When the great Doris Burke interviewed LeBron immediately after Game 6, the roar from the Raptors crowd was still overpowering. There wasn’t supposed to be a Game 5, and now there will be a Game 6 as well.
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LeBron James (C-L) embraces Bismack Biyombo (C-R) after game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference basketball finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors.
The Raptros also allowed the Cavs shooters to make 54 percent of their attempts from the three-point line while Toronto only managed to make 32 percent of their attempts from long range. With a little more than four minutes left in the fourth quarter, James received a pass in the right corner from Kyrie Irving, pump faked his defender out of position, and drove baseline for the dunk.
Coach Tyronn Lue acknowledged the importance of getting James to come out firing on all cylinders. Now that’s what we call a “LeBron James kind-of-a-stat-line”.
James pushed himself harder in Game 4, and Lue said that was the plan. “We needed him to do that and he did”.
It was a risky move by coach Dwane Casey and his staff, but the strategy paid off and helped the Raptors reverse the series.
A year after their chase for a championship was derailed by season-ending injuries to All-Stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, the Cavaliers are hungry for the title they feel cruelly eluded them. “He makes a difference to all of the guys he’s playing with”. I even wondered, just for a bit, if the Raptors were going to force a Game 7, a bubble that the barrage of three pointers from Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith, and Kevin Love quickly popped. More importantly, he pounced early, scoring 13 points inside the first seven minutes as the Cavs jumped out to a lead they would not surrender.
“I’m so proud of those two guys”, James said. This time around, he’ll have an extra 50 points to work with.
The Cavs raced out to an 11-point first-quarter lead, but the Raptors ended the quarter on a 9-4 run, and trailed 31-25 heading into the second.
“There’s definitely a different feeling”, James said of his second year of going to the finals with his hometown team.
James was referring to last year’s Finals, where he nearly single-handedly carried the injury-riddled Cavaliers to an unlikely triumph over the Golden State Warriors.
The Cavaliers will face either the Golden State Warriors or the Oklahoma City Thunder in next week’s finals. If the Warriors win, the series will be decided on MondayinOakland.
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James will be turning out in an incredible sixth straight NBA Finals, having made it to the season finale four times with the Miami Heat.
