LeBron James was more than willing to take the backseat on this one.
Advertisement
The Magic have lost 11 consecutive games to the Cavaliers, with the last win occurring on November 23, 2012, when Orlando trotted out a starting lineup of Jameer Nelson, Arron Afflalo, Moe Harkless, Glen Davis and Nik Vucevic. Four straight finals, two championships in between, what some would call a failure in the ultimate reason why the “Big 3” was brought to South Beach while other loyal respectable fans would call a success in the fact that being in contention every year of the “Big 3” was good enough for them. And while he has spoken in the past about the career goal of ranking at the top of everybody’s list, he’d prefer we didn’t use these milestones as an occasion for evaluations aimed at elevating one player above another, thanks. That’s all that matters. “Think the most impressive thing is the way they’ve been playing at a high level for so long”. They dropped Philadelphia to 0-15 and avoided another embarrassing home loss to the Sixers, who snapped a 0-17 start to last season with a win at Target Center.
James finished with 13 assists in the game. With the series tied 1-1, it was still nearly the feeling that the Heat would take it home, winning game 3 seconded that emotion. Kevin Love was the beneficiary on quite a few.
The Cavaliers were always going to be a tough matchup for the Magic, as they are for any team. They’ve done it for the most part, surging to the best record in the East (11-3) despite missing roughly half their team to injuries. The West, considered the superior conference, had seven. With no way to collapse the variables of era, team, luck, and so many other forces affecting individual greatness, we will never find a hard answer on who is the superior between two similar players. 500 or better and the West had nine. “Jordan was my superhero growing up”, James said. “From a collective group of all 15 teams, we’re kind of trying to hold up our end of the bargain”.
Added Love: “He’s done it his whole career. Those numbers show it”.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Andrew Wiggins scored 17 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter to help Minnesota keep Philadelphia winless on the season.
Magic: Oladipo made the game’s wildest shot, driving into the lane in the second quarter and blindly flipping the ball over his head, off the backboard and into the basket….
Advertisement
“We wanted to establish something great on our home floor”, he said. “We’re going to play very physical and give a high effort”. “And the last one (Saturday against Atlanta), too”. The Cavs are hopeful Williams can play Wednesday at Toronto. James was then asked if basketball players feed into those comparisons by having the conversations he doesn’t care for. It was the 49th time Cleveland has had a player win the award. Both were threats to put up triple-doubles on any given night, though Robertson was clearly a bigger one – you may have heard once or twice that he’s the only player ever to average a triple-double over the course of a full season.
