Cavaliers vs. Warriors: Game 5 Score and Twitter Reaction from 2015 NBA Finals
The Cleveland Cavaliers didn't go down without a fight, but the Golden State Warriors are now just one win away from an NBA title. The Western Conference champions picked up a 104-91 win Sunday night at Oracle Arena in Game 5 of the 2015 NBA Finals, taking a 3-2 series lead.
Stephen Curry scored 37 points on 13-of-23 shooting with seven triples, seven rebounds and four assists. He found a different gear in the fourth quarter to secure the victory, erupting for 17 points on 5-of-7 shooting, including 3-of-5 from deep. After Curry looked a bit unsure of himself to start the Finals, he's back to being the NBA's Most Valuable Player.
Curry might be the regular-season MVP, but Andre Iguodala strengthened his case to be Finals MVP, chipping in 14 points, eight boards, seven assists and three steals. His left-handed layup and subsequent celebration with just under four minutes remaining in the fourth will be one of the lasting images from the game.
Staying in the Finals MVP discussion, LeBron James had yet another bravura performance with 40 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists, recording his second triple-double in this series. James will obviously go down as one of the greatest basketball players in history, but ESPN Stats & Info showed just how impressive he has been in the NBA Finals:
Giving the Finals MVP to a player from the losing team sounds crazy, but should the Cavaliers fall to the Warriors, James may be the best candidate this year. Without him, Cleveland would've been dead in the water long ago.
Cavs coach David Blatt showered his star with praise after the game, as CBS Sports relayed:
Simply put, the Warriors were the better overall team entering this series, and their strength in numbers is consistently overwhelming Cleveland over the course of each 48-minute contest.
Steve Kerr's decision to move Andre Iguodala into the starting lineup instead of Andrew Bogut didn't single-handedly win the Warriors Game 4, but it created serious matchup problems for the Cavaliers. Kerr stuck with that same starting five in Game 5 and gave Iguodala plenty of props afterward, via CBS Sports:
The question then became how Blatt would adjust in Game 5 to counteract the strategy. James shot down the possibility of any major tweaks when he revealed Cleveland would continue using the same starting five Sunday night.
"We're going to play our game," he said Saturday, per ESPN's Dave McMenamin. "We've gotten to this point by playing the way we play, and we're not going to change. We'll make adjustments throughout the game, but we won't change our starting lineup."
Considering that lineup had a plus-4.8 net rating through the first four games of the NBA Finals, per NBA.com, altering the starting unit was unnecessary.
The bigger key for Cleveland was getting its secondary scorers, particularly J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova, to regularly knock down shots. Those three combined to shoot 7-of-35 from the field in Game 4.
Luckily for the Cavaliers, they got exactly that to start Sunday's game. The roulette wheel finally came up with Smith's number as he shot 5-of-11, including 4-of-10 from deep, for 14 points in the first half. Bleacher Report's Ethan Skolnick suggested the key to the streaky shooter's hot start:
Both teams struggled offensively in the first few minutes. When the Warriors took an early 8-2 lead in the first quarter, it looked like Golden State was picking up where it left off in Game 4. Oracle Arena was rocking, forcing Blatt to call his first timeout 4:51 into the game.
However, a three-pointer from Smith got the Cavs back to within one possession. From that point forward, the Cavaliers kept pace with Golden State.
If you would've told Cavaliers fans before the game that their team would be down 51-50 at halftime, they likely would've been happy with that. Trailing by a point on the road to the Warriors wasn't the worst thing in the world for Cleveland.
The biggest concern for the Cavs, though, was that they were still trailing despite James playing at an almost historic—albeit likely unsustainable—level for nearly all 24 minutes of the first half. NBA on ESPN showed how much better he was playing compared to his Game 4 output:
"LeBron James has bounced back in a BIG way after Game 4. #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/0wGsbWiDVp
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) June 15, 2015"
Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated highlighted how 20/8/8 games aren't exactly common in the Finals, and LeBron put one together in a single half:
According to Michael Lee of the Washington Post, James had a hand in all but one of his team's 17 made field goals in the opening 24 minutes:
Curry, meanwhile, had 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting in the first half, but it rarely felt as though he was dominating the game or breaking the Cavs' spirits from behind the arc.
CBS Sports' Zach Harper added that he didn't even know the reigning MVP was in double figures until looking at the box score:
The Cavaliers did a great job of limiting Curry's supporting cast early on. Iguodala and Klay Thompson combined for nine first-half points on 4-of-11 shooting, while Draymond Green was the only other Warriors player in double figures.
Blatt saw Golden State's small lineup and responded with a small one of his own, often trotting out LeBron as the tallest player on the floor for Cleveland. Timofey Mozgov, who recorded a team-high 28 points and 10 rebounds in Game 4, played just five first-half minutes. That came as a surprise to ESPN's J.A. Adande:
There looked to be cracks in the Cavaliers' foundation in the third quarter as the Warriors slowly inched out in front. The two teams exchanged the lead on multiple occasions for the first four minutes before Cleveland went ahead by three, 63-60, with 5:10 remaining until the fourth.
Golden State closed on a 13-4 run to own a 73-67 lead going into the final quarter.
The Cavs refused to be extinguished, clawing back and tying the game at 75-75 with 9:35 remaining in regulation following a three from Shumpert. Almost two minutes later, James hit a deep three-pointer to put his team ahead by a point, 80-79.
Curry immediately responded with a trademark three of his own, which finally looked to give fans the head-to-head duel they'd hoped to see when the series commenced:
Thompson drilled another three to give the Warriors a five-point lead with 6:49 remaining. Cleveland flirted with going back ahead, cutting Golden State's lead to one, but ultimately ran out of gas. Pro Basketball Talk's Kurt Helin noticed that when the Cavaliers had a fast-break opportunity at one point in the fourth, James didn't even run down the floor in order to conserve energy:
Making matters worse, Curry was simply unstoppable. It's not hyperbole to say almost nobody in the world could hit this shot:
The final score is a bit deceiving in that the Cavaliers didn't look completely outmatched until the last five minutes of the game.
They didn't make the most of James' superhuman first half and J.R. Smith's hot first quarter, in essence failing to build any sort of buffer so that if they faded in the second half, they'd still have a bit of wiggle room.
Instead, Golden State is 48 minutes from its first championship since 1975.
The Cavaliers have been counted out plenty of times in this series, but they look well and truly finished. Their lack of depth is becoming exposed in a big way, and they might not have any magic left from the likes of Mozgov, Dellavedova and Smith.
More importantly, the Warriors grow more and more confident with every win. The skittishness from earlier in the series is gone, and Golden State is back to playing like a 67-win team. The Warriors will look to close out the Finals Tuesday night in Cleveland.
