King frustrated after another ugly defeat

OAKLAND, Calif. — LeBron James sounded out of answers.

“I don’t want to get into the ‘what we need to do better’ right now. The game is too fresh. We’re going to go home and watch the film to see ways we can be better,” James said after his Cavs fell into a menacing 2-0 Finals hole to the powerful Warriors — despite his tripledouble.

“Do things — I don’t want to say differently because you work so hard to get to this point — but make a couple of changes to see if we can be a lot better defensively and offensively,” James said. “I thought for the most part with the game plan that we had, we tried to execute it as close as possible.”

And they still got clobbered as Stephen Curry went off for a tripledouble, Kevin Durant scored 33 points, Klay Thompson added 22.

The Cavs were preaching and teaching the gospel of up-tempo and physical since getting their posteriors kicked in Game 1. They came out and tried all that Sunday in Game 2.

Final score: Warriors 132, Cavs 113. Back to the drawing board. “Much more physical today than we were in Game 1. And we forced them to 20 turnovers,” James said, starting out sounding hopeful before the downer entered his voice. “And they still beat us pretty good, so we got to be much better, too.”

Throughout the first half, James went away from anything resembling an offensive perimeter game. He drove. And he drove successfully when on breaks or in the half court. The Warriors could not deny him. By halftime he had 18 points.

But even though he is the best on the planet, he is one guy. He wore down. Still, he finished with 29 points, 14 assists and 11 rebounds. It was his eighth Finals triple-double, tying Magic Johnson for the most all time. And it was his 18th career playoff triple-double. Not that it mattered to him.

“Right now, it means nothing. But it will mean something. He’s one of the greatest to play this game. Right now, individuality means absolutely nothing when it comes to this team sport,” James said. “But when I’m done, I’ll probably look back on it and say it was a cool feat.”

Right now all that matters is Game 3 on Wednesday. The Warriors expect LeBron to be LeBron.

“Oh, we have got a plan in Cleveland, we’re going to shut him down,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr joked. “We have got this great plan that for sure is going to just completely stop him.

“I don’t know what you do with him. He’s one of the great players of all time.”