LeBron James scored 44 points in game one of this year’s NBA Finals on Thursday. However, it wasn’t enough as the Cavaliers fell to the Warriors 108-100 in overtime.
Heading into the series, the Warriors seem to have adopted a strategy of “letting” LeBron take an inflated number of shots, preferably difficult ones. As ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss notes, Golden State is okay with LeBron doing the majority of the heavy lifting while limiting the effectiveness of guys like J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Matthew Dellavedova, who are more than capable of knocking down open shots when James penetrates and dishes.
On Friday, the subject of the Warriors’ strategy regarding James came up. James had a defiant response.
LeBron: "first of all, you don't let me get 40. I got 40. It's not like they moved out of the way."
— David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt) June 5, 2015
With Kyrie Irving having suffered a fractured knee cap on this play, the Cavaliers will have one less weapon to help them try to capture the franchise’s first championship. This will put more of the weight on LeBron’s shoulders and require and force him to carry the scoring load even more, which would be just fine with the Warriors.
