Irving scored 41 points, while James matched that total and added 16 rebounds in a 112-97 victory over the Golden State Warriors, trimming the defending champions’ lead to 3-2 ahead of Thursday’s game six in Cleveland.
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Instead, Golden State is going to OH again. One flight the Warriors surely would have preferred not to take at this road-weary stage of another extra-long season, but it will be well worth it if they hoist a second straight trophy when these NBA Finals finally end.
This was the Irving Cleveland needed, the ideal complement to James, forced to take on the Warriors by himself in last year’s finals without the star guard – Irving got hurt in Game 1 – or Kevin Love, who contributed just 2 points in Game 5 and remains a conundrum.
Michael Reghi, Bud Shaw, Dan Labbe and I discuss whether the Cavs’ Game 5 performance was sustainable. But just a couple of minutes later, the Warriors PR department announced that in reality Andre Iguodala was going to get the start. But it’s the finals.
But Cleveland wasn’t ready to go down that easy. It doesn’t matter who’s on the court. That’s how we’ve got to play.
The Cavs got a combined 82 points – 41 each – from Kyrie Irving and LeBron James. “Free Dray-mond!” and large cutouts of his face waved from all corners of Oracle Arena as he watched from a baseball suite next door in the Oakland Coliseum. “To put on the show that he did, you just go out and follow the keys and play winning basketball, and we did that tonight”.
“We had a mindset that we wanted to come here and just extend our period and have another opportunity to fight for another day”, James said.
The Warriors will get Green back Thursday as they try again for that repeat title. “Been doing it all year”, Thompson said. Irving and James had terrific shooting nights, particularly from three-point range.
The Warriors are confident, and why shouldn’t they be? At halftime, Golden State was shooting 46.5 percent from the field and had made 11 of 21 3-pointers.
“We’re in the same place we were past year, up 3-2 heading back to Cleveland”.
“Mind you, to repeat a performance like this would definitely be tough, but whatever it takes to win”, Irving said. “We weren’t very good defensively”.
James and Irving seemed to wear down in the fourth quarters of the first four games, the weight of carrying the Cavaliers offense with little rest sapping their energy as the Warriors kept coming at them in waves.
Coach Steve Kerr didn’t want to talk much about the emotional chasm Green’s absence opened with his team, but fans sure didn’t forget the fiery forward.
“You tip your hat to them”.
“They had two great games, two breakout games”.
The Warriors are trying to close out the fifth championship in franchise history and third since moving out West from Philadelphia in 1962-63.
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It marked the highest-scoring first half in an NBA Finals game since the 1987 championship between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics.
