Philadelphia forward Robert Covington went 0-for-eight shooting with one point and two rebounds in 25 minutes.
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The Cleveland Cavaliers star put his team up 3-0 in its second-round National Basketball Association playoff series against the Toronto Raptors with a buzzer-beater off the glass to win Game 3 at Quicken Loans Arena on Saturday night. They cut the lead to as low as two points in the 4th quarter and forced the Cavs to really win the game on their home court.
But before that, the Cleveland will try to take the dominating 3-0 lead in Saturday’s Game 3. After a Raptors turnover, James found Jeff Green cutting to the basket utterly unmolested by any Toronto defender.
DeRozan finished with eight points on 3-of-12 shooting, inefficient across the board, and zero points in the fourth quarter. “I didn’t want it to be real”. Round 2 has been a different story so far however, as the team shot 32% from beyond the arc in Game 1 and 40% in Game 2.
The Cavs have his Toronto Raptors on the ropes once again in the playoffs down 3-0 in their best of seven semi-finals series – and even though it may seem like all is lost Lowry’s fighting spirit isn’t broken just yet.
“It’s an added advantage because you’re back home to everything that you’re accustomed to, including your home”, James said. “[There’s a] mental clock of being a kid, and telling myself, three, two, one, making the noise of the net, that [swoosh] sound”.
He’s gone from averaging 11.3 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.9 assists per contest in the regular season to 19 points, 4.8 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game in the playoffs.
“I think the blitz”, Lue said of what worked so well. It’s just that the team isn’t getting enough stops.
Unfortunately for the Raptors, they left too much time for James to win the game.
“We’ve got to do it better on defence”, Lowry said.
Seconds later, Marco Belinelli stunned everyone with a falling 22-footer in front of the 76ers bench as time expired that sent the game into overtime – and confetti mistakenly blasted from the cannon. “We wanted to trap LeBron in the backcourt”.
The first half ended in frustration for the Raptors with DeRozan, Casey and his assistants screaming at the officials following a sequence that went against them.
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It did distinctly appear like that, until Toronto missed 15 of its last 16 shots to lose a won game 113-112 in overtime. Part of Toronto’s success in the first round was their ability to make three-pointers. “You see him shoot that all the time with one hand in practice”, Love said.
