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On Sunday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers had the opportunity to increase their series lead over the Boston Celtics to 3-0, on their home court nonetheless.
That did not happen.
Instead, the Celtics put together one of the gutsiest playoff performances of all time coming back from a 21-point lead on the road, two nights after being blow out by more than 40 points on their own home court. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the C’s managed to pull off the upset without their best player and leading scorer, Isaiah Thomas.
The question of the night was - what happened to LeBron James?
After leading the Cavaliers to a pristine 10-0 start to the 2017 playoffs, averaging a ridiculous 34 PTS, 9 REB and 7 AST, LeBron posted a dud last night in Game 3. Managing only 30% shooting from the field, LeBron scored 11 PTS accompanied by 6 REB and 6 AST.
After the game, LeBron was decidedly positive alluding to the fact that if a performance like this were to happen it’s better it happen in the Conference finals as opposed to the NBA Finals:
“I feel like you have to have some type of adversity in order to be successful. So I’m glad it… I mean, if it was going to happen, let it happen now. Let’s regroup and get back to playing desperate basketball, like (Boston) did tonight.”
In the loss, LeBron moved within 61 points of Michael Jordan’s all-time playoff scoring record and is only 17 steals from tying Scottie Pippen’s all-time playoff steals record. LeBron also needs to block just 9 shots to enter the top 20 in all-time playoff blocks.
James and the Cavaliers have the opportunity to redeem themselves on Tuesday night at the Quicken Loans Arena where Game 4 kicks-off at 8:30pm E.S.T.
LeBron Fact: LeBron James is the only player in NBA history to lead both teams in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks in a playoffs series, when he did so against the Golden State Warriors during the 2016 NBA Finals.
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