Cavs follow their leader to Game 3 triumph
James sets tone, Irving plays along as Cleveland crushes Golden State by 30 points to make it a series
LeBron James gathered his teammates outside the locker room before taking the floor Wednesday night to deliver a simple but poignant message.
“Follow my lead,” he told them. “And do your job.”
The Cleveland Cavaliers did. As a result, they’re still alive in the NBA Finals.
James had 32 points and 11 rebounds, Kyrie Irving scored 30 points and the Cavaliers never trailed in blasting the Golden State Warriors 120-90 for their first win in this series. The Warriors still lead the series 2-1 with Game 4 Friday at Quicken Loans Arena.
J.R. Smith broke out of a shooting slump to score 20 points on 7-of-13 shooting, including 5-of-10 on three-pointers.
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue started Richard Jefferson at small forward in place of Kevin Love, who sat out with a concussion. James shifted into Love’s spot at power forward and the Cavs looked like a completely different team than the one that was crushed by a total of 48 points in the first two games at Oracle Arena.
“We’ve tried a lot of different lineups that haven’t worked,” Lue said before the game. “We’ve been big, we’ve been small. But putting LeBron at the 4 and trying to match their speed I think will help us out a lot.”
Tristan Thompson had 14 points and 13 rebounds, including seven offensive rebounds, and James handled Draymond Green better than anyone else has in this series. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson went scoreless in the first quarter as the Warriors fell behind by 20 on another off shooting night from the “Splash Brothers.” They finished a combined 4-of-16 from three-point range.
James all but guaranteed a victory after calling Wednesday a “must-win” game and a “do-or-die” situation since no NBA team has ever rallied from a 3-0 deficit. Then he went out and played like it. James bear-crawled across the court chasing after a loose ball, then soared high for a lob dunk when his head was even with the backboard.
He even swatted away a Curry shot during a dead ball in the second half to deliver a subtle message to the Warriors.
Irving, likewise, responded with arguably his best performance of the series. James took over some of the ball handling, freeing up Irving to focus more on scoring at times and he still finished with seven assists.
The Cavs were better with two stars instead of three, leaving a dilemma if Love is cleared before Friday. Irving scored 16 points in the first quarter and the Cavs raced out to a 33-13 lead while Curry’s shooting problems continued. Curry is shooting 44 percent in this series, including 10-of-25 from beyond the arc.
The Cavs led 51-43 at the half without any scoring from the bench. In fact, Iman Shumpert took the only two shots from a reserve, but he had to be pulled early in the second quarter after killing four possessions in a matter of minutes with turnovers and questionable shot selection.
His three early in the fourth quarter was the only basket scored by a Cavs reserve.
Yet the Cavs led by 20 in the first quarter and maintained a lead throughout the first half because Thompson and Curry went scoreless in the first quarter and the Splash Brothers missed their first nine shots. Thompson scored their first basket on a drive with 6:34 left in the first half, and Curry followed with his first basket less than two minutes later.
Curry scored 19 points and Thompson finished with 10. Harrison Barnes had 18 points for the Warriors.
Thompson played most of the night hobbled on a sore leg. He suffered a thigh contusion in the first quarter after he was hit on a screen from Timofey Mozgov. Thompson retreated to the locker room temporarily before returning.
Green finished with six points, seven rebounds and seven assists on 2-of-8 shooting. He scored 28 points in Sunday’s Game 2 victory over the Cavs.
It seemed like the Cavs unleashed all of the frustrating fury that was collected in losing seven consecutive games to the Warriors, dating to last year’s Finals.
No Love? No problem. With the high-scoring forward not medical ly cleared to return from the concussion suffered in Game 2, the Cavs rolled with some serious addition by subtraction as Jefferson responded (and played better defense, too) while the raucous crowd provided a sixth-man effect that seemingly more than made up for the manpower lost with Love’s setback. There’s no place like home, indeed. So they had a party -- no, actually a revival, given the life-support scenario in play -- that rewarded the masses who still believe.
Nobody does hype quite like the Cavs. The show includes two mascots, a dance team, piped-in noise, thunderous party-music tracks, a hype man who talks on a microphone during the action and constant pleas on the Jumbotron for more noise.
Then again, you’d have to expect this at an arena where a 1980s disco ball spins from the rafters.
This feel-good scene was too much for the Splash Brothers and their cousins, too.
Never mind the debate about whether the Warriors can beat Magic Johnson’s Showtime Lakers.
They’d better worry about the here and now, because beating the Cavs is suddenly too hard to feel comfortable about.
(Akron Beacon Journal/TNS)