On that glorious day, the worst Los Angeles Lakers team of all time beat the team with the best regular season record in National Basketball Association history, the 73-9 Golden State Warriors.
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It’s unclear if the Warriors even noticed. All the Warriors care about is whether they win.
It tells you Oracle Arena, barring the biggest letdown since “The Hangover Part II”, will be the scene of a massive championship celebration Monday night.
James said Green went “a little bit overboard” with what he said to him, and it escalated. “Let’s get one. We’ve already got to take a flight back home anyways, so we might as well come home with a win and play on our home floor again”.
The Warriors seemed to have grown exhausted of questions about their star backcourt’s ineffectiveness. However, LeBron James and Co. didn’t enough to contain Curry, Thompson or Harrison Barnes, who made four 3s and added 14 points.
But once the Warriors got to within a point at 64-65 on a 9-2 blast behind three blistering threes by Curry (one) and Thompson (two), the Cavs turned from courageous to atrocious. They also lacked the depth of Golden State, and wore down as Curry, Thompson and Andre Iguodala hit jumper after jumper.
“Like saying we’re better than the Bulls – we’ll never play them”.
We looked back to Los Angeles’ best win of the season to see if Cleveland can learn anything from it.
The two were involved in various dust-ups during the game, and weren’t happy with each other, often roughing each other up, as they tried to get a psychological hold on the game. This is the 33rd time a team has gone up 3-1 at the Finals. “We made some mistakes and he made us pay for them”.
In the case of the unanimous MVP of the NBA, the whispers surrounding Stephen Curry were intensifying with each game the Golden State Warriors played in the NBA Finals.
In the four Finals games, James has gone to the foul line just 17 times in all despite continually driving to the basket and the versatile forward, who is appearing in his sixth successive NBA Finals, sounded frustrated. Nobody has ever rallied from this deficit, though 10 teams have done it in the playoffs, including the Warriors against Oklahoma City in the last round. But the Warriors also know that it’s possible.
“Draymond said something that I don’t agree with”.
The immediate fallout could be beneficial to the Cleveland Cavaliers: Draymond Green could be suspended for Game 5 on Monday if the league rules that his punch to LeBron’s groin was intentional. You’ve got, you know, everybody in your ear, you’ve got friends, you’ve got family who want to come to the game and want to discuss everything.
“We have to rebound better to close out this series but we gave ourselves a chance to close it out”. “We always feel comfortable when we beat our rivals so aggressively after being loosed in the previous game”.
True, James still has a few very good years in him if you look at the Cavaliers contract situation, their cap situation and what’s available in the offseason there doesn’t seem to be a lot of help coming.
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His second ring in 2013 with Miami came when the Heat needed to win two elimination games in the finals to oust the San Antonio Spurs in what became a dramatic seven-game matchup, highlighted by Ray Allen’s overtime-forcing 3-pointer with 5.2 seconds left in Game 6. Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said: “Well when its tie to win and you’re in the NBA Finals you’ve got to play as many minutes as you need to. He wanted so badly to break out”, said Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
