LeBron at His Grittiest, Not His Greatest, Puts Cavs Within a Win of Needed Rest
CLEVELAND — At approximately 11:33 p.m. ET Sunday, LeBron James' legs buckled, and his knees and palms touched the court, while a happy pandemonium erupted around him.
It was not a gesture of relief or celebration, although both were warranted when the final buzzer rang on a 114-111 overtime victory that nudged the Cavaliers within one victory of the NBA Finals.
No, this was an act of pure necessity, a concession to physics and physiology. This was a moment of pure exhaustion.
For three hours, through shooting slumps, controversial calls and wobbly legs, James had carried the Cavaliers, shouldering the load of three men—his own and that of his missing co-stars, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.
For 46 minutes and 47 seconds of actual game time, James shot (37 times), rebounded (18) and created (13 assists), rarely taking a moment to exhale. He couldn't. The Atlanta Hawks, written off but ever relentless, would not give him the space.
It was not until Shelvin Mack's final three-point attempt bounced off the far side of the rim as time expired that James could allow himself a moment. He raised his right fist, pivoted toward midcourt, took two steps...and collapsed, completing one of the most strange and riveting nights of his career.
"I play to exhaustion," James said 90 minutes later, after extensive postgame treatment. "Sometimes the body just kind of shuts down at times, and that's what happened tonight at one point."
It happened, initially, early in the overtime period, as James' leg ached and cramped. He motioned to the bench. He was asking out. And then he wasn't.
"I had a second thought," he said. "There was no way I can go—I wouldn't have felt right about the situation, win, lose or draw, if I'd have went to the bench and not been out there for my teammates. So it was mind over matter at that point."
James stayed on the court, played the entire overtime period, missed his first three shots and made his last two: the first, a three-pointer that gave the Cavs a 112-111 lead with 36.4 seconds to go; the second, a driving bank shot that extended the lead to three points with 12.8 seconds left.
This was not the most spectacular game of James' brilliant playoff career, and certainly not the most efficient. This was not Game 6 in Boston in 2012, or Game 6 of the 2013 Finals in Miami, or Game 2 of the 2009 conference finals against Orlando, or Game 5 of the 2007 conference finals in Detroit. But it will rank in the next tier.
The stakes were not particularly high Sunday night, with the Cavaliers holding a 2-0 series advantage in these Eastern Conference Finals, with another home game coming Tuesday night, and with a battered Hawks team on the other bench. The Cavaliers could have given Game 3 away and been fine.
James' own performance was so uneven that at times Sunday night it would have seemed laughable to even suggest including it in the LeBron canon. He missed his first 10 field-goal attempts, the worst start to a playoff game in his career. He missed three point-blank shots in the first half. By halftime, his line was a jumble: 3-of-16 from the field, 0-of-3 from behind the arc, eight rebounds, five assists, 10 points.
And somehow the Cavs trailed by only a point.
"You just know," said James Jones, who also played with LeBron in Miami. "He's relentless. He's going to continue to go. Even when it starts to look a little shaky, you know that he's getting ready to push it to another level, and so that kind of calms us."
Throughout the game, James could be seen grabbing his leg and rubbing it, and receiving treatment during timeouts. Leg cramps, of course, have plagued James at key moments in recent years, most memorably in last year's finals, when he was forced to leave Game 1 in the middle of the fourth quarter in San Antonio. The same issue forced him out of Game 4 of the 2012 Finals against Oklahoma City.
If fatigue was the issue Sunday night, it should not come as a surprise. James has been carrying this team—and an entire region's championship hopes—since he returned home last summer. The workload has only increased in recent weeks.
Love was lost in the first round to a separated shoulder. Irving has been dealing with knee, foot and ankle problems throughout the postseason, and he has taken the last two games off because of left knee tendinitis.
What remains is a supporting cast that may be only slightly better than the rag-tag Cavaliers team James dragged to the Finals in 2007 (a group that, by some measures, was among the worst in Finals history).
Irving's status has become its own minor soap opera, his absence inviting speculation about his drive and resilience. Tendinitis is a common issue among NBA veterans, one that does not typically force star players to the bench in a playoff series. In Irving's case, there are also concerns about a lack of strength around his knee, about favoring the left leg and potentially causing other injuries
Yet on a night when nearly every Cavaliers player talked about playing through ailments, Irving's decision to sit out looked all the more awkward.
James "wasn't the only one cramping," said Iman Shumpert. "We had a couple other guys cramping up. I was definitely included. The cooling tub is our best friend right now."
Of James, Shumpert said, "He's just one of those guys that's going to will his way to win. He preaches that on the court. He preaches that in practice. I think we got a team of resilient guys. Guys won't break—bend a little bit, but we won't break. You gotta just look at the next guy. You see one guy pushing through it, it gives you more inspiration to push through what you got. ... I think everybody's got something going on, something nagging them. But that desire to want to win outweighs whatever pain you're dealing with."
The game required more of the Cavaliers than they might have anticipated, after two solid victories in Atlanta and given the fragile state of the Hawks. Atlanta entered Game 3 without one starter (Kyle Korver, who suffered a season-ending ankle injury in Game 2), and with another starter on one leg (DeMarre Carroll, who injured his knee in Game 1). Then the Hawks lost star center Al Horford to an ejection just before halftime, after a dustup with Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova.
Horford was tossed for a flagrant-2 foul, for swinging his elbow at the head and neck area of Dellavedova—retaliation for Dellavedova driving himself into Horford's lower legs. The sequence was similar to the play that injured Korver on Friday, and the Hawks essentially implied that both were dirty plays.
James would have none of it.
"There's no difference between me boxing out or Al Horford boxing me out and Delly boxing someone out," James said, with Dellavedova sitting to his right. "That is a fundamental box-out. That's all it is."
This game came down to perhaps a half-dozen such plays—the loose balls that squibbed across the floor, the gentle rebounds that pinged off the rim. In the end, it came down to one.
James fired an errant 12-footer, but Tristan Thompson gathered the ball and zipped it back out to James in the corner. James pump-faked, then launched the game-winner.
At the other end, James rose and forced Jeff Teague into a missed layup, setting up the Cavs' final possession and James' clinching bank shot.
Mack got two chances from behind the arc, misfiring both times. The buzzer sounded, the crowd erupted and Cleveland seized a 3-0 lead that now means everything: The series is effectively over. The Cavaliers will soon be back in the finals.
Then, and only then, could James afford to exhale, to let his legs buckle beneath him, in joyous relief.
Howard Beck covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @HowardBeck.
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