Cavs avoid elimination, roll over Warriors in Game 4
LeBron, Cavs ignore doubters, end Warriors’ perfect postseason run
It was impossible. It was inconceivable. There was no way the Cavaliers could escape from the wreckage of this series and slow the Golden State Warriors’ march to immortality. The Cavaliers heard all the doubts ahead of Friday’s Game 4 of the NBA finals. The noise was impossible to ignore. But with every dazzling layup by Kyrie Irving and each impassioned fist pump from LeBron James, the Cavaliers and their fans at Quicken Loans Arena found hope, a commodity that had been in short supply.
In a game played at a breakneck pace, and one that seemed to have more physical contact than a taekwondo tournament, the Cavaliers stunned the Warriors, 137-116, to stay alive in the finals.
The Warriors lead the best-ofseven series by three games to one, and they will have another opportunity to clinch the title in Game 5 on Monday in Oakland, Calif.
The loss was a missed opportunity for the Warriors — not only to celebrate a championship on Cleveland’s home court, but to do something no team in league history had ever done: sweep its way to a perfect record in the postseason.
The Cavaliers refused to let that happen, dealing the Warriors their first defeat since April 10, their second-to-last game of the regular season. All that good feeling for the Cavaliers came with a caveat, of course: No team has come back from a 3-0 series deficit to win the finals. On Friday, the Cavaliers, who erased a 3-1 deficit against the Warriors in last season’s finals, at least took a step in that direction.
Irving, the team’s acrobatic point guard, scored 40 points, and James, its all-world forward, finished with his second triple-double of the series: 31 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists. Kevin Love added 23 points for the Cavaliers, who shot 52.9 percent from the field. J.R. Smith had five 3-pointers.
After scoring 49 points in the first quarter and 86 points in the first half, the Cavaliers survived a frantic third quarter. James threw a pass off the backboard to himself for a dunk. Kevin Durant later jawed with him, drawing security personnel onto the court. Draymond Green was ejected — and then un-ejected, after it was determined that an earlier technical foul was incorrectly assessed to him.
There was more: Zaza Pachulia, the Warriors’ starting center, appeared to strike the Cavaliers’ Iman Shumpert in the midsection during a scrum. They were both assessed technical fouls.
In other words, it was a big mess. But the Cavaliers emerged from the muck with a 115-96 lead entering the fourth quarter. It was too much for even the Warriors to overcome.
The Cavaliers played suffocating defense on Stephen Curry, limiting him to 4-of-13 shooting. Durant scored a team-high 35 points, more than twice as many as any of his teammates. Green had 16 points and 14 rebounds. As game time approached, crowds began to form outside the arena. But the general direction of the series had put a damper on the festivities. The air seemed thick with resignation. A sandwich board at a restaurant made a sad plea: “Cleveland Don’t Quit!”
The Cavaliers were coming off a 118-113 loss in Wednesday’s Game 3, a heartbreaking result that put them in a giant hole. James and Irving had combined for 77 points, yet the Cavaliers still lost. Another title for the Warriors seemed inevitable, and perhaps it still does.
On Thursday, James said there was nothing the Cavaliers could do but try. Their loss in Game 3 had given them some belief — the belief, at least, that they could make these games competitive, after 22- and 19-point losses to open the series.
“I feel like if we come in with the same energy, same effort, physicality as we did in Game 3, we give ourselves a good chance to win,” he said. “Now, does that result in a win? It’s tough to say. Because we played well in Game 3, and they were able to get that one as well.”
On Friday, Smith and Irving opened the game with back-toback 3-pointers. The Cavaliers were not going to back down. Later, James drove to the hoop, absorbed contact and scored on a layup. He punctuated the play by pumping his fist — once, twice, three times — and “MVP” chants filled the building as he went to the foul line.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr needed just 2 minutes, 44 seconds of the first quarter to elapse before he called his first timeout. It did little good. The Cavaliers pushed their lead to 17, and the Warriors augmented their opponent’s hot shooting by getting into foul trouble. Curry, Green and Klay Thompson picked up two fouls apiece, and the Cavaliers had a 49-33 lead at the end of the first quarter.
It was a record-setting effort by the Cavaliers: the most points a team has scored in the first quarter of any NBA playoff game.
When the Warriors threatened in the second quarter, trimming the lead to 12, Smith connected on a 3-pointer from 30 feet with the shot clock winding down. The lead was back to 20 when James pulled up for a short jumper, and the crowd — so forlorn just two days ago — went bananas.
Irving and James combined for 50 points while shooting 18 of 25 from the field as the Cavaliers surged to an 86-68 halftime lead. The Cavaliers had scored 91 points in Game 1.
Given the long odds facing the Cavaliers and the strength of their opponent, their overall effort was nothing short of extraordinary. Now, the hard part: doing it three more times.