James, Cavs KO Celts, set up rematch vs. Warriors

Avery Bradley one game. He had six points when James was taken out and ended the game with 42.

The Boston Celtics showed this postseason that they have players who could fill in for Isaiah Thomas when the star point guard was injured. “Just watching him move without the basketball, getting easy baskets off of cuts and splits and when he passes the ball he’s also relocating now”.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors will square off in the NBA Finals for the third straight year in a series that felt like a foregone conclusion pretty much all season. There’s no touching the Warriors right now. We had to earn it.’ And both teams had to do the same thing.

“Since I fell down in March, I think that’s what aggravated it”, Thomas said.

“Those guys are going to challenge me, they are going to challenge our ballclub”, said James, who last week surpassed Michael Jordan as the all-time playoff leading scorer.

Kyrie Irving backed up his massive game four with 24 points and seven assists, while Kevin Love had a double-double, adding 11 boards to his 15 points. Finished the playoffs having made at least 10 3-pointers in 16 of their 18 games. “And if you add Pop (Gregg Popovich) in there, that’s five Hall of Famers”, James said of the 2014 Spurs team, via ESPN. “We’d love it if we could win in four games, that would be great”, Green said with a smile. They didn’t top their own regular-season win record, but they actually improved upon their scoring margin.

The Celtics got out to that early lead as they played more of a motion offense and for a while it looked as though they were going to level the series going back to Boston, but there was no stopping Irving in the second half and the Celtics’ offense faded as the game wore on.

James promptly knocked down two more three-pointers before the end of the third period.

Though Thomas is eligible for an extension this offseason, which could come with a pay raise for next year, the Celtics can only offer one if they stay under the salary cap. Draymond Green has last year’s Game 5 suspension to redeem himself for.

“We want to defend our title”, Cavs small forward Richard Jefferson told reporters after Cleveland eliminated the Celtics 4-1 in the Eastern Conference finals. We just wanted to build good habits and have fun playing some basketball, man. Whether that is true or not is up to the person arguing for or against LeBron, but at least we know that this is where Laimbeer stands on the issue. Golden State will practice again Saturday then take Sunday as its last off day ahead of Thursday’s Game 1 at Oracle Arena.

“They made it this far”.

“It’s carried me to this point now and it’s going to carry me for the rest of my career because scoring is not number one on my agenda”.

An injury-ravaged Cleveland team went 33-49 before Brown was sacked again in May of 2014 – shortly before James returned to Cleveland as a free agent and two-time National Basketball Association champion with the Heat. The 2015 NBA champions won a record 73 regular-season games, and Stephen Curry was the first player to unanimously win the NBA MVP Award.