The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Rally shows Cavs at best under pressure
The question once the regular season finally ended was: Will the Cavaliers finally wake up when the alarm clock announcing the playoffs goes off?
Up, showered, dressed, breakfast devoured and out the door all in 15 minutes.
The Cavaliers lost their final four games of the regular season and now have won seven straight in the 2017 playoffs. They trailed the Raptors by three points at halftime in Game 3 on May 5 and then played a near flawless second half to win, 115-94, and take a 3-0 lead in the bestof-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series. A year ago, the Cavaliers beat the Raptors in the first two games of the Eastern Conference finals and then lost the next two games in Toronto before taking Game 5 in Cleveland and Game 6 in Toronto to advance to the NBA Finals. There will be no repeat this year.
“I don’t dwell on the past,” LeBron James said in a TNT postgame interview. “I can only focus on the present, and that’s what we did today.
“We knew we were going to get their best shot. We had to come back by playing great basketball and we did that.”
James with 35 points, eight rebounds and seven assists and Kyle Korver with four 3-point shots, led a monstrous
second half comeback and silenced the crowd in the Air Canada Centre. The Cavaliers went on a 20-3 run in the first six minutes of the fourth period for a 99-80 lead.
The Cavs earned a week off after sweeping Indiana in the first round. If they play Game 4 on May 7 in Toronto with the same determination they played the second half of Game 3, they will get another long break. A rested Cavs team is a dangerous team.
“It’s not about the sweep,” James said. “It’s not about how important it is. It’s about going out and playing Cavaliers basketball.
If we can do that for 48 minutes, we give ourselves a good chance to win it.”
The Cavaliers were sloppy with the ball in the first half and they didn’t rain down 3’s as often as they did in Quicken Loans Arena in the first two games of the series, but when the pressure was on, they responded, just as they did when the games with Indiana got tight.
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue had a simple answer when asked after Game 2 why his team is so much more focused in the playoff than it was for most of 2017 in the regular season.
“They understand what’s at stake,” Lue said. “Being able to lock on one team defensively has really helped us out. You
can’t look at the (shooting) percentages. You have to try to make a team do something differently than they’ve done all season. That’s our main focus.”
The Cavs, led by relentless defensive effort from J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert, held Toronto scoring machine DeMar DeRozan to 19 points in Game 1 and just five points in Game 2. DeRozan didn’t score his first field goal until the fourth quarter of Game 2 on May 3 at The Q.
DeRozan scored 21 points in the first half of Game 3 to lift the Raptors to a 52-49 lead at intermission. The Cavs led, 43-37, when Smith went to the bench with his third foul with 4:38 remaining in the second quarter.
Smith fouled DeRozan
in the first minute of the third quarter and remained in the game. DeRozan got a step on Smith, drove the lane and Smith grabbed his arm going by for his fifth foul with 7:06 left in the third.
Lue had no choice but to replace his best defender. DeRozan scored 15 points in the third quarter, but when the period ended, the Cavs were back on top, 79-77, behind a spurt of 3-point shots by Korver.
DeRozan scored one point in the fourth quarter.
This was the first time in this series the Cavaliers were challenged. They answered like champions.