Recap: Cavs 106, Bulls 101 (Or, A Return to What We Never Have Known)

Overview: The Cavaliers were able to overcame a slow start and a shaky finish to beat the Bulls in Cleveland and take a 3-2 series lead. LeBron James led the Cavs with 38 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three blocks, and three steals, with 24 points on 10-12 shooting in the first half alone. Kyrie Irving added 25 points on 16 shots, while Jimmy Butler led the way for Chicago with 29 points as Derrick Rose struggled en route to an 8-24 night from the field.

Cavs-Related Bullets:

Last time LeBron played a Game 5 in a Conference Semifinals series, it didn’t go so well. He went 5-14 from the floor, the Cavs got blown out, and it turned out to be LeBron’s last home game as a Cavalier until 2014. (I do like to remind people that LeBron did put in a lot of effort in Game 6, finishing with a final line of 27/19/10, although he also turned it over nine times and threw up brick after brick from the outside. Definitely didn’t make up for that Game 5 disaster, though.)

Between then and now, something happened with LeBron. For one thing, he hasn’t lost a playoff series to an Eastern Conference team since that 2010 loss to the Celtics. More importantly, though, after the series of humiliations LeBron suffered after freezing up against the Celtics, the Mavericks, and the Celtics again when the Heat fell behind 3 games to 2 against them in 2012, something in LeBron just seemed to snap and he decided that he wouldn’t stand by and watch as his team was eliminated from the playoffs ever again.

The reason I bring this up is because I was reminded of that Game 6 in Boston watching LeBron tonight, mainly because of where his shots were coming from. Something clicked for LeBron that night, something that I feel he found again in the first half of tonight’s game — he found the happy medium between getting enough shots to make the impact his team needed him to and getting shots that were close enough to the basket to be good ones.

We’ve come to know two versions of Struggling Playoff LeBron: The LeBron who isn’t sure what to do, so he waits for an efficient play that doesn’t come, over-passes, and doesn’t make as much of an impact on the game as he should. We saw him in Game 1 of this series. Then there’s the LeBron who starts to worry that he won’t get the ball if he waits to get the ball in a good position, so he strangles the offense, initiates pick-and-rolls and ISOs from above the arc, and forces jumpers even when they’re not going down. He’s the gentleman who took us on a merry ride through the second, third, and fourth games of this series.

Then there’s Ultimate Weapon LeBron, the freaking point power forward. In the first half of Tuesday’s game, after the Bulls took early leads of 8-0 and 16-6 and it looked like it was time to seriously worry about the Cavs’ season, he showed up in a major way. The Cavs ended the first half with a 54-44 lead, with LeBron contributing 24 points on 12 shots. That’s good. Again, though, the really fun part was where he was getting his points:

Here’s a rundown of LeBron’s 1st-half points (as shown in the video above):

– Layup off a post-up

– Free throws off a post-up

– Dunk on a fast-break after a steal

– Fadeaway off a post-up

– Fadeaway off a post-up

– Fadeaway off a post-up

– Drive into a fake post-up/turnaround thing that was honestly some of the most gorgeous footwork I’ve seen from LeBron

– Layup after slipping a screen as the roll man on a pick-and-roll

– Fast-Break layup (Fouled, missed FT)

– Layup off a pick-and-roll, with LeBron as the ball-handler

– Layup off a post-up

I’ll do the math for you: That’s 16 points out of the post (I’m counting his fake-post drive as a post-up), 4 on the break, 2 working off the ball, and just two off the dribble-drive, with exactly none many of his points coming on ISO drives to the basket or deep pull-up jumpers. It’s beautiful. It’s just a beautiful thing to watch LeBron perform at his peak, and it came when the Cavs needed it most.

Naturally, LeBron spent halftime forgetting absolutely all of this, and shot 4-12 in the second half, including a 2-9 mark on shots outside of the paint. I’ll have to go back to the tape tomorrow, but I really want to give LeBron the benefit of the doubt and assume he was trying to establish post position and that the Bulls made an adjustment, but I distinctly LeBron forcing more than a few possible daggers, and sometimes you just have to accept that LeBron James was sent here to drive you insane.

My go-to defense is that LeBron gets more crap than he should, because people think he can just go straight from the perimeter into a high-percentage shot every time down the floor and he makes the game look so easy when he’s on because of it, but SERIOUSLY SOMETIMES IT JUST LOOKS LIKE HE’S MAKING THE GAME HARDER FOR HIMSELF FOR THE HELL OF IT. I mean, my head knows he can’t have 24 points on 10-12 shooting every half, but my heart/fan-sense kind of feels like he could. LeBron is funny: If you “hate” him, it’s because you think he’s secretly better than he performs, and if you “love” him, you find yourself explaining that he’s not as good as people who criticize him for not being omnipotent is.

Last thing — I’ll take a half of sustained brilliance like that from LeBron over one buzzer-beater after a shaky game any day of the week. I realize that the only reason I like the other more is that it’s more damaging to the false narratives pumped out by pundits whose opinions I do not respect but actively seek out out of masochism. My realization that I let my disdain for others affect my enjoyment of things has led me to a deep hatred of self. I suppose recognizing this is progress.

Anyways, non-LeBron things happened in this game. (Yes, I did happen to roll in after a big LeBron game, but I promise it’s a coincidence — our lineup had as many inactives as the Cavs’ tonight, and I’m actually moving in the morning.) Let’s discuss them!

TRISTAN BY GOD THOMPSON. Nobody ever says they’re happy to be wrong about something and really means it, but I’m as close as you can get with Thompson. This guy has been an absolute terror during this series. I don’t know if a Thompson/Mozgov frontcourt can work against other teams in these playoffs (let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, in fact), and I do think a lot of the reason LeBron’s been forced to stall out the offense and chuck so much is that Thompson being forced into such heavy minutes is gumming up the spacing more than LeBron would prefer.

That said, he’s a ball of energy who’s always moving and finishing inside, and I’m out of superlatives for his work on the offensive glass. I mean, a game-clinching rebound should be enough, but it’s all game, every missed shot he’s pouring the pressure on. For a team struggling to run offense with Love out and everyone else hobbled, you need all the free points you can get, and offensive rebounds one of the best ways to get them.

Kyrie is just so skilled. He clearly does not have any lift in those legs of his, but he’s making it work anyways — I think you could have had a quarter touch both the soles of his shoes and the floor when he released that reverse layup in the first quarter, and it still went in. He started to make some shots in isolation in the second half, which was key because the Cavs’ offense was stalling out, and they needed those shots in the worst way. It says a lot about just how complete of a scorer a guy is when you look at the final box score, see he had 25 points on 9-16 shooting, and hadn’t even really registered it as a great game before then. A combination of first-half LeBron and second-half Kyrie has a puncher’s chance against any team in this league. Even the Warriors. I mean, a puncher’s chance, but still, I’ll take it.

Very good job by Shump to contribute with his 3-pointer not really falling, taking advantage of close-outs, showing confidence in that pull-up shot, and keeping the ball moving instead of just waiting for a corner 3 to come.

Usually, a rough offensive half like the one the Cavs had in the second will make me point at what the other team is doing and say “Why can’t we run more offense and get the looks those guys do?” Boy, the Bulls are not that team. When Rose gets cut off from the paint (and Gasol is injured), it’s just BRUTAL basketball to watch. I do not envy their fans having to endure those droughts.

That’s about all from me tonight — no access to DVR (as I mentioned, I’m moving), so I wasn’t able to watch the game close enough to really break down how the team was able to adjust on Rose. Let me know what y’all think, and I’ll catch you again soon. 9 wins to go — easy enough, right? Oh, and for the record, Taj shouldn’t have been ejected; looked more like a snap “dude, get off my leg!” reaction than something done with malice. That’s just me, though.