Cleveland beats Golden State 96-91 in Game 3
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Version 0 of 1. CLEVELAND — They don’t hang banners at Quicken Loans Arena, only retired jerseys and catchy slogans. So until the Cleveland Cavaliers can win a championship, their diehard fans will have to settle for embracing the motto, “All In,” as they have all postseason — or now, the Nike catchphrase that was unveiled before a title-starved city hosted its first NBA Finals in eight years. Both sides of the arena were covered by a white banner that read, “There’s Always This Year” — a twist on the waiting game Cleveland has been forced to play for the past 51 years, as heartbreak and disappointment have come to define the area. LeBron James understands what his return to the Cavaliers means to his fans and the responsibility that he assumed the moment he penned a love letter to the region last July. Before leading his team to a 96-91 win, James spotted legendary Browns running back Jim Brown seated in the front row and bowed in reference. Brown acknowledged James’s gesture, clasped his hands together and nodded back. James has spoken consistently about staying in the moment — not getting lost in what he lacks but trying to uplift what remains — and his rag-tag collection of henchmen have followed his lead. Watching his team nearly fritter away a 20-point second-half lead, James — with a little help from his scruffy sidekick Matthew Dellavedova — repeatedly made the plays necessary to give his team a victory in Game 3 and a two-games-to-one lead in the Finals. Whether it was an alley-oop dunk, a step-back three-pointer, a block, a steal or even contagious hustle, James was everywhere and everything the Cavaliers needed as he summoned another monster performance with 40 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists. James has scored 123 points this series, the most ever for the first three games of the Finals. “He understands the situation,” Cavaliers Coach David Blatt said of James, “and he’s a big, big, big-time player. He can get it done.” League most valuable player Stephen Curry angrily shook his head as he headed to the locker room after the game. He could’ve been upset by the slow start, the incomplete finish, or the fact that the Warriors needed until they trailed 68-48 before they started to resemble the offensive juggernaut that won 67 regular season games and breezed through the Western Conference. In a stupor for much of the game, Curry came alive with a flurry of his patented, step-back off-balance three-pointers and scored 22 of his team-high 27 points in the final 141/2 minutes. Curry connected on three-pointers on consecutive possessions to bring the Warriors within 94-91 with 18.9 seconds left, but James then got fouled and hit the free throws needed for his second 40-point game of this series. Golden State fell behind by double digits for the 10th time in 18 games this postseason, dropping to 5-5 in those situations. Playing uphill is a dangerous strategy when James is sitting atop the perch and it has now cost the Warriors the past two games. In his sixth Finals — and fifth in a row — James is playing with an urgency that the Warriors, having no players on the roster with experience on this stage, have yet to match. “They’re a great team. LeBron’s making crazy plays. I think they’re all just fighting hard, and we have to match their intensity, especially to start games,” Curry said. “You can’t rely on your comeback abilities every game to win a series like this.” Curry deemed his struggles a fluke in Game 2, when he missed 18 of 23 shots and set an NBA record with 13 missed three-pointers, but he continued a disturbing trend through the first three quarters Tuesday. Dellavedova, the scruffy Australian who brought a grimier element to the Cavaliers since replacing Kyrie Irving, continued to hound Curry with relentless pressure through the first three quarters while also providing some much-needed offense with 20 points. After the game, Dellavedova had to be taken to Cleveland Clinic in an ambulance after suffering severe cramps that required intravenous fluids in the locker room. “Delle’s the most Cleveland-like Australian I’ve ever met in my life,” Blatt said. “He just plays with all his heart.” The Cavaliers were written off when they lost Irving for the rest of the series with a fractured left knee. But what they have lacked offensively without the dynamic talents of their all-star point guard, the Cavaliers have compensated with a suffocating defense that has completely discombobulated the Warriors. Without Irving and Kevin Love, the Cavaliers are winning the only way they know how — by limiting possessions, mucking up the game and making Golden State players uncomfortable. The disappearance of starters Andrew Bogut, Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes — who scored 11 combined points — has contributed to more frustration and forced Coach Steve Kerr to make the most significant adjustment of the series by inserting seldom-used former all-star David Lee. Lee scored 11 points off the bench and Curry also had a little more space to operate. Lee’s production was especially needed when Klay Thompson was held to just 14 points two nights after scoring a team-high 34 points in Game 2. The move helped a Warriors team that scored 37 points in the first half get 36 points in the fourth period. “I didn’t like out energy. I didn’t like our body language. You’ve got to bring life. You’ve got to bring some emotion,” Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said. “We can’t get our heads down. That’s why I was pleased with the comeback, because we just looked more like ourselves.” But no adjustment could compensate for the fact that the Warriors simply don’t have the best player on the floor in James, who is two wins away from completing his impossible mission. “I’m trying to do whatever it takes at this point,” James told ESPN after the game. “Being undermanned, being counted out, everything is against us right now. We don’t have nothing to lose. The group of guys that I have, they’re playing off straight motivation.” More coverage: Box score: Cavaliers 96, Warriors 91 Matthew Dellavedova an inconceivable NBA Finals star LeBron James’s secret ‘motivation’ NBA Finals schedule Warriors owner flew more than 100 team employees to Cleveland Wizards considered drafting Klay Thompson over Jan Vesely |