‘Threematch’ at hand for Cavaliers and Warriors

May 25, 2017; Boston, MA, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James (23) attempts a layup against the Boston Celtics during the third quarter of game five of the Eastern conference finals of the NBA Playoffs at the TD Garden. And that made it this far.

After the Warriors beat the Cavs for their first title in 40 years in 2015, Cleveland got revenge last season with a comeback from 3-1 down to give the city its first major championship since 1964. He returned to coach the likes of Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson with the 2013-14 Cavs, being fired months before James made a decision to return to northeast Ohio.

“In the back of my mind, I was like, I’m saying to myself, ‘We can not – they can not tie up this series, ‘” Irving said. “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”. “We just kept grinding. So however you want to take that, that’s how the season’s been”. “But we’re going to enjoy this for a couple more days before we have to lock in on that juggernaut out west”. “Obviously we want to take that to the next series and try to be great and see what happens”.

The practice in Independence was the Cavaliers’ final piece of preparation before boarding a plane at 9 a.m. The Warriors went 2-5 after that game. The circumstances were different and the primary author of the comeback was Irving instead of James, but Cleveland fighting back from 16 down was in some ways reminiscent of the 26-point halftime deficit the Cavs erased in Game 3 of their first-round series against the Indiana Pacers. He said, no matter if he’s coaching or not, he will travel to Cleveland with the team in The Finals. “Wednesday, we’ll get some shooting in and go over a couple things if we can”.

I did pretty much everything that MJ did when I was a kid. “Once Wednesday comes, we get a chance to fine-tune everything and go from there”.

Warriors host game one of the championship series in Oakland next Thursday.

The Warriors have home-court advantage, and they were almost unbeatable at Oracle Arena in the regular season.

Interestingly enough, though, the Boston defensive ace was torched in this series by Irving.

“The whole underdog thing is amusing to me, because, yeah, at the end of the day we are defending our title”, Love said Saturday after the Cavs’ first practice in preparation for the Warriors since clinching a spot in the Finals. “And if you’re a coach able to just stay even-keeled throughout the whole thing, it relaxes the rest of the group”. One is the fact Golden State has been playing better defense this postseason than Cleveland.

On July 4, with a 351-word post on The Players’ Tribune, Durant announced he was joining the Warriors. “So, it’s going to be very challenging not only on me mentally, but on our ballclub and on our franchise”. He’s one of the most unsafe guys we have in the world already.

“They’ve gotten better, adding an MVP, probably the best scorer in the league”.

“The good news is the team’s healthy”, Kerr said. “It’s going to be a good challenge”.

That Warriors team James conquered in 2016 won 73 games during the regular season and was being mentioned as one of the best to ever take the floor.

While the Golden State-Cleveland matchup has seemed inevitable for some time, it doesn’t mean the final series of the season won’t be entertaining.