The NBA Finals are now tied and headed back to THE LAND!
For the first time in their 45 year history, the Cleveland Cavaliers have won their an NBA Finals game. Following their disappointing overtime game 1 defeat to the Golden State Warriors, where Kyrie Irving would suffer an unfortunate season-ending knee injury – where he would have immediate surgery less than 48 hours later.
LeBron James scored 44 points in the losing affair, but surprisingly kept his confidence and composure at an all-time high after Thursday. With 72 hours to rethink, readjust and make strategic changes in hopes of splitting the series, the Cleveland Cavaliers came out immediately aggressive on the defensive end. The story of the game was the rare horrific shooting display from Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Combined, the splash bros. took 17 shots from long range and only made 6. The league’s MVP, Curry, finished with an all-time finals worst with 13 misses from deep, as he was limited from successful play with Matthew Dellavedova constantly in his face and properly defending shots. With LeBron James using isolation nearly the entire game on his 35 attempts, the King managed to get to the line 18 times, in comparison to the entire Golden State team shooting 25.
Marreese Speights, who had an impressive affair in game one of the NBA Finals, had one of the worst wide-open fast-break missed dunks in the history of basketball. The Warriors had a chance to inch within a point before the 4th quarter, but the missed dunk took momentum they had going. As Klay Thompson continued to carry the entire team on his back throughout the 4th quarter, Steph Curry would score 7 of his 19 points in the quarter alone. In OT, the Warriors, with the exception of Draymond Green, who scored his first two field goal of the game nearly went scoreless. As JR Smith fouled out in the final minutes of the quarter, Iman Shumpert draining a long three and a key offensive rebound from Matthew Dellavedova to closed the game in a shocking affair.
With the split, Cleveland now heads back home for a game 3, where Steph Curry will be looking to redeem his performance – as well as their bench that was outscored. In another interesting and shocking note from the game, the Cavaliers had a higher three-point efficiency than the Warriors, at 33.3% in comparison to their 22%. Tristan Thompson went 0-5 from the field and will be looking to contribute offensively as well.
FINAL: CLE 95 | GSW 93 | Series Tied 1-1 | Game 3 is Tuesday at 9:00pm ET on ABC.
The 2015 NBA Finals Edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “Mean Tweets”