Boston Celtics: 3 reasons the season is over
3. Cavaliers finally showed up
After the trade deadline, the narrative surrounding the Cavaliers roster was the inability of anyone outside of LeBron James to produce with any level of consistency, forcing the King to win games seemingly by himself with historic performances.
Kevin Love, the team’s second leading scorer, averaged only 13.9 points per game for the entire postseason, making it extremely difficult for Cleveland to remain competitive with such lackluster offensive play.
This narrative continued in their matchup with the Celtics, as James was once again fantastic with 33.6 points per game on 52.4 percent shooting, while Love’s numbers where at only 12.5 points per game on 37.5 percent shooting.
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Heading into Game 7, nobody was predicting big nights from anyone other than James, as his teammates struggled mightily outside Quicken Loans Arena.
This boded well for Boston, as its well-rounded offensive strategy was the exact opposite of what the Cavs’ game plan was, forcing everyone to be accounted for at all times while they simply had to zero in on James at the other end.
It might’ve worked for Games 1-6, but it didn’t work in Game 7, as Jeff Green scored 19, followed by J.R. Smith with 12.
Nobody was ever asking the other Cavaliers to fill the role left by Kyrie Irving, nor were they really asked to create offense for themselves.
All LeBron needed was for teammates to knock down open shots off his penetration, making sure they kept the defense honest. If that happened, James’ greatness would surely be the difference down the stretch.
It took six games, but to the horrors of Celtics fans everywhere, Cleveland’s other guys answered the bell when it mattered most.