'Itching to Finish' off the Series, Kevin Durant Finally Pushes Aside LeBron
CLEVELAND — As Kevin Durant sat on the bench to suck some wind in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, the stoicism he had displayed on the floor to that point disappeared.
With the score tied in Game 3 of the NBA Finals—a good, old-fashioned duel between Durant and LeBron James—Durant grew louder and more animated (almost agitated) as his teammates tried to hold off James and the Cavaliers.
The word "luxury" has been tossed around to describe Durant's presence on the Warriors. Not on this night. In Game 3, with the opportunity to all but finish off James and the Cavs, Durant was the opposite.
He was a necessity.
"He was fired up on the bench," teammate David West told Bleacher Report. "He was sitting down the first couple of minutes of the fourth, and I think he was just itching to finish this thing off and be a big-time closer for us."
That he was.
The LeBron James versus the world scenario was finally put out of its misery Wednesday night. Other than perhaps Game 1 of the Boston series, for the first time all postseason James was not the best player on the floor. That was Durant, who poured in 43 points on 15-of-23 shooting as the Warriors took a 3-0 lead with a 110-102 victory.
The basketball gods never gave us Kobe vs. LeBron in the Finals. This is the third time we've been treated to LeBron vs. Durant on this stage. Yet in this era of superteams, with the Warriors having a chance to stake their claim as the most dominant of all, it's never felt like a matchup of the two best players on the planet.
But this time for one night, it was LeBron vs. Durant in all its glory.
"He's one of the best players I've played against—and the league has ever seen," said James, who had 33 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds as the Cavs fell behind 3-0 to the Warriors for the second straight year.
Despite the largesse of adding Durant to a team coming off a 73-win season and a trip to the Finals—with Stephen Curry, then the reigning two-time MVP, already on board—it was at least a fair fight for the Cavs a year ago. James was flanked by not just Kevin Love but also another All-Star, Kyrie Irving. (They still trailed 3-0 and lost the series in five.)
In 2012, it was James' superteam in Miami that overwhelmed Oklahoma City's dynamic duo of Durant and Russell Westbrook, along with a young James Harden. James' teammates put up seven 20-point games in the series as the Heat won in five for James' first championship. In this entire postseason, James' teammates have scored 20 points only eight times—in a span of 21 games.
"The margin for error is very low," James said. "I mean, it's almost like playing the Patriots. You can't have mistakes."
For one night, though, the script was flipped. Curry incomprehensibly shot 3-of-16 from the floor, including 1-of-10 from three-point range. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green each scored as many points as JaVale McGee and Jordan Bell did: 10.
In the 2018 version of Cavs vs. Warriors, Golden State's embarrassment of riches boiled down to one fact: They had Durant and the Cavs didn't.
"We struggled to shoot the ball early on, and I felt like I had some good looks," Durant said. "I started asking for more of them."
And more of them he received.
"Steph was not making shots, but Kevin had it rolling," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. "So we just flipped it around and we had Steph set a couple of screens for him. We basically just tried to initiate with Kevin, and he made so many great, difficult shots."
One man, in particular, sat in his box seat at Quicken Loans Arena and exhaled. That would be Bob Myers, the Warriors general manager, who got the rarest of opportunities to add a league MVP to a team that already had one—plus two other All-Stars—in 2016.
"That's what makes him unique is that he's capable of doing what he did tonight," Myers told B/R. "Not many guys are capable of doing that on the road, but he's one of them. On this kind of stage and on the road, that's why I'm so lucky. You just enjoy his performances—just like what LeBron did in Game 1. And you just have to sit back and appreciate it as a basketball fan."
Unless, of course, you wear No. 23 and you scored 51 points on the road in Game 1 of this series—and your team still lost.
Now this.
"You guys asked me this last year: What was the difference between the Warriors the previous year and this year?" James said. "And what was my answer? All right, there it is. Kevin Durant was my answer."
Not even James' Miami teams with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were this loaded. Not even close.
"You've got three guys in Klay, Steph and KD who are probably three of the top five most unique offensive guys in the league," West told B/R. "LeBron is one, and probably [James] Harden is the other one. And so, chances are everybody's not going to be on, so KD finds those opportunities and those moments and he just takes over."
The dagger from Durant—from 33 feet!—put the Warriors up by six with 49.8 seconds left. For James, who has been dragging the Cavs uphill all the way to the Finals, it must have been too much to bear.
"You definitely tip your hat," James said. "I mean, that's what he does. He's a scorer. He's an assassin, and that was one of those assassin plays right there."
In digging through the rubble in his mind about the impossible predicament he's in, James was able to arrive at a moment of introspection.
"I can take you back to the battles I had with the Spurs when I was in Miami," James said. "You just knew they wouldn't beat themselves. You just knew that every possession…if you made a mistake, Manu [Ginobili], Tim [Duncan], Tony [Parker] and Pop [Gregg Popovich] will make you pay.
"When you have Timmy D and Manu and Kawhi [Leonard], and now Draymond and Klay, Steph and KD—and then you sprinkle in [Andre] Iguodala and [Shaun] Livingston—it adds a level of stress. You know if you relax, they make you pay. And making you pay could cost you the game."
James said it would be a long night for him, that he was "not sure what time I'll be getting to bed." But ultimately, getting beaten by Durant is not going to be what haunts him about this game, or this series.
Or this season.
Yes, Durant's impact was massive. Yet the Warriors may not have been able to finish off James and the Cavs without Curry waking from his slumber and putting in a scoop shot off the glass to give Golden State a one-point lead with 2:58 left. Or the lone three-pointer he made all night—from 31 feet!—to push the lead to four.
Or Iguodala responding to a three-pointer from James with a soaring dunk off a bounce pass from Durant. Or Green's dunk off a feed from Curry that put the game out of reach.
Contrast that with the Cavs' meltdown at the end of regulation and overtime in Game 1, a series of catastrophic blunders that wasted James' 51 points and may have sealed their fate in this series.
In other words, at their worst, Durant's teammates are more useful than LeBron's at their best. For James, that's going to be what will prove hardest to swallow—in the hours leading up to Game 4 and beyond.
Ken Berger covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @KBergNBA.
