The Cleveland Cavaliers fans chanted “M! V! P! M! V! P!” at LeBron James late in the fourth quarter of Game 6 as he stood at the foul line. The look on his face said everything.
It was probably the most casual, unaffected look a man can have as thousands of people all at the same time tell him he is the best. He knows. The whole air about him seemed to shrug it off.
“Yes, yes. I am the best. Thank you. But there is still another game to win.”
James may not win Finals MVP, but he has most assuredly been the most consistently outstanding player in this series.
His cool, confident excellence – in passing, in his steady ability to score from anywhere on the court, in his defensive command of the floor, in his general leadership – stood in stark contrast to the Golden State Warriors, who for the second straight game with a chance to seal their second straight NBA title instead melted down.
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Whether emotionally, as Stephen Curry played his most aggressive, coherent game of the series but took too many cheap, foolish fouls and got ejected on his sixth and final infraction with the game reasonably close in the fourth. The regular season MVP flinging his mouthguard at the sideline in frustration as he fouled out was as poignant a scene for the Warriors, for this game, as any.
Or, whether, it was the actual basketball meltdown, for which pretty much everyone else on the team was responsible. Klay Thompson was a mess until he found his stroke a little too little too late. Andre Iguodala tweaked something in his lower back and clearly wasn’t at full capacity. Draymond Green was embarrassingly ineffectual on both ends.
Harrison Barnes – poor Harrison Barnes – with a significant payday in free agency on the near horizon, has almost certainly cost himself a chunk of change with his last two performances. A rancid 2-of-14 shooting performance in Game 5, followed by an impossibly futile 0-for-8, 0-point effort on Thursday night.
It says enough that the infrequently-relied-upon Leandro Barbosa was the Warriors’ second best, and most unflappable, player of the night.
It was against this backdrop that James stood strong, repelling the couple comeback bids Golden State mounted, carrying Cleveland to a seventh and deciding game of these bizarre, badly-contested yet oddly compelling 2016 NBA Finals.
He had 41 points and 11 assists, scoring practically at will when Cleveland needed him to, and single-handedly opening up the Cavs’ spacing with his vision.
He was the unstoppable force that staked Cleveland to a 20-point first-quarter lead. He was the calming influence in the few nervy moments the Cavaliers faced the rest of the way.
The good news for Golden State is that, as unhinged as they have looked the last two games and as ominous as it is to be without Andrew Bogut and maybe now Iguodala too, they still get the finale at home. They still must know they are much, much better than they have shown in allowing things to get this far.
Only twice in 32 instances before this Game 6 had a finals series reached 3-1 and continued on to what now awaits. The Warriors can take heart that neither of those resulted in the team who originally went 3-1 up blowing the series. Such a capitulation has never happened.
Still, right now, it sure feels hard to pick against James with a straight face.
“Listen, end of the day, I’m gonna give my teammates everything I got, I’m gonna give my coaching staff everything I got in Game 7,” James told Craig Sager after the win, “and I’ll be satisfied with the results.”
He has certainly earned the right to be satisfied. He stands on the precipice of orchestrating the most unprecedented comeback in NBA history. The 73-win, record-breaking Warriors sit on the brink of a nearly unthinkable collapse.
This has been an ugly series, between two teams wildly veering between awesome and terrible, not once lining up at the same time for a truly close contest.
And that, in its roundabout way, has set up for us one of the most enthralling basketball games in memory.
“Obviously I wanna win, for sure that’s the ultimate goal,” James said on Thurdsay night, “but I know I’m gonna give everything and we’ll see what happens.
“It’s gonna be a fun one.”
jraymond@thenational.ae
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