Too much history for LeBron James, Cavaliers to be denied: Joe Vardon's instant analysis
TORONTO – There was too much history on the line for LeBron James and the Cavaliers for it to go any other way.
And now, there’s so much more to be made. James and the Cavs can win their first NBA championship together.
James delivered the “dominant” performance everyone was waiting for in Game 6, and the Cavs eliminated the Toronto Raptors from the Eastern Conference finals Friday night with a 113-87 triumph at the Air Canada Centre.
He led Cleveland with 33 points for his highest-scoring game of the 2016 postseason, snapping a career-long string of 13 playoff games without reaching 30. He added 11 rebounds and six assists in 40 minutes.
Indeed, James and the Cavs are headed back to the Finals, where he’s won twice but never with Cleveland. They fell in six games to the Warriors last year and were swept in 2007 by the San Antonio Spurs.
For James, this marks his sixth consecutive Finals – no player or team has done that since the great Boston Celtics teams of the 1960s. The dizzying streaks he kept alive with Friday night’s win don’t stop there.
James has now won at least one road playoff game in 25 consecutive series, a streak that dates to the start of the 2010 playoffs. The Cavs struggled mightily at Air Canada Centre all season, but it was their plan for James to start quickly and help silence the deafening roar of the Toronto crowd. More on that later.
This was James’ seventh consecutive win in a closeout game – his teams haven’t lost with a chance to closeout a series since May 28, 2014. He tied his own personal record with 24 straight playoff games scoring at least 20 points. He can break that record in Game 1 of the Finals on Thursday, either on the road against Golden State or at home against Oklahoma City.
James nailed three 3-pointers and passed Paul Pierce (272) for sixth place in career postseason 3s. Alright, enough of the record keeping.
This was a “takeover” game for James only in that he finally broke the seal on 30 points. Otherwise, as he has throughout the playoffs, he did all of his damage within the flow of the Cavs’ offense and with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love getting plenty of room to work with him.
Irving added 30 points and nine assists; Love was next with 20 points and a team-high 12 rebounds.
The other way in which the game belonged to James was the way in which he started it, taking the crowd out of it by halftime.
James raced out to 14 points in the first quarter. He caught a lob from Irving off a steal and crushed a nasty dunk for a 15-8 lead with 6:27 left. He finished the quarter by darting to the hoop for a layup with 00.6 to go for a 31-25 advantage. When the half was over, James was up to 21 points on 8-of-15 shooting. He’d played all but a handful of seconds in the first half.
James sunk his two last free throws and was out of the game for good with 3:07 left and the Cavs up 23. There were hugs and celebrations between him and his teammates, while both Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan came over to Cleveland’s bench to congratulate the victors.
This was the Raptors’ first trip to the conference finals. One day they hope to be the Cavs. But they don’t have James.
“I remember going against [Michael] Jordan in ’96,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “He has that type of mindset, that razor-like focus that you’ve got to fight against and you’ve got to overcome. That’s the level that you’ve got to reach to beat them, his level, because they’re going to go the way he goes.”
Too much history for LeBron James, Cavaliers to be denied: Joe Vardon"s instant analysis
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