The Cavaliers got waxed by the Celtics in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. There is no way to sugar coat it or get around what happened on Sunday afternoon. LeBron James was a -32 for the game and had an unlikely seven turnovers, something we don’t see from him much these days.
LeBron James’ near-perfect recall of 2 minutes from Cavs-Celtics is pretty damn impressive
We fact checked to see how much he got right. It was a lot.
Despite how dominating the Celtics were in this one, the Cavs still got a 28-point lead down to 14 in the third quarter. Going into the final 12 minutes, thing felt rocky for the Celtics as it looked like LeBron James and Co. could be mounting another thrilling comeback.
That didn’t happen. The Celtics came out in the fourth quarter and went on a 7-0 run and essentially put a dagger into the Cavs with ten minutes still to play. James was asked about that exact run in his post game presser.
James explained the run is such detail during his presser that the internet was in shock:
So I decided to see just how accurate James really was with his description.
Reporter: “Do you have any idea of what, I think they scored seven quick ones, any idea what happened there?”
LeBron James: “What happened? Um. We ran ‘em the first possession ... We ran ‘em down all the way down to two on the shot clock. Marcus Morris missed a jump shot. “Followed it up, they got a dunk.” Almost correct. The shot clock was at eight seconds but Morris did take the shot and miss and he did follow it up with a dunk.
“We came back down, we ran a set for Jordan Crawford, I mean Jordan Clarkson. He came off and missed it.” Aside from the name mistake ... Correct.
“They rebounded it.” Correct
“We came back on the defensive end and we got a stop.” Correct
***Here is where James left out a Tristan Thompson turnover.*** Forgivable
“They took it out on the sideline. Jayson Tatum took the ball out, threw it to Marcus Smart in the short corner and he made a three.” Pretty correct. Smart didn’t exactly catch it in the short corner but Tatum did take the ball out.
“We come back down and miss another shot.” This was recorded as a James turnover but I bet he believes Tristan should have caught that alley-oop. So in this case, ‘Bron gets the nod over the stat sheet. Correct.
“And then Tatum came down and went 94 feet and did a eurostep, and made right hand layup.” Correct.
“Timeout.” Correct
“There you go.”
Okay, so aside from only one small omission and a difference of opinion on the official play by play, LeBron James sat down about 30 minutes after the game ended and spontaneously recalled about two minutes of gameplay in extreme detail. EXTREME DETAIL. The man has an incredible memory as we’ve seen time and time again. What a legend.
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