LeBron James breaks Michael Jordan’s playoff scoring record

But Kevin Love doesn’t buy it. “We’re trying to repeat, which is so hard to do”.

“I just think I’m seeing the floor a lot better than I was in my younger years”, Irving said. “Like I have an extra bone or something, like doctor talk, I don’t understand what they’re saying”, he said.

“The whole underdog thing is amusing to me, because yeah, at the end of the day we are defending our title”, Love said. But, overall, the better team here is the Golden State Warriors. “Right now we are going to enjoy this and we will think about the Warriors tomorrow”.

For James, the Finals are an annual rite. That’s enough motivation alone. Being the underdogs in the series just isn’t a thing, he said. We’re not using that as an excuse. We just wanted to build good habits and have fun playing some basketball, man.

In the first championship meeting in 1952, Layne and Walker ran for TDs to give the Lions a 17-7 win and their first championship since 1935. “So that’s what we’re focused on”. And. that’s it: Those were the only three times in major American sports that two franchises played each other in back-to-back-to-back championships before this year.

As much as we all hate preordained championship matchups, we can’t automatically blame every National Basketball Association travail on the dominance of Golden State and Cleveland.

“They’ve been there before”, said Marcus Smart. “You’ve got one guy with 12 years, first Finals appearance, and another guy 14. Says what he really wants”.

Thomas aggravated a right hip injury in the second game of the Eastern Conference finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers and missed the rest of the series. Ruth had three homers in the Series, including one in the decisive sixth game.

Lue said he started his game planning for the Warriors after the Cavs returned home from Boston early Friday. “They’ve been super-impressive”, Love said. “We have a bigger goal in mind”.

Bill Laimbeer, stalwart of the Detroit Pistons’ “Bad Boys” teams that were once the bane of Jordan’s Bulls, says that attention to every aspect of the game makes James, for him, the best ever. It’s tough to say that we didn’t expect it.

Both teams have compared favorably with one another in this postseason. So maybe there’s just not an understanding of what you’re watching.

Golden State led the league with a 67-15 record this season and is 27-1 in their last 28 games, including the playoffs. Back then he was tall and scrawny, the inkling of what he would become drawn more from his skills and determination to develop an all-around game than his body. They do something, we come back and do something. Though a sweep is always possible in the NBA Playoffs, it seems unlikely to take place between two teams that seemed so evenly balanced over the last three years.

“Like I’m the reason why f-king Orlando couldn’t make the playoffs for five, six years in a row?” said Durant, clearly not happy to be talking about this subject again. It wasn’t given to us. It’s also the seventh-straight time that a team led by LeBron James has been crowned as the Eastern Conference champions. “But we’re going to enjoy this for a couple more days before we have to lock in on that juggernaut out west”.