LeBron puts Cavaliers on his shoulders for playoffs
It’s June again, time for the annual tradition of LeBron James on your TV for four to seven games. He is in the NBA Finals for a fifth straight year.
He has no chance, however, against the Golden State Warriors, according to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ critics.
He’s injured. So are Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, who is out for the season. He can’t win with the erratic Iman Shumpert and the even more erratic J.R. Smith. Who’s their center? Timofey Mozgov. Oddsmakers have made Golden State a two-to-one favorite to win the series, the Warriors finishing 14 games better than Cleveland in the regular season and holding that “team of destiny” look in the playoffs.
All the attention focused on James by opponents, the media and everyone else could be “suffocating,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr told reporters.
James, though, averaged 30.3 points, 11 rebounds and 9.3 assists against Atlanta in the Eastern Conference finals. His team might be falling apart — Irving is hobbled by knee tendinitis and missed half of the East finals — but James might be playing the best basketball of his career.
“This is probably the best I’ve been,” James said.
He has played 101 playoff games over the past five years, essentially an entire seasonplus of wear and tear. Two of his four Miami years ended in championship victories, the other two with losses to San Antonio and Dallas. He is 30 and sat out eight games before midseason to rest knee and back injuries. Not that people want to hear about the toll so many playoff games can take, even though James is the first star to appear in five straight Finals since Bill Russell with Boston in the 1960s.
“No, you’re playing basketball,” said Houston coach Kevin McHale, who played in four straight NBA Finals with Boston in the 1980s. “The physical toll was when you saw your pops come home from working in the mines every single day. Believe me, every single day I played basketball was a blessing, and they paid you for it.”
McHale wasn’t specifically talking about James, but James needs to win this one to avoid falling too far below .500 in the biggest category of all — he’s 2-3 in
Game 1
TV: championship rounds, having lost his only other one with Cleveland in four games in 2007.
He turned off many in 2010 when he abandoned the Cavaliers for Miami in “The Decision” but shed most of his villain status by rejoining his former team last summer.
“He went back home for the sole purpose of putting them in [ championship] position,” ABC-ESPN analyst Mark Jackson said.
James has dragged the Cavaliers along with him, making Shumpert and Smith rise above ordinary in the playoffs, not to mention the often immobile Mozgov.
“LeBron has been the star of the league for the last seven or eight years. He’s handled himself really well when you think about the spotlight on him, the constant pressure to win,” Kerr said. “He’s obviously a champion and has matured into that role.”
Now he just has to win the title, which would be the first in Cleveland’s 45-year history. And try to keep his body intact.
He didn’t seem to have much left after pushing the Cavaliers to a 114-111 overtime victory in Game 3 of the East finals. He fell to the court in exhaustion and stayed there several seconds after a 37-point, 18-rebound, 13-assist effort in 47 minutes.
“You could play doctor right now with how many injuries I’ve got,” he told TNT reporter Rachel Nichols. “It was mind over matter. I was able to push through.”
He then had 23 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in a blowout victory that ended the series.