Golden State Warriors beat Cleveland Cavaliers, as they did in last season’s

Even on a night when all those long-range shots weren’t falling like usual, the defending National Basketball Association champion Golden State Warriors showed they are quite comfortable grinding out a victory.

“We don’t believe we’re going to make a statement with one game”, Warriors interim coach Luke Walton said. “We just showed our versatility in trying to win in different ways”. Nonetheless the Cavaliers (19-8 win-loss) proved they still had plenty to challenge the Warriors (28-1) as LeBron James scored a game-high 25 points with nine rebounds while throwing down two powerful late game dunks and making a chase-down block on Warriors guard Ian Clark. Instead of doing it with 3-pointers, Golden State maintained its edge over Cleveland by limiting the Cavaliers to 32 percent shooting. For Golden State, it was the first time in 47 regular-season games the Warriors didn’t crack 100. “So, for us, having this Christmas game was a great test and we’ll see them again”.

According to the AP’s release (via ESPN), he is just the fourth basketball player to win the award in its 85-year history, joining LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.

Help is on the way, if only the Warriors can hold it together another couple weeks and avoid the all-out panic that will come if they slump all the way to, say, 75-win pace and only break the single-season record by three games as opposed to the current tracking to 79 victories.

Yes, an optimistic point of view (which we don’t specialize in around here) would be to highlight the facts that Cleveland stifled Curry, Thompson and the rest of the Warriors shooters as well, but the Dubs have the track record and the pedigree to give them the benefit of the doubt.

“If we play like that defensively, we’re going to be a very tough team to beat”. “Offensively, we just didn’t have it. No one had it”. By the time the buzzer rang, Green had contributed 10 points to the Warriors scoreboard and Golden State led the Cavilers 28-19. “To keep them to the 80s, they never really got in a flow where they could really attack us”. He was reduced to highly contested shots in the lane or three pointers – and shot poorly from both (5-16 from the field; 0-5 from three).

It’s another sucking blow for LeBron since he lost the match representing the Cleveland Cavaliers who were beaten 89-83 by Golden State Warriors.

They had led by nine points after the first quarter before the Cavaliers were able to gain ground with the Warriors’ starters off the floor and tie the score at 31.

If anything, Cleveland left the game even more confident of their chances in a potential Finals rematch six months from now. One major question entering Christmas was how, exactly, Love might alter the matchup between these two teams after he missed the entire Finals due to injury.

“It was one of those nights”, Love said.

Far more importantly, the Cavs were unable to exploit Stephen Curry being far from his best, limited by a sore calf that had to be examined both on the bench and in the locker room during the second quarter and briefly threatened to shelve him for the duration. Walton said he is always concerned when his star has any injury but Curry said this will not be a long-term issue.

American Pharoah got three more first-place votes than Curry’s 24, but Curry appeared on 86 percent of the 82 ballots that ranked the top five candidates.

Heat 94, Pelicans 88, OT: Chris Bosh had 30 points and 10 rebounds, Dwyane Wade added 19 points to move into No. 3 on the NBA’s Christmas Day list and Miami survived some shaky moments to beat New Orleans.

Love had a double-double today for the Cleveland Cavaliers, scoring ten points while grabbing 18 rebounds.

Jimmy Butler scored 23 points and Pau Gasol 21 as the Chicago Bulls halted a three-game skid with a 105-96 triumph over the Oklahoma City Thunder, who had won three straight.