The NBA Finals tipped off Thursday with Commissioner Adam Silver addressing assembled media, saying his league is about “celebrating greatness.”
“That’s what you’re seeing on the floor here,” Silver added.
In Golden State’s 124-114 overtime victory in Game 1, greatness was indeed celebrated — and a memorable mistake by Cleveland’s J.R. Smith was immortalized — in a game that delivered on the hype of the fourth straight Finals meeting between the Warriors and Cavaliers.
Ultimately, LeBron James’ 51 points, a career playoff high, were not enough to save Cleveland in overtime. Add in his 19-for-32 shooting and his eight rebounds and eight assists, and it still wasn’t enough.
The problem for James and the rest of the Cavaliers is that he’s facing one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport. And for all of the greatness James put on display Thursday night, it was the strength and depth of Golden State’s star-studded roster plus some ill-timed brain-lock from Smith that allowed Golden State to prevail.
The key sequence came with 4.7 seconds left in regulation, with Cleveland trailing 107-106. A great pass from James to a cutting George Hill resulted in a foul, sending Hill to the line for two free throws. But after making the first free throw, Hill missed the second, and Smith grabbed the rebound, giving Cleveland a chance to get a final shot.
Instead, Smith — seemingly thinking Cleveland was ahead instead of tied — dribbled all the way out to half court, letting the final four seconds run off the clock as all 19,596 in attendance — not to mention the players on the court — stared at him. The buzzer sounded, the crowd at Oracle Arena exhaled, and James turned to Smith and quite clearly seemed to ask him what, exactly, he was thinking.
“We got lucky,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said.
Cavaliers Coach Tyronn Lue said that, watching Smith react in the moment, the guard clearly thought Cleveland was winning, and therefore he was dribbling the clock out.
“He thought it was over,” Lue said. “He thought we were up one.”
But the score was tied, and overtime beckoned. And the extra five minutes were not close, with Golden State scoring overtime’s first nine points and never looking back.
Smith was asked multiple times after the game, and he stuck to this explanation: “I was trying to get enough to bring it out to get a shot off. I knew we were tied; I thought we were going to call timeout. If I thought we were ahead, I’d have held onto the ball and let them foul me.”
Afterward, it was clear just from seeing the mood outside of the Cavaliers’ locker room — and the looks on the faces of Lue and other members of the Cavaliers organization — how exasperated and disappointed Cleveland was after letting this game slip through its grasp.
Cleveland knew coming into this series that its chances of making this a long, competitive one were slim. Doing so would require, at minimum, coming into Oakland and winning one of these first two games, allowing the Cavaliers to go home with some momentum.
For more than 47 minutes, Cleveland did all it could to put itself in that position. But then, in those final 4.7 seconds of regulation — between Hill’s missed free throw and Smith losing track of the score — all of that hard work fell away.
It was easy to hear in Kerr’s voice how fortunate he felt that Golden State survived. And it was clear from their play in overtime that the Warriors felt the same way.
Giving a team like Golden State a second chance is never a wise move. And in those extra five minutes, the Warriors quickly took over, scoring the first nine points of overtime to grab a 116-107 lead.
After Cleveland finally got on the board with a Jeff Green tip-in, Draymond Green followed with a 3-pointer — his second of the game after going 2 for 17 from behind the arc in the seven-game Western Conference finals against Houston — to seal the victory for Golden State.
But that didn’t mean the theatrics were over. After a block by James on a Stephen Curry drive with 34.1 seconds remaining, Curry kept jawing at James for the next 20 seconds as play continued at the other end of the court – to the point where James shoved Curry away from him, though that didn’t stop him from yapping.
By that point, the result was a formality. Behind 29 points, six rebounds and nine assists from Curry and 26 points, nine rebounds and six assists from Kevin Durant, Golden State knew it would prevail.
But as Curry and James jawed, the Warriors wound up with the ball. As Shaun Livingston went up for what would have been a meaningless jumper, Cleveland’s Tristan Thompson fouled him, earning a technical foul from referee Tony Brothers.
Then, as both teams milled around, Draymond Green began talking to Cavaliers players and clapping his hands, leading Thompson to hit Green in the face with the ball and possibly his hand. After the players were separated and there was a lengthy replay review – including Curry and James continuing to talk to each other with their mouths covered – Thompson was given a flagrant 2 foul and was ejected.
So much for this series, in its fourth iteration, being a boring repeat with nothing to talk about. It only took 53 minutes of game action Thursday for that to change.
“Everybody has been saying it’s going to be easy,” Kerr said. “It isn’t going to be easy.”
And while James’ greatness nearly gave Cleveland the upper hand, Golden State’s overall greatness — plus some help from Smith — tipped the scales in the Warriors’ favor.
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