Thursday night in Indianapolis Lebron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers attack in their 119 to 114 win with 41 points 12 Assist and 13 rebounds. Watching the game you would think that this man became a superhero right before your eyes.
“Bron” penetrated, grabbed rebounds and dished the ball off to open men who sank open jumpers. All the while helping the Cavs overcome an explosive first half performance by the Indian Pacers. You see Indian led by Paul George and his 36 points put up 74 points as a team in just the first half. George also finished the night with a career playoff high of 15 rebounds before it was all over, but unfortunately for the Pacers “Bron” was in the building and playing for the other team.
James overcame his 13 points first half performance (a half which the Pacers dominated) and became “Bron” in the second half pouring in 28 points and the almost magical part of his performance was that he made it look easy. Leaving no doubt that he was taking over the game with literally as 2/3 of the big three ( Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving) on the bench. Lebron forced the Pacers to focus on him as he drove to the hole and scored buckets and once Indians’ focus was on the King down low he would find open teammates Channing Frye, Kyle Korver, Love and Irving for scoring opportunities.
Do you know that in the third quarter Cleveland scored 35 points and shut down the Pacers attack holding Indiana to only 17 points? I do not know what happened in each team’s locker room at the half, but whatever Cleveland head coach Tyronn Lue said to his players, he needs to bottle it up..
The win for the Cavaliers has given “Bron” a record 20th consecutive first round playoff win and James passed Kobe Bryant on the all-time playoffs scoring list ( he now has 5,669 playoff points scored). In my opinion, if Lebron and the Cavaliers can continue to play the way they did in the second half of this most recent win they will be back in the NBA Finals defending their Crown.
There was another game that had a magical atmosphere to it on Thursday night, Did you see it? The Memphis Grizzlies and their rookie head coach David Fizzle had their backs against the wall against the vaunted San Antonio Spurs down two games to none. The same Spurs who finished the regular season with the second-best record in the NBA. But Thursday night’s game was different as Memphis point guard Mike Conley, and Grizzly big men Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph each scored over 20 points leading the way to 105-94 Memphis to win. The fight in the Grizzlies can probably be credited to the NBA fining Fizzdale last week for his comments about the officiating in the Grizz game two loss. In the press conference after that game, Fizzdale pointed out the disparity in foul shot opportunities between the Spurs and his Grizzlies. The Memphis head coaches remarks were met with a huge fine from the league. Fizzdale said he was taking up for his players and with that, his players responded Thursday by beating the Spurs by 11 points. The win cuts into the San Antonio lead with another game coming up in Memphis on Saturday
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Trevin A Jones
