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NBA Finals: LeBron James And Cavaliers Are Leaving Lasting Impressions

By Ernest Shepard
Published on: 16:50 PST, Jun 9, 2015

Three games into the NBA Finals and the Cleveland Cavaliers keep finding ways to survive. A 96-91 win, via Bleacher Report, gives them a 2-1 advantage in the series. How they have a 2-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors at this stage is remarkable. Their lead is leaving us to have strong impressions.

Win or lose the championship, the Cavaliers have left an impression of resilience that will not soon be forgotten. If they do go on to win it all, the NBA Finals will be remembered for two things. First, jump shooting teams still cannot prosper against stout defense. And the NBA Finals will be remembered for LeBron James inserting himself into the discussion as one of the top three players of all time.

The NBA is a fickle league. During some years teams need a dominant presence in the post in order to advance in the playoffs. Jump shooting teams typically fall prey to bigger teams. In this case, the Cavaliers are the bigger team, the Warriors are the team that can shoot.

In the NBA Finals thus far, the bigger team has played big, while the team that can shoot, haven’t.

The Golden State Warriors have failed to make 40 percent of their shots in the last two games. They have also not reached the century mark in points scored. What has happened to the Warriors? In a simple word, defense. Cleveland’s defense, as typically the bigger teams do, adjust to a jump shooting as a series go on. That is not to say that the Warriors will not come back to win this series, it just suggests the obvious – defense wins championships. When a team that averaged 110 points in the regular season cannot get to 100, you have to give credit to the team that stopped them.

Between that and the out-of-this-world play from LeBron James, you have the true story behind the NBA Finals.

Kyrie Irving is out, no problem. The all-star point guard will miss a considerable amount of time to recover from surgery to fix his fractured knee cap. He is one of many Cavaliers players who is injured.

How bad is it for Cleveland? Irving, despite not being able to play, had to be placed on the active list in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.

Guard Iman Shumpert left the game after injuring his shoulder trying to go through a Draymond Green screen.

Not to be shaken, or disrupted, LeBron James still kept his strong play. He once again led Cleveland with 40 points, 12 rebounds, and eight assists. In Game 2 James had a triple-double. How he has helped keeping the team together in the wake of a basketball mash unit is making his harshest critics recognize him as one of the top three or five greats of all-time.

Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, those guys had plenty of help. So has James in the past, but this is different. The territory for which LeBron James is going to is rare air. There is no one who is healthy that remotely resembles a perennial All-Star.

Cleveland has some solid players among the healthy roster, but neither of them are the same player as Irving or the also-injured Kevin Love. For this group to be where they are in the NBA Finals is a testimony to their leader, LeBron James. He has this team playing without excuses or any sign of quitting in them. Players are diving for loose balls, diving into the stands, and making all of the necessary plays to win. If the Cleveland Cavaliers were to win the title, they would be a deserving champion.

It is still too early in the NBA Finals to declare a winner, but if the Cleveland Cavaliers fail to take another game, we have at least a few impressions to last us for years to come.

(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Sport)

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