Spurs vs. Cavaliers: Score and Twitter Reaction from 2014 Regular Season
We won't know until at least June whether LeBron James' return home gave him a better chance to beat the San Antonio Spurs in a seven-game series. We may never know. But we do know his first crack at taking down the Spurs could have gone better.
The four-time NBA MVP lost control of the ball as he was driving the court for a potential game-winning bucket and finished with only 15 points as San Antonio came away with a hotly contested 92-90 victory over the Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday.
The turnover capped off a final two-minute stretch filled with offensive calamities. James was credited with three turnovers down the stretch and finished with five overall, mistakes that cost Cleveland critical possessions.
For most of the fourth quarter, the Spurs and Cavaliers battled like they were testing each other on the grandest stage. The two teams weren't separated by more than one possession for the game's final 10 minutes, each trading off clutch buckets to halt its opponent's momentum.
Tim Duncan finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds, matching Boris Diaw for a team-high point total.
Anderson Varejao (23 points, 11 rebounds) and Kyrie Irving (20 points, two assists), who combined to score 17 of Cleveland's 21 fourth-quarter points, led the way for the Cavaliers. James added nine assists and six rebounds to his second-lowest scoring output of 2014-15.
This was the first meeting between the Spurs and Cavaliers since James left Miami to return to Cleveland. The Heat played San Antonio in each of the last two NBA Finals. Many credit the Spurs' five-game dismantling of Miami as the root cause of James ending his South Beach experiment early.
"I've always loved playing against them and playing against Pop [Spurs coach Gregg Popovich]. That's someone that I admire and I respect so much, obviously the Big Three as well," James told reporters, per ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin. "But I wouldn't say it's a rivalry. But I would say it's mutual respect, it's great competition and they definitely helped me grow along the way and hopefully I pushed them, too."
At the very least, the atmosphere felt far different in Cleveland than it did in Miami. Whereas the Heat's defensive efforts proved hapless against the Spurs' whirring ball movement, San Antonio made only five three-pointers and generally looked disjointed at points offensively—save for a few key moments.
Both teams spent much of the night competing hard despite off shooting nights from their respective stars. Tony Parker finished with only eight points, Duncan went 7-of-17 from the field and Manu Ginobili was largely nonexistent for the Spurs.
James was a deft facilitator but struggled with his shot, Irving disappeared for stretches before taking an aggressive fourth-quarter role and Kevin Love (10 points, 11 rebounds) was shrug-worthy on both ends.
For long stretches Varejao and Diaw, the latter more typically a thorn in James' side in May and June than November, carried their offenses. Varejao took advantage of a series of opportunities underneath created by teammates en route to his first 20-point, 10-rebound game in nearly two calendar years.
Diaw, as he so often does, rose to the nationally televised stage. Working at times as the Spurs' primary facilitator over Parker, Diaw added seven assists to his six rebounds and 19 points. The game was by far his best of the season, having gone into double figures twice prior and this being his second five-plus assist contest.
The Spurs, like they have for most of the season, were playing without a full complement of talent. Marco Belinelli sat out with a groin strain, and Matt Bonner was ruled out before the game with flu-like symptoms.
San Antonio has been without critical rotation pieces Patty Mills and Tiago Splitter for nearly the entire season. Mills is still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, and Splitter has missed all but one game with calf problems.
"We're still a work in progress," Duncan told reporters this week. "I think we're starting to find our rhythm."
Despite the obvious mitigating circumstances (and others), those in the hot-take industry will likely use Wednesday night as a barometer of where these Cavs stand. They'll use it to offer an early assessment of how the James-Love-Irving Big Three compares with the James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh trio.
James rightly dismissed this as a foolish line of thought before the game.
"It's too early, that team has been together—I think I just seen a stat that Tim Duncan, won, I don't know, he's won more games than all of our guys together," James told reporters, via Joe Vardon of Northeast Ohio Media Group. "All of our guys put together, he's probably won more games, so there's no way it can be a measuring stick."
In some ways James was understandably trying to downplay expectations. In others, he's 100 percent right. Neither of these teams is now what it will be in seven months. The Cavaliers should mesh better on both ends as the season progresses, and the Spurs will get Splitter and Mills back—and do their customary late-season turning on of the switch.
The only legitimate takeaway from Wednesday night is that San Antonio was better than Cleveland on a single November night no one will remember come playoff time. Oh, and that it wouldn't be so bad seeing these two teams duke it out on the NBA Finals stage.
But for now, baby steps.
Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter.
