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*Photo via USA Today
We are now tied at two games apiece. The King aka LeBron James seemed to have fallen short last night and all of Cleveland was silent when there was a possibility the throne would be empty for the remainder of the NBA Finals. This was thanks to a collision with the camera man, thankfully LeBron walked away with a few minor cuts on his head but nothing to worry too much about.
After watching the domination in Game 3 and the adversity in Game 4 I think it's time to ask, can LeBron keep this up. The answer is directly correlated with which team you are rooting for. Although, if you look at it from a strategic standpoint, I do not think LeBron can do it. Let's break this down a little bit.
Last night, LeBron played 41 minutes. The only other player on the court to do that was Stephen Curry. LeBron only scored 20 points as opposed to Stephen. who topped him with 22. LeBron makes a majority of Cleveland's points since the absence of Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. Even from the box score, it appears that Cleveland has them beat by out rebounding and assisting more than the Warriors.
The one thing that made the major difference in the game was the bench points. The Warriors bench outscored Cleveland's bench by 12 points. It does not seem like that much of a difference, but when your star player is only scoring 20 points in the game and the only other player who scored in that range was Timothy Mozgov then you have an issue. Not to mention the rest of the starters on Cleveland were basically stagnant the whole game. When Stephen Curry could not do much , Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green, and Shaun Livingston provided a nice spark to help get their team going.
With that being said, a few stats definitely caught my eye and that was the fast break points and the points in the paint. We know that Cleveland has an advantage Mozgov and Thompson in the paint, so you would think that's where a bulk of the points would be produced. Yet the Warriors beat them in that category too. If the Warriors can do this for the rest of the finals, LeBron is going to need to increase his productivity and rely on his teammates a lot more.