The Cleveland Cavaliers eliminated the Hawks from the National Basketball Association playoffs the second consecutive season behind a barrage of Cavaliers’ 3-pointers.
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James scored 21 points and doled out nine assists while Kevin Love had 27 points and Kyrie Irving 21 in another dazzling performance. What they might not (care to) realize is that the No. 8 seed Pistons gave the No. 1 seed Cavs way more of a fight than the No. 4 Atlanta Hawks.
Half of Cleveland’s three-point shots in game 4 belonged to Kevin Love, who shot 8-for-15 from deep. But James, after having one shot blocked and missing two tip-ins, got another chance when a video review overturned a call that Cleveland had knocked the ball out of bounds. I’ll have more on it in the coming days, but what’s important to understand is they made 77 3-pointers in this series – the most any team has ever made in a four-game series.
This was a trend that started in the last few weeks of the regular season and has carried through both of their first two playoff series. Atlanta had fourth-quarter leads in three of the four games but weren’t strong enough to finish.
Broom service, times three: The Cleveland franchise is 12-0 against Atlanta all-time in the playoffs.
Kevin Love in the Nike Hyperdunk 2015.
While most players after a series say that their focus is to get ready for the next series and catch up on some rest, Love told reporters that the just wants to get home in time to watch the HBO series Game of Thrones. “I still think it was a clean block”.
“It starts with me”, Westbrook said.
ATLANTA (99): Bazemore 5-12 0-0 11, Sefolosha 7-12 0-2 16, Millsap 5-12 8-10 19, Horford 7-14 0-0 15, Teague 2-5 0-0 5, Scott 1-1 0-0 2, Humphries 2-5 2-2 8, Schroder 10-18 0-0 21, Korver 1-4 0-0 2. That’s when James and Irving made back-to-back layups following smooth moves to give the Cavs a 93-89 advantage and late-game momentum with just under 3:30 remaining in the game.
LeBron missed a 3-point attempt topside with 14 seconds left.
Cleveland opened the playoffs with four straight wins over Detroit, then did the same against the Hawks in a rematch of last year’s conference final.
The Hawks had a chance to take the lead in the final seconds, but Dennis Schroder drove into traffic under the rim with 2.8 seconds left and was tied up by three Cavs.
“They shot the piss out of the ball”, Hawks forward Paul Millsap said. The Cavs needed an adjustment period under Lue, as he handed off his defensive duties to his assistants in order to focus on a high-tempo offense, but as we’ve seen in these playoffs, it’s all come together. “This year we thought we had it figured out-they do something completely different-they killed us with threes”. “We know where we want to be on the floor, we know exactly where we are on the floor and it’s benefited all us individually, and obviously it’s trickled down to the team”, said James. “We still had a couple of minutes left in the game, our crowd was phenomenal tonight”. We all live here.
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LeBron James continued his love affair with the Eastern Conference play-offs as the Cleveland Cavaliers booked their place in the final.
