “juggernaut” and “beast” before this series began, Cleveland dug down deep again.
Kyrie Irving knocked down seven of Cleveland’s 24 3-pointers — one of their three NBA Finals scoring records — and had 40 points as the Cavs stopped Golden State’s streak of postseason perfection at 15 games.
The All-Star point guard, who made several Golden State defenders look silly with his darting moves, excels when things seem darkest. However, he can’t explain the 2016 champions’ ability to bounce back.
“Every game is do or die, and we understand that,” he said. “We’re ready to live in it.”
On Thursday, Green, whose suspension from last year’s Game 5 for hitting James in the groin helped swing the series to Cleveland, said he was looking forward to celebrating on Cleveland’s home floor for the second time in three years.
And while the comments didn’t come across as excessively brash given who made them, Irving said the Cavs were offended and inspired.
“It’s part of the game,” Irving said. “But we knew what we were faced with. But then you add, of course, some chatter in there, and that adds some extra motivation. That taste wouldn’t have been the same if we would have lost tonight and they would have celebrated on our home floor. So I’ll just leave that at that.”