LeBron drops the hammer on Golden State to force Game 6

James and teammate Kyrie Irving scored 41 points each for a desperate Cavaliers team that took advantage of the Warriors’ playing without suspended defensive stalwart Draymond Green to pull within 3-2 in the best-of-seven NBA Finals. He made 17 of 24 shots, including 5 of 7 3-pointers and several twisting layups on which he somehow coaxed the ball through the rim.

In the regular season, the Cavs’ bench was 27th in the league with 28.1 points per game. Green also provides another player capable of exerting multiple forms of pressure on the Cavs’ defense – inside and out – thereby preventing them from (or at least punishing them for) mobbing Curry and Thompson as the Cavs did again in Game 5. Game 6 will be played Thursday at Cleveland.

Sources told ESPN’s Marc Stein that Green had to be out of the arena two hours before tipoff, but he would have been allowed by the National Basketball Association to enter the arena immediately after the game to join in the celebration had Golden State won.

Klay Thompson had a team-high 37 points for the Warriors on 11-of-20 shooting, including six three-pointers, but it was far from enough on this night.

James and Irving seemed to wear down in the fourth quarters of the first four games, the weight of carrying the Cavaliers offense with little rest sapping their energy as the Warriors kept coming at them in waves.

“We had a mindset that we wanted to come here and just extend our period and have another opportunity to fight for another day”, said James, who was assessed with a technical foul by the league following a Game 4 squabble with Green. We still had an opportunity to win the game.

“It was always a situation where the team down in the series was going to benefit from those calls”, he said.

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Warriors: The Warriors had won their last four against the Cavs on their home court, outscoring Cleveland by a combined 48 points in Games 1 and 2 of these finals.

Irving reached a level in Game 5 that he’s only touched in brief, brilliant flashes. Considering how many clean looks didn’t find the net, don’t expect them to finish below 100 for a third time this series. Tristan Thompson crashed the glass with 15 rebounds, but Kevin Love had only two points in 32 minutes. Irving was making shots left and right, and James put up 13 more.

While James and Irving were not the new political power in the town, they certainly owned the night on the court at Oracle. Additionally, Golden State’s spiritual leader Draymond Green did not play in Game 5, and he will be back for the remainder of the series. “Tonight it was obviously different rotations, and we tried to adjust on the fly with different matchups. But we just didn’t execute as well”. He and Irving did something special and didn’t want to let the night go. “You just don’t take these moments for granted”.