James and Co. will be tasked with defeating either the Oklahoma City Thunder or Golden State Warriors, depending on the outcome of the Western Conference Finals.
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The Thunder lead the series 3-2 and can eliminate the Warriors on Sunday with a win in game six in front of their wild Oklahoma City home crowd.
LeBron James seemed determined from the beginning to will the Cavaliers to victory and to reach his sixth consecutive NBA Finals.
Since James has returned to his local team after a four-season spell in Miami, he has led the Cavaliers to back-to-back Finals appearances.
Here’s Love potentially pretending to fall asleep during the post-game press conference in Toronto on Friday night. Man, I do not know. “These fans, they mean a lot to their team, and I think the team gave everything they could throughout this whole season”, he said of the Raptors, who won 56 games for the first time in franchise history.
“We’ve had our ups and downs”. Yet sometimes, we still take for granted just how incredible his accomplishments are. He didn’t want to give the Raptors any life, even if Game 7 would be in Cleveland, so he made sure the Cavaliers were prepared to finish the job in Toronto.
James was vicious in his basket attacks throughout the game, and his interior action freed up the team’s variety of outside shooters.
Irving chipped in with 30 points while Love added 20 points.
The Raptors got back to within 13 points with 6:57 to play in the third but Smith made a 3-pointer and Irving followed with a pullup jumper with 4:58 to go and Cleveland led by 20.The Cavs’ lead got up to 21 before Lowry hit a 3-pointer with 2:57 left in the quarter.
For the Raptors, their All-Star guards Kyle Lowry (35) and DeMar Derozan combined for 65 points but it obviously wasn’t enough.
James said he didn’t fully appreciate last year’s journey to the Finals in his return to Cleveland due to injuries that knocked out Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving in the postseason.
We don’t know what was said but we do know there weren’t any hard feelings after the game. When they moved the ball, the Cavs got good shots. “Big time performance and big time leadership by those guys”.
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue began listing off the Raptors’ roster when he was asked about the challenge that was thrown at his team in this series.
“First of all, uh, Do you hear this?”
“We needed LeBron to set the tone for us early, and I thought he did that”, he said. They could go 12 players deep on any given night and still pull out a win. He really did that for us tonight. “It just feels great to go out there and sacrifice and play for guys that truly just have the same goal in mind, truly care for one another both on and off the floor, and that’s the results of it”. “He’s a proven victor”.
“We’ve grown throughout the season”. “They continued to pull away for the rest of the game and it was tough for us to get back in the game”.
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Love’s sentiment was shared by Lue.
