LeBron James Must Be Great For Cleveland Cavaliers To Win

LeBron James had a decent stat line for the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 versus the Chicago Bulls. However, with Kevin Love and J.R. Smith out, decent isn’t going to cut it.

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He finished the loss with 19 points, 15 rebounds, nine assists and three steals. Adding his six turnovers and poor shooting (9-for-22 overall, 0-for-3 from deep), drops his performance from well-rounded to just so-so.

Missing Love and playing small for much of the game—Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson only played 15.5 minutes together—the Cavs needed James to rebound, which he did. James grabbed five more rebounds than any other player in the game and Chicago only out-rebounded Cleveland by three, despite the size advantage.

Because Kyrie Irving is more scorer than facilitator, James led the team in assists per game during the regular season (7.4 to 5.2) and so far in the playoffs (7.0 to 4.6). He is their point forward and main offensive initiator. He has struggled with turnovers though.

He averaged a career-high 3.9 turnovers per game this season and only during his first run through the playoffs as a 21-year-old did he average as many turnovers in the postseason as the five per game he is coughing up right now.

For Cleveland to win the series, James must continue to hit the boards strong and set up his teammates to score while bringing his turnovers down to manageable levels. He had two late in Game 1 that were particularly damaging to the Cavs comeback push.

While the rebounds and assists are great and the turnovers are an issue, the most important part of James’ game right now is his scoring.

Point Producer

The beauty of LeBron’s game is his all-around brilliance. There isn’t anything that he doesn’t do well to great on the court. Depending on the circumstances, there are times a particular aspect of his game is needed even more so than the others.

If the Cavs want to make it to the Eastern Conference Finals, James must score and score big, especially in Game 2 with Smith still out due to suspension.

Love and Smith weren’t putting up monster point totals for the Cavs in their first-round series against the Boston Celtics—14.3 for Love and 9.8 for Smith—but losing a combined 24.1 points per game of playoff scoring is significant, even if Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau doesn’t think Cleveland qualifies as being shorthanded.

It is not just the extra scoring that the Cavs are missing, but also the extra defensive attention and game planning. Cavs opponents are always going to key in on stopping LeBron and Kyrie, in that order, and then everyone else. When you take away the two biggest ‘everyone elses’ it makes it that much easier to focus on LeBron and Kyrie, not that it is every easy to stop them.

Smith and Love were the two most prolific release valves for the Cavs offense once either James or Irving drove and forced the defense to collapse. During the regular season, James and Irving piled up 194 assists to Love and 98 assists to Smith. With neither of those two shooters spotting up around the perimeter, the Cavs offense needs a boost.

Iman Shumpert scored 22 points and went 4-for-10 on 3-point shots and stepped up to the plate reasonably well scoring, but didn’t do much else with one rebound, asset and steal. If LeBron and Kyrie are scoring big, that is all they will need from their third scorer. If one of them has an off night and the other doesn’t do something spectacular, they are going to struggle.

James has not had as heavy a scoring load this season as he has had most seasons in his career. Only during his rookie year did James ever average fewer than the 25.3 points per game he scored this season. That dip in scoring wasn’t mainly due to slippage in his game, but what his team needed. The Cavs didn’t need James to average 30 a game, they had scorers and shooters.

James was free to pick his spots and assert himself at key moments in the game.

The same was true of the first round as well. James went for 20, 30, 31 and 27 points in their sweep against the Celtics. Good numbers to be sure, but nothing extraordinary for a player of James’ stature. His 19 points versus the Bulls seems downright pedestrian compared to what he has done in the past.

Credit should go to the Bulls for playing him well defensively without fouling, but it may also speak to his aggressiveness that he only attempted two free throws. Only twice in his 163 playoff games has James attempted fewer free throws, per Basketball-Reference.com.

James may not need to be extraordinary for the Cavs to win Game 2, but he probably needs to score at least 30-to-35 points depending on what Kyrie does, especially when the guys taking the place of Love and Smith in the lineup do this:

If the Cavs want to avoid going down 0-2 and putting their back up against the wall, James needs to take the same aggressive scoring attitude he used to have during his first stint with the offensively challenged version of the Cavs.

He needs to summon the old Cavalier that did this to the Detroit Pistons on the way to his first trip to the Finals in 2007.

The Pistons were able to turn almost all of their defensive attention on  LeBron, especially late in the game, and he scored anyway. He carried that team to victory. Bill Simmons later called it the “48-Special.”

This series will be special, one way or the other. Who it is special for depends on how many times the scorer’s table calls out “LeBron James.”

Maybe we’ll even get a chance to add a game or two to the list below?

Next: LeBron James: 10 Best Career Performances

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