Spurs 103, Cavs 92
Spurs Show No Mercy in Dismantling Cavaliers
By
HOWARD BECK
Published: June 11, 2007
SAN ANTONIO, June 10 — It was understood, even before the N.B.A. finals got going last week, that the
San Antonio Spurs were a fearsome force, capable of great and powerful things. It appears they can be a little destructive, too.
For nearly two hours Sunday night, the Spurs emasculated the
Cleveland Cavaliers, further trashed
LeBron James’s coming-out party and most certainly laid waste to the N.B.A.’s television ratings.
James and his friends provided a late jolt of suspense, but finally suc bed once more to the utter relentlessness of the Spurs, who took a 103-92 victory at the AT&T Center. The series slid a little closer to irrelevance and the Spurs, with a 2-0 lead, inched a little closer to their fourth championship.
“There’s no magic play, there’s no magic defenses,” Cavaliers Coach Mike Brown said. “This is a good team. We’ve got to bring the juice. And right now we’re not.”
Bottled up and out of sync in his finals debut last Thursday, James rebounded with a more familiar 25-point performance. But the Spurs controlled the game for all but a few minutes of the fourth quarter, when they let the Cavaliers — who once trailed by 28 points — briefly knock their lead down to single digits.
James had consecutive 3-point plays to cut the deficit to 95-87 with 4 minutes 53 seconds to play, and the arena grew momentarily tense. But Tony Parker answered with a 22-footer and Manu Ginóbili sealed the victory with a 4-point play when Daniel Gibson fouled him on a 3-pointer. The Cavaliers never had a chance to tie the score in the second half.
“In the fourth quarter, I thought LeBron got away from us, without a doubt,” Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said. “I think my subs ution pattern was poor and slow. I think a couple defenses I called were inappropriate, and I think all those things combined gave us a problem in the fourth quarter.”
So now the series moves to Cleveland, where the scoreboard will spit fire, James will throw his cloud of magic talc dust in the air and the Cavaliers will try to relocate their mojo.
Tony Parker, still too quick and too clever for the Cavaliers’ defense, led the way with 30 points. Ginóbili scored 25.
Tim Duncan had 23 points and 9 rebounds. And Robert Horry did a little of everything, blocking five shots and collecting nine rebounds. Popovich called Horry the team’s star.
The Spurs’ outright domination may reduce the season to only one debate: whether Parker can wrest the finals Most Valuable Player award from the three-time M.V.P. Duncan.
With no stars to complement James and few options on the bench, Brown pushed whatever buttons he could. He gave James full rein to freelance. He played Gibson, the rookie star in the Eastern Conference finals, for as many minutes as possible. But mostly, he just hoped that James could find an open lane or an open teammate and that someone in dark blue would make a shot or a stop now and then.
Those prayers went largely unanswered. The Spurs had a 10-point lead before the game was five minutes old, a 28-point lead by late in the second quarter, and it stayed in the 20s until early in the fourth quarter.
Brown cited a “lack of poise,” particularly in the opening minutes of the game. “We’re making mental errors that we haven’t made all throughout the playoffs,” he said.
It seemed like a good omen for Cleveland when James, who missed his first eight shots in Game 1, hit a short jumper 35 seconds after the tipoff. As omens go, it was sadly lacking in staying power.
Minutes later, James was on the bench with foul trouble and the Cavaliers were on their way to a 15-point first-quarter deficit. It only got worse. James shot an air ball from the foul line. Zydrunas Ilgauskas shot an air ball from the baseline. Horry rejected two shots by Drew Gooden and another by Gibson.
The Cavaliers shot 26.8 percent in the first half and trailed by 58-33 at halftime. Beyond the AT&T Center, the loudest sound in America was probably a few million remote controls clicking from ABC to HBO for the finale of “The Sopranos.”
The desperation in the Cavaliers was quickly evident. They turned the offense over to James for nearly the entire second quarter and he spent it attacking the rim. It got his offense going — he had 13 points at halftime, 1 fewer than in all of Game 1 — but it did nothing for the Cavaliers, who watched the deficit balloon to 29 points from 13. Cleveland’s stagnant offense produced only four assists in the first half, none by James.
James opened the game guarding Parker, who had strafed Cleveland for 27 points in Game 1. The strategy was scuttled when James fouled Duncan twice in the first three minutes. James wore a disgusted look as he reached the bench, where he remained for the rest of the first quarter. The Cavaliers cut a 10-point deficit to 3, then fell behind by 15 points while James watched helplessly.
Before the game, Brown acknowledged that his players, most of whom were making their finals debut, “might have been a little too juiced and not focused the right way” in Game 1. Whether they are too juiced, awe-struck or outclassed, the Cavaliers only looked worse in Game 2.
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