Lue: Cavs’ Irving feeling ‘good’ after Game 4 ankle injury

The series heads back to Boston for Game 5 on Thursday, May 25, where the Celtics look to give their fans a better effort than the first two games at home and will try to earn a trip back to Cleveland.

The Cleveland Cavaliers look for a victory here to advance to their third straight NBA Finals.

Irving reflected on his big game and what it felt like to have to step up with LeBron on the bench.

Irving was basically unstoppable in the late second and entire third quarter. The rookie has been one of the bright spots on the floor at times and has played his share of minutes guarding LeBron James. He is also 40 points away from being the only player in history to score over 6,000 career points in the playoffs.

On the night, Irving went 15-for-22 from the floor, including 4-of-7 from long-range and 8-of-9 from the stripe. They were down by 10, LeBron James only had 10 points with four fouls, and the fans in The Q must’ve been a tiny bit anxious. “But, for Kyrie (Irving) and K-Love and Tristan (Thompson) and those guys just to keep their composure and just keep playing, I thought it was good for us”. “We were down, we needed his pop and his spunk and I didn’t think he would get a fourth called on him, but he did”.

James’ performance was the major talking point after Sunday’s defeat, with the Cavs star finishing with just 11 points on four-of-13 shooting.

“He basically was just waiting for an opportunity to be able to blossom”, James said. The Cavaliers are up 3-1 and proved that they want to put the upset of Game 3 behind them.

Something else was going on in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals while Kyrie Irving was flying through the air with the greatest of ease on his way to a 21-point third quarter and a 42-point game. Avery Bradley did as well as he could on Irving, but Game 5 is going to be about the Celtics rotation on the backend of the defense to help alleviate the pressure of the one-on-one defense.

Boston shot 47 percent from the field and 35 percent from the 3-point line in the first half of Game 4 on their way to building as much as a 16-point lead.

Both squads hit 10 triples on the night, but the Cavaliers again controlled the boards – 37-29 – as well holding scoring advantages in the paint, 58-34, and on the break, 16-4. In Game 3, Marcus Smart found his stroke and knocked down seven three-pointers to put the first blemish on the Cavaliers’ 2017 postseason record.

Irving’s previous career playoff high was 41 points, in Game 5 of the NBA Finals last season against the Golden State Warriors.

After Love scored back-to-back buckets, Swish drained a bomb to get Cleveland to within three, 69-66. They took the lead, 73-72, on two free throws by James at the 3:15 mark.

By the Numbers – 24.5, 12.8 … He had only been called for four fouls in a playoff game three times over the last two years. “In the second half, he commanded us to be better”. Despite the fact that the Cavs will be underdogs in that potential series, Lue believes that the offense of the team’s current opponent, the Boston Celtics, has an offense that’s more hard to plan for than that of the high-powered Warriors.

In fact, Lue told Cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon and a small group of Cleveland reporters that he and the Cavs have their hands full, more so after the Celtics lost top gun Isaiah Thomas for the rest of the playoffs due to a hip injury and went on to post a shocking Game 3 win in their Eastern Conference Finals series.