Cavs Take Game 3 and Series Lead

After a thrilling Game 2 overtime victory in Oakland for the Cleveland Cavaliers, a win in Game 3 in Cleveland would give a heavily shorthanded Cavaliers team a 2-1 series lead over a heavily stacked Golden State Warriors team.

Could LeBron and the shorthanded Cavaliers surprised the Warriors for the second straight game?

Well, yes they did exactly that with a 96-91 victory.

 LeBron James showed once again why he is the real MVP of the league with a 40 point performance, and a double double, as he added 12 rebounds to his Game 3 stat sheet as well.

 LeBron’s 40 point performance in Game 3 now gives him a total of 123 for this series, a record for the first 3 games of an NBA Finals in history. But while LeBron is the clear cut leader and best player on this Cavs team, though extremely shorthanded without teammates Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, the Cavs depth came up huge in Game 3, especially Matthew Dellavedova, who had a 20 point night, and was the only Cavs player other than James to score over 20 points.

Defense was the key once again for the Cavaliers, as like I said previously on the show, if the Cavs want to win this series they are going to have to buckle down and get dirty on defense, and for the second straight game they held the high powered Warriors to under 100 points for the game.

 As for the Warriors, their best player and league MVP, Steph Curry, had a horrible first half with only 3 points but then found his game in the second half, especially in the 4th quarter, finishing with 7 made 3 pointers and a total of 27 points, which led the Warriors in Game 3.

 Game 4 is now a must win for the Warriors because the way LeBron is playing, and the way his teammates are rallying around him, even with their injury woes, it will be an enormous task to come back down 3-1 in this series.

-Article written by host Steve Carollo