There’s nothing in sports quite like LeBron James when he decides he’s done screwing around. After losing Game 1 against the Indiana Pacers over the weekend, breaking his streak of 21 straight first-round wins, James decided just that. It resulted in a 100-97 Cavaliers win on Wednesday, and Cleveland tying the series at one game each.
LeBron James refuses to let Cavaliers lose after Pacers massive comeback
He was absolutely unstoppable.
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He scored 13 unanswered points before the Pacers scored once — literally, the score was 13-0 — and finished with 46 points on 17-of-24 shooting while adding 12 rebounds and five assists.
It was a remarkable Game 2, even by LeBron’s remarkable standards. After that 13-0 start, and after Indiana hit a free throw, James hit another three-pointer and assisted on two more triples to put his team up 22-4. It looked something like this.
This was all according to James’ plan
In Game 1, it took James about 10 minutes to attempt his first field goal. It came with a purpose, it seemed — James was purposefully trying to get his teammates, some of them playing in the postseason for the first time, involved and ready for a long playoffs run. James doesn’t want to do everything, but after an opening loss, he decided he had to. And ... well, yeah, he did.
It also helped that just about a minute into the game, Victor Oladipo picked up two fouls and was subbed out of the game. (It was probably a mistake, but that’s another problem altogether.) He picked up another third foul later in the first half, and only played 28 minutes overall.
Indiana hung around all the same, and they even gave Oladipo a relatively wide-open look that could have tied the game late. He missed, and Cleveland held on.
Still, Tyronn Lue said he wanted James to be a little more aggressive to start Game 2, and clearly James agreed. Is 46 points aggressive enough? Anyway, James is still The King, and Game 2 was another incredible postseason moment from him.
