Deja vu: Clinching shot by Durant comes straight out of Cavs’ nightmares
CLEVELAND — A frozen moment in Game 3:
Same player. Close to the same spot on the floor. Almost the exact same game situation.
Kevin Durant with the dagger three to give the Warriors a 3-0 series lead.
“It was like deja vu, seeing that shot again,” Cleveland forward Kevin Love said.
On Wednesday night, Durant’s 33-foot pull-up threepointer sealed the game, and likely another championship trophy, for the Warriors,
It was the final basket of Durant’s sublime night: He finished with 43 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists.
And when he hit the three to give the Warriors a six-point lead with 49.8 seconds left, Draymond Green turned and roared into his teammate’s face. The Warriors exploded with
joy. But Durant was expressionless.
Like he was in a trance. In the zone.
“Don’t get me wrong, every time I make a shot in the NBA, I get excited,” Durant said. “I just internalize it a little bit as I get older.
“I was definitely excited. It’s hard to make shots at this level in the NBA and I understand that. But at the same time, I knew the game wasn’t over. I’ve seen some crazy stuff happen . ... I just try to stay in the zone of trying to win the game.”
Durant said he wasn’t aware at the time that the shot was similar to last year’s three-pointer. That shot — over LeBron James, and made in a blue rather than a white uniform — in Game 3 of the 2017 Finals came with 45.3 seconds to play, and the score gave the Warriors a one-point lead, which they kept.
“It wasn’t the same shot,” James said. “It was 4 or 5 feet behind what he made last year. Last year, we were up by two and he pulled up right at the three-point line and got a great contest but he made it. Tonight, they’re up three, they come off a pick and roll and he just pulled up. Same wing, different location.
“You definitely tip your hat. He’s an assassin and that’s one of those assassin plays.”
Remember after Game 1, when Warriors fans were frustrated with Durant, when Durant was beating himself up for his poor shooting night?
No? Didn’t think so. At some point in his career, people might stop nitpicking Durant. This was the Durant the Warriors flew across to the country to the Hamptons to recruit. The safety valve who could cover for a bad shooting night by either or both of the Splash Brothers.
“Nights like tonight, he reminds people of how great he is in all areas of offense, just how dominant he is,” Warriors guard Stephen Curry said.
The player James called “one of the best players I’ve ever played against, that this league has ever seen,” was at his best.
“I didn’t want to shoot a bad shot,” Durant said.
He didn’t. He almost single-handedly won the game, with his greatest playoff effort (he had scored 41 points four other times).
The Warriors have some bad Game 3 memories in Cleveland. They have not won one in Cleveland without Durant, losing in both 2015 and 2016. They know how electric the arena is: Quicken Loans is as great a home-court advantage for the Cavaliers as Oracle has been for the Warriors.
“We know what kind of force they’re going to bring,” head coach Steve Kerr said before the game.
The Cavaliers got exactly the start they wanted, jumping the Warriors early, preventing them from finding a rhythm. The fans were wild, telegraphing their love to James, who could be spending his final week in a Cavaliers uniform.
But then the Warriors, led by Durant, started to chip away. The Warriors took the best punch from the Cavaliers and survived. Durant was 4-for-4 from the field in the first quarter, scoring 13 points and getting all seven of the team’s rebounds. He scored a three-pointer at the end of the half to cut the deficit to six.
“Kevin was the story in the first half, just keeping us in the game,” Kerr said. “And then he was the story in the second half as well, closing it out.”
His opponents couldn’t
“You definitely tip your hat. He’s an assassin and that’s one of those assassin plays.”
LeBron James, Cleveland forward, on Kevin Durant
praise him enough.
“His ability to handle the ball, shoot the ball, make plays at his length, his size, his speed,” James said.
And his teammates couldn’t celebrate him enough. They got overly excited.
“It was almost like I was cussing him out, I was so happy,” Green said of his reaction to the big shot. “It was a huge shot. High emotion. It was in the same area, just a little bit deeper.
“But it was like deja vu all the way around.”
And the Warriors hope they have another kind of deja vu soon, hoisting that Larry O’Brien Trophy.