The Cleveland Cavaliers squandered a great opportunity to beat the Golden State Warriors in game three of the NBA Finals. Cleveland led 113-107 with 2:25 remaining in the fourth quarter but the Warriors ended the game (and, for all practical purposes, the series) with an 11-0 run spearheaded by Kevin Durant's seven points. Durant's clutch three pointer over LeBron James at the :45 mark put the Warriors up 114-113 and James' slump-shouldered look after the ball went through the net made it clear that the Cavaliers were not going to retake the lead. The Cavaliers missed their last eight field goal attempts of the game, punctuated by Andre Iguodala's block of James' three point attempt with 12 seconds to go and Golden State up 116-113.
Durant, who is well on his way to claiming 2017 NBA Finals MVP honors, finished with 31 points on 10-18 field goal shooting, plus eight rebounds and four assists. During the Finals, Durant is averaging 34.0 ppg, 10.0 rpg, 6.0 apg, 2.0 bpg and 1.3 spg while shooting .561 from the field (including .524 from three point range) and .895 from the free throw line. He did not commit a single turnover in game one and he has just six turnovers overall. He has scored at least 25 points in each of his first eight career NBA Finals games, tying a mark held by Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal.
Klay Thompson continues to play great defense and he rediscovered his shooting stroke as well, pouring in 30 points on 11-18 field goal shooting. Stephen Curry contributed 30 points, a game-high 13 rebounds (remarkable for any point guard not named Russell Westbrook) and six assists.
James authored a monster stat line: 39 points on 15-27 field goal shooting, 11 rebounds and a game-high nine assists in 46 minutes. He had a +7 plus/minus number that was not only better than any other Cavalier but also better than all but three members of the winning Warriors (Draymond Green +14, Curry +11, Iguodala +10). He is an all-time great player having a very impressive series statistically for a team that is an underdog by any reasonable measure or conception.
However, greatness is not merely defined by numbers but also by impact. During the 1983 NBA Finals telecast, Bill Russell and Dick Stockton made the point that Julius Erving was a special player not only because of his impressive statistics but because of "when" he got those numbers. Each of the first three games of the 2017 NBA Finals has been competitive in the first half and game three went down to the wire but James has repeatedly disappeared just when his team needs him the most.
James spent most of the second half of game three getting into the paint and then passing to the perimeter instead of finishing at the rim, despite the fact that he was usually the biggest and strongest player on the court. Brian Windhorst identified the issue years ago: "Everything that LeBron does, his going into a bunker, turning off social media; these are all anti-choking maneuvers…the choke is what Lebron is prone to do. And so everything he's doing in the postseason is to avoid that choke."
Did James choke in the final minutes of game three? He did not score in the last 4:28, after scoring at will for most of the game and most of the series. Is he tired? Is he frustrated? Is he overwhelmed?
Many reasons/explanations/excuses are offered on James' behalf but the bottom line is that the reasonable expectation for a Pantheon-level player is to come through more often than not in clutch situations. Michael Jordan went 6-0 in the NBA Finals with six Finals MVPs. Bill Russell won 11 championships in 13 seasons and would likely have won a host of Finals MVPs if the award had existed in the first 12 years of his career. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went 6-4 in the Finals and he won a pair of Finals MVPs, including one when he was 38.
James is 3-4 so far in the NBA Finals, which is a subpar Finals resume compared to most Pantheon members:
Bill Russell: 11-1
Michael Jordan: 6-0
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 6-4
Magic Johnson: 5-4
Julius Erving: 3-3
Larry Bird: 3-2
Wilt Chamberlain: 2-4
Jerry West: 1-8
Oscar Robertson: 1-1
Elgin Baylor: 0-7
I classify Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James as the four greatest players of the post-Jordan era. O'Neal went 4-1 in the Finals with three Finals MVPs. Duncan went 5-1 in the Finals and he won three Finals MVPs. Bryant went 5-2 in the Finals and he won two Finals MVPs. It seems unlikely that James' eighth Finals appearance will net him a championship or a Finals MVP, so his record is about to drop to 3-5. James recently lamented that it is his fate to face dynasty teams at the peak of their powers (apparently referring to Duncan's Spurs and the current Warriors, while ignoring the not so little detail that he twice switched teams to personally create a Big Three that was supposed to become a dynasty)--but the only Pantheon players who fared worse than James in the Finals had to contend with Bill Russell and a roster stacked with Hall of Famers. I suspect that Chamberlain, West, Robertson and Baylor would happily trade teams and eras with James, because they would do quite well in a watered down 30 team league that has legislated physicality out of the game. The Warriors cannot guard Kevin Love when he actually posts up and the Cavaliers decide to give him the ball; how are they going to guard Chamberlain? Before you say that Chamberlain could not keep up with a fast-paced game, remember that he was a track and field star with sprinter's speed.
Is it James' fault that the Warriors are poised to sweep his Cavaliers? No, but if James had the mentality to reach the gear that Russell, Jordan, Bryant and other Pantheon members often reached in the Finals then this series would, at the very least, be more competitive than it has been.
The bottom line is that James is not playing badly but he is providing a lot of footage that can be shown to put a stop to the foolish comparisons to Jordan; let's just put a moratorium on such talk and see if James can actually get within striking distance of O'Neal, Duncan and Bryant.
Game three was a winnable game in a must win situation and O'Neal, Duncan and Bryant did not let many of those slip away during the primes of their respective careers. Golden State hit Cleveland with a barrage of 39 points (including a Finals record nine three pointers) in the first quarter but the Warriors only led 67-61 at halftime. The Cavaliers attacked the paint in the first half and James led the way with 27 points. The argument that the Cavaliers are a flawed team because they need James to score a lot of points flies in the face of basketball history. Were the Bulls flawed because Jordan scored over 40 ppg versus the Suns in the 1993 Finals? That Bulls team had one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players of All-Time (Scottie Pippen), an All-Star caliber power forward (Horace Grant) and several outstanding role players but Jordan still scored at a record-setting clip; that is the responsibility of a Pantheon-level player in such situations. Let's not compare James to Russell Westbrook, either; in the 2017 playoffs, Westbrook's second best teammate was Andre Roberson, who spent significant portions of the series running around playing tag because he did not want to be fouled since he cannot make a free throw. In marked contrast, in game three James had another superstar on his own team matching him point for point: Kyrie Irving finished with 38 points on 16-29 field goal shooting, including 16 points in the third quarter as James cooled off.
If you are comparing James to Jordan then you are arguing that Jordan would have found a way to lose a Finals game in which his sidekick dropped nearly 40 points and in which his team had a two possession lead with barely two minutes to go. Sorry, I am not buying that for one second.
It may be true that James was too tired to drop another 20 or 25 points in the second half but, again, that means he is not quite at the level of Jordan or Bryant, guys who logged heavy minutes while playing hard at both ends of the court. James coasted through the regular season and had more than a week off before the Finals. Playing 46 minutes in a Finals game used to be a badge of honor, not an excuse for failure.
James' inability to seal the deal in this series is markedly contrasted by Durant consistently rising to the occasion at both ends of the court. He is taking his one on one matchup with James very seriously, much the way that Jordan and Bryant tried to destroy whoever they were matched up with individually. Durant's ability to come through in clutch moments has been questioned and it is undeniable that he came up short last year for the Oklahoma City Thunder when they blew a 3-1 lead versus the Warriors. This time around, Durant has been magnificent. One championship and one Finals MVP would not move him past James on the all-time list--but James being bested so decisively by a contemporary is a negative mark on his resume that is missing from Jordan's resume.
I don't like the way that Durant left Oklahoma City to join Golden State and I wish that he would have embraced the challenge of trying to beat the Warriors but I respect the way that Durant has made it clear that his primary focus is winning a championship. Durant has come a long way from the soft-spoken kid who I interviewed when he was a second year player. Durant has grown physically and emotionally in the past decade and it will be interesting to see if this season is a stepping stone toward further achievements for him and his new team or if injuries/complacency/lack of focus will prevent the Warriors from achieving their full potential.
The Warriors are now on the verge of completing an unprecedented 16-0 postseason run. The Warriors are 15-0 in the 2017 playoffs, breaking the record of 13 straight postseason wins set by the L.A. Lakers, who went 11-0 to start the postseason before being swept in the Finals by Detroit (the Lakers also won the last two games of the 1988 playoffs). Worth noting is that the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers went 12-1 en route to winning the title and the 2001 Lakers went 15-1 during their championship run. From a matchup standpoint, I am still not convinced that these Warriors would beat the 1983 76ers, 1996 Bulls or 2001 Lakers in a seven game series--less than a month ago the Warriors were down by more than 20 points to the Spurs before Zaza Pachulia took out Kawhi Leonard, so it is not like the Warriors are invincible even in their own era--but whether they go 16-0, 16-1 or even 16-2 they have carved out a special place in NBA history.
Warriors Stun Cavaliers With Late 11-0 Run to Take 3-0 Series Lead
