Cavs beat Celtics to earn NBA Finals rematch with Warriors

There were two firsts in last night’s Eastern Conference championship game.

But it all evaporated.

Boston managed to pull off a surprise victory in Game 3 of the series, but was unable to contain an occasionally historic display of shooting from Cleveland, who now advance to the NBA Finals to play the Golden State Warriors for the third year in a row.

It’s unlikely the two will be matched up against each other often this year – the Warriors are more likely to cross-match and put Green on James – but it will be a compelling storyline. Golden State is now a seven-point favorite for Game 1 that will be played at Oracle Arena on June 1.

“He just never had the opportunity because of the team at that point in time”.

The Cleveland Cavaliers were supposed to get there, and they did. But then he added this: “OK, maybe a slight preference for Cleveland”. “San Antonio was supposed to be a test that year, and we were able to sweep them”. The Warriors have surpassed that mark, thumping playoff foes by an average of 16.3 points.

And they’re doing this without their head coach.

Thomas is set to enter the final year of a four-year, $27 million contract he inked before being traded to the Phoenix Suns in 2014.

Kerr is still involved, albeit donning sweatpants. The Warriors defeated the Spurs 113-111.

Just how important was the Magic/Bird rubber match in ’87?

“He was really young but extremely talented”, Brown told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated. The Cavs will look to defend their title starting June 1 in Oakland, California. He is eligible for free agency after next season.

On July 4, with a 351-word post on The Players’ Tribune, Durant announced he was joining the Warriors.

“It’s hard for me; I’m kind of in this basketball mode”, Myers said.

“Man, I hit him with punches that’d bring down the walls of a city”, Frazier said.

“We were both running and grinding together”. Simple as that. It’s good that we’re here now.

James also gave his thoughts on the finals and said, “Once we get to the preparation for that juggernaut, we will be locked in”.

When asked about the suggestion that the Celtics were better without him after they rallied to win Game 3 against the Cavaliers while Thomas was sidelined by a hip injury, he dismissed the notion.

Can the Cavs do it again?

On the brink of becoming the first player since the early 1960s to play in seven straight Finals, James finds himself in a similar – and somewhat surprising – situation.

“Eastern Conference finals, that’s the biggest stage I’ve ever been on”, Thomas said at the team’s practice facility in Waltham, Mass.

He passed Michael Jordan in the third quarter to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer in the playoffs. After torching the Celtics for 35, James now sits at 5,995 postseason career points. “He was one of those guys that you said sooner or later he was going to figure this thing out. They had multiple people come in and talk to me about what’s more important, but I definitely wasn’t trying to hear that at that point in time”. “I feel great about where the team is”.

“I did pretty much everything that MJ did when I was a kid”.

This was my pick before the playoffs started, and I’m sticking with it.

The Boston Celtics are 12-3 against the spread in their last 15 games as a double-digit underdog and 2-1 straight up in their last three instances as one.

James, however, made sure to point out that “scoring” was “not number one” on his “agenda”, drawing a bit of a contrast with Jordan. If the Celtics had won, Bird and Johnson would both have four career National Basketball Association titles, and Bird would have beaten Magic in two out of three Finals meetings.

Nearly nobody understands, firsthand, the position the Warriors find themselves in.