THREE FALLING
CAVS TUMBLE TO BRINK AFTER WARRIORS CLOSE ON 11-0 RUN
CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers got everything they wanted. They were home. They had the fast pace. They had a physical game. They had the Warriors again treating the basketball as if it were nuclear waste. They got support for the planet’s greatest player, LeBron James, as Kyrie Irving arose with an electrifying 38 points.
Everything they wanted. Pace, physical nature, venue, support. Everything. Well, almost. Even with all that, they still didn’t get a win. The Warriors shut out the Cavs over the final 3:08 and scored the game’s last 11 points, seven of them by Kevin Durant, whose 3-pointer with 45.3 seconds remaining put Golden State up for good and on the way to a thrilling 118-113 victory that brought a strangulating 3-0 NBA Finals lead.
“We just wanted to stay around and we did,” Durant said. “I’ve never been in this position before, I don’t want to relax. It’s not over. This was a crazy game, anything can happen.”
Irving shot 16-of-29, but missed his final three shots, all in the final 1:52. “Definitely tough, hurts,” he said. “Obviously, it’s physically and emotionally draining,” said LeBron James, who was one assist shy of another triple-double (39 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists) and called the Warriors the team with “probably the most firepower I’ve played in my career. I played against some great teams but I don’t think no team had this kind of firepower.”
In addition to Durant, Klay Thompson scored 30 points and Stephen Curry had 26. Yeah, firepower.
After J.R. Smith (16 points) hit his fifth 3-pointer of the game, Cleveland led 113-107 with 3:09 left. But the Cavs missed their last eight shots and committed a turnover. Every miss was huge, but perhaps the killer was Kyle Korver missing a corner 3pointer off a James feed with 52.5 seconds remaining.
The Warriors? Curry scored a layup at 2:25, Durant hit a baseline pull-up at 1:15. After the Korver miss, Durant hit his monster 3-pointer with James closing for the lead, 114-113, that never evaporated. In the final 12.9 seconds, Durant and Curry each bagged a pair of free throws.
“It was a great stop,” Durant said. “It always starts on the defensive side with us. We know if we get off the board and push, we’re a dangerous team. And I seen him backing up, and I just wanted to take that shot. … We were down two, if I miss, we could have got another stop. But glad I was able to knock that down.”
Said James: “They made some shots and we didn’t. I had some really good looks. Me personally I gave everything I have. … They made shots and got stops. They made every play down the stretch.” The biggest, of course, was Durant’s 3.
“Obviously KD made some huge plays down the stretch,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who also praised Thompson’s late-game defense on Irving. “Overall, it was just an incredibly tough, resilient performance. It wasn’t our smartest game that we have played all year, but it was maybe our toughest in terms of our ability to just hang in there. Nothing was really going our way, but we were still there.”
Yet they came out of it with a chance to sweep Friday night in Cleveland, despite 18 turnovers.
And despite Irving. And despite James. Kerr kept telling his team the Cavs pair would wear down because “that’s pretty taxing to go one-onone the whole game.” James played all but 2:23 — when he sat the final 1:49 of the first quarter the Cavs went from up three to down seven.
“Those guys had to do so much,” said Thompson, whose offense carried the Warriors early (16 points in the first quarter) and his defense helped bring them home.
Behind Irving, who grabbed the game by the throat in the third quarter, and James, who was his human-tornado self, Cleveland was fueled by desperation and pride and seemed set to drop the Warriors to their third straight Game 3 Finals loss here. But appearances can be so deceiving.