Stephen Curry exuberantly dribbled his way around a Draymond Green drag screen, with a sold-out Oracle Arena already on its feet and the Golden State Warriors clinging to a two-point lead with 4:20 left to play in the game.
The MVP sensed the trap coming, and he bolted for the middle of the floor. Tristan Thompson leaped out at him, trying to prevent a three-pointer at all costs; Matthew Dellavedova, hailed as the Curry stopper, chased him from behind.
Curry frantically took a step back and threaded a pass between Dellavedova's outstretched right arm and the sagging left arm of Thompson's, who was trying to regain his balance from jumping out at arguably the greatest shooter of all time.
Green caught the MVP's pass, took one dribble into the paint and fired a fastball to Andre Iguodala in the left corner. The veteran of 10 years elevated, let his right arm hang in the air for just a second and then celebrated as nearly 20,000 people rejoiced all around him during Game 5 of the 2015 NBA Finals.
It wasn't supposed to be this hard. From October to June, the Warriors, winners of 67 games in the regular season, had been the best team in the NBA. The league's top-rated defense and second-best offense allowed them to lay claim to such a proposition, per NBA.com.
However, the Cleveland Cavaliers, sans Kevin Love and without Kyrie Irving since Game 1 of the Finals, have forced Golden State to scratch and claw its way to the finish line.
The man primarily responsible for this is LeBron James. According to NBA.com, the King has scored 183 points in the Finals. That's an astonishing 39.4 percent of Cleveland's points. He has also dished out 44 assists and grabbed 62 rebounds.
James has not only elevated the play of his teammates, but on the NBA's biggest stage, he has taken his game to unprecedented heights: according to a tweet from NBA.com/Stats, James' dominance of Game 2, ranks as the second-highest percentage of a team's field goals that were scored or assisted by one player in the last 45 years (75.9). His performance in Game 5 (81.3!) is first.
Furthermore, since 1985, there had only been three instances of a player scoring 30 points, doling out at least 10 assists and pulling in at least 10 rebounds in the NBA Finals; James has done it twice this series, per Basketball-Reference.com.
Despite his Herculean performance, James' Cavaliers are on the brink of elimination. From inserting Iguodala into the starting lineup in place of Andrew Bogut, to being more active defensively around James, to Curry finding his rhythm on offense, the Warriors have made the necessary adjustments to put themselves in position to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
On the other side, the Cavaliers look exhausted. Playing five games of this magnitude while using just three subs (Mike Miller has only played 28 minutes this series, per NBA.com) is causing the team to wear down. It also appears as if the clock has struck midnight on Dellavedova, who has shot less than 23 percent from the field in each of the last two games and is no longer defending Curry as effectively. In fairness, that has more to do with the MVP than it does Delly.
Iman Shumpert has been very effective defensively, but is averaging just 6.2 points per game, per NBA.com. Meanwhile, his fellow former New York Knicks teammate, J.R. Smith, has been abhorrent in the Finals. Outside of scoring 14 points in the first half of Game 5—including shooting 40 percent from three-point range—his shot hasn't been dropping, and he hasn't contributed in any other area.
Smith has a plus/minus of minus-10.8 this series.
James has had his share of miscues as well. In Game 1, he had a chance to deliver a last-second victory in regulation, but he settled for a fadeaway jumper, which clanged off the rim. In Game 2, he had a shot at redemption but missed a lefty layup at the buzzer. Granted he was fouled, but it's a moment when the best player in the game is expected to deliver for his team. In overtime, Dellavedova's game-winning free-throws saved him from being ridiculed for shooting 0-4 from the field in the fifth frame, per NBA.com.
In the Cavs' Game 4 loss, James wasn't nearly as effective, scoring 20 points and shooting 31.8 percent from the field, per NBA.com. He did, however, nearly record another triple-double.
In Game 5, the miscues continued: down by two points with 4:33 remaining, James had the ball in his hands and a chance to even the score. After bulldozing his way into the paint, his jump hook bounced out off the back of the rim.
As seen at the 2:24 mark in the following video, shortly after that missed jump hook, a fatigued James failed to box out Harrison Barnes, who tipped the rebound to Iguodala for a layup that gave the Warriors a seven-point lead and effectively sealed the game.
Should Golden State close out Cleveland, mistakes such as these make it doubtful that James becomes the first player since Jerry West in 1969 to win Finals MVP in a losing effort, per Basketball-Reference.com. However, there is no denying the fact that he has been the most outstanding player in this series.
James has turned in an otherworldly performance that serves as perhaps his most amplified reminder to stop comparing him to Michael Jordan and simply appreciate his greatness and uniqueness.
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