NBA playoffs 2017: Do you remember the last time LeBron James wasn’t in the Finals?

What were you doing the last time LeBron James didn’t make the NBA Finals? It was 2010 and I was still in high school (sorry) lamenting if the Mavericks would ever put a good enough team around Dirk Nowitzki to win a championship while binging Mountain Dew and Taco Bell. Or something like that.

Check the replies.

It included a bunch of good tweets like this one.

The point is simple: it’s been a long, long time since LeBron James wasn’t in the NBA Finals. And honestly, does anyone see that changing anytime in the near future?

With a Game 5 win on Thursday, James is headed to his seventh straight Finals and eighth overall. Like I tweeted, James could fill up a drawer with his “Eastern Conference champions” T-shirts at this point.

On the other hand, James still hasn’t won any Western Conference championships. [insert thinking face emojis here] I guess he just isn’t clutch.

It turns out that James, who had 35 points to push the Cavaliers onto the third straight rematch against Golden State, is very good. Who could have known?

LeBron James has passed Michael Jordan to become the all-time leading playoff scorer, leaping past him in Game 5 against the Boston Celtics on Thursday. James, who was 27 points behind Jordan coming into the game, went ahead of Jordan in the third quarter with a three-pointer from the left wing and now sits at 5,994 points in his postseason career.

James, for what it’s worth, downplayed the stat.

“Anytime I’m linked to any of the greats, even the greatest, in Mike, it’s an honor,” James said at Cavaliers shootaround on Thursday. “I’m not a scorer and I don’t want to be labeled as a scorer. I can put the ball in the hoop but I’m a playmaker. Put me on the court and I’ll find ways to be successful.”

Clearly, James is one of the best passers that the game has ever seen, and his numbers and the way he plays the game reflect that. Still, that’s a bit of a simplification: James does average 28.2 points per game in the postseason, fifth-most in NBA history.

James did it in 32 more games than Jordan, to be fair.

LeBron James has scored more points in the playoffs against the Celtics than any other player has scored against any team in the postseason ever. If you want a number, it’s 979 points. Yes, that’s a 100 percent real stat.

At this point, James has to be enjoying it, right?

James’ series win in five games against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals is the sixth time he has played Boston. In 2008 and 2010, he lost to Boston. In the last four series, though, he has beaten them soundly. (That would be 2011, 2012, 2015, and 2017.)

But let’s not mince words: James didn’t just beat the Celtics in Thursday’s Game 5 win. Cleveland crushed them, rattling off 108 points even in the one game they lost and topping that total in every other one played. With a 30-point win on Thursday — 33 points to be exact — the Cavaliers became just the third team in the past 30 years to beat an opponent by 30 points twice in the same series.

James has completely owned Boston over the past six years. They have to be real tired of this by now.

Here is the NBA Finals schedule.

LeBron James was very helpful handing out T-shirts.

This headline says: “Look at Shaq’s awful foot.” Counterpoint: DO NOT LOOK AT SHAQ’S AWFUL FOOT. IT IS AWFUL.

LeBron James made Celtics fans say bad words.

That’s real nice.

Cavaliers 135, Celtics 102 (Fear the Sword recap | Celtics Blog recap)