The Cleveland Cavaliers still haven’t flipped the switch, but LeBron James thinks they’re “right there,” within arm’s reach of playing their best ball. They’re also two wins away from Round 2, thanks to a dominant offensive performance from their Big Three.
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LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love each topped 25 points for the first time in the playoffs, staking the Cavs to an 18-point lead through three quarters. But another final-frame sputter allowed Paul George and the Indiana Pacers to hang around and forced Cleveland to sweat out the final minutes before finishing off a 117-111 win that gave them a 2-0 edge in their best-of-seven opening-round series.
Irving led the way with a game-high 37 points on 14-for-24 shooting, baffling multiple Pacers defenders with his dazzling handle:
Love added 27 on just seven field-goal attempts, making six (including three 3-pointers) to go with a perfect 12-for-12 mark at the foul line as he bulled his way to the front of the rim and to the charity stripe time and again:
James did a little (or a lot) of everything, scoring 25 on 11-for-20 shooting with 10 rebounds, seven assists, four blocks and four steals in 42 minutes of work:
The Big Three combining for 89 points, the most they’ve ever mustered as a trio in the postseason, and leading Cleveland to blistering 55.3 percent shooting as a team allowed the Cavs to once again survive an iffy-at-best defensive performance. The Pacers topped 29 points in three of Game 2’s four quarters, shooting 51.2 percent as a team on their own and coming back from 19 down in the third to make it a five-point game in the final minute.
But a honey of a baseline-out-of-bounds after-timeout play called by coach Tyronn Lue got Irving a wide-open layup to put Cleveland up seven with 29.6 seconds left …
… and an emphatic LeBron rejection of a would-be layup by Pacers center Myles Turner four seconds later …
lebron says nah pic.twitter.com/hRWUKq6R1l — James Herbert (@outsidethenba) April 18, 2017
… all but put the finishing touches on the win, the 19th straight Round 1 victory by a LeBron-led team, which is the longest streak for any player since the early-1980s Lakers.
The Cavaliers really only mustered one quarter of sound defense on Monday, limiting Indiana to 38.9 percent shooting with six turnovers in the third quarter … and, ultimately, that was enough.
“I think we were just a little bit early on a lot of their sets,” James said during his postgame press conference. “[…] Our bigs, Tristan [Thompson] and Kev, did a great job of rotating when we put two on the ball, and myself and Ky on the backside were just trying to read and react. We were moving, we were flying around, we were communicating our coverages, and it allowed us to have that 33-20 third quarter.”
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After George had continued his strong start to the series with 18 points on nine shots in 19 first-half minutes, the Cavs ramped up their pressure on the All-Star in the third quarter, fueled in part by aggressive on-ball defense from swingman Iman Shumpert, who hadn’t played at all through the first six quarters of the series but was pressed into duty when J.R. Smith suffered a hamstring injury.
“Shump was unbelievable,” Lue said after the game. “Just staying ready, being professional. He came in and made it tough on Paul George. You know, we held Paul George to just four points in that third quarter, when our defense was really good, and Shump sparked that […] When [George] shoots it, I think he’s going to make it every single time. We just take away those turnovers — those stupid turnovers that get him out, get him layups, get him dunks and easy shots in transition — we’ll be a lot better off. But that third quarter, we was able to turn our defense up, trapping him, getting the ball out of his hands, scrambling, rotating, and it was a good defensive performance in that third quarter.”
On the other end, despite Indiana coach Nate McMillan siccing George on Kyrie to try to short-circuit Cleveland’s offensive flow, the Cavs just kept rolling:
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