OAKLAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers are not going down without a fight as they dominated the Warriors with superstar power in a Game 5 112-97 victory Monday night at Oracle Arena.
In a pair of heroic efforts, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving each scored 41 points and the Cavs have all the confidence in the world going back home for Game 6.
Klay Thompson led the Warriors with 37 points — 26 of those came in a wild first half. Steph Curry added 25 points, but was not clutch with a championship on the line. Curry was just 5-for-14 from three-point territory. Thompson seemed to run out of gas in the second half.
Every time the Warriors trimmed Cleveland’s lead, the Cavaliers answered. Curry made a floater at the free throw line to cut the score to 102-96; Irving banked home a runner on the next possession.
The passing was too fancy from the Warriors, who committed 17 turnovers. The defense was not vicious enough without the suspended Draymond Green, who watched the game from a suite at the adjacent Coliseum with GM Bob Myers and Marshawn Lynch. The Cavs shot an unheard of 53 percent from the floor in Game 5, frying Golden State from the mid-range and in.
A telling sequence of the game came early in the fourth quarter. Harrison Barnes and Curry missed back-to-back wide open threes and Andre Iguodala committed a turnover on a fast break. It was that kind of night for the Warriors. Iguodala, who started in place of Green, finished with 15 points.
Hero ball worked for Cleveland in Game 5. The Cavaliers began making their move late the third quarter, taking an 89-80 lead and hushing the Oracle Arena crowd. It was a tide-turning period of the game that saw both teams head in opposite directions. LeBron was in attack mode like never before in this series, looking to score on nearly every possession down the floor. Irving’s isolations without Draymond on the court all of a sudden appeared to have more focus. Curry, meanwhile, was mostly irrelevant in the quarter and couldn’t calm down LeBron even with the crowd begging for it.
Without Green, Steve Kerr played 11 different Warriors, and the results were mixed at best. Shaun Livingston threw down a monstrous dunk on top of Richard Jefferson’s head in the second quarter and scored seven points; Anderson Varejao gave the team spurts of emotional energy off the bench. But ‘Strength in Numbers’ was not a slogan that paid off for the Warriors in Game 5. Leandro Barbosa, Mo Speights and Festus Ezeli were mostly quiet on a night Golden State needed them most. Additionally, Andrew Bogut suffered a sprained left knee in the third quarter and had to be helped off the court by the trainers.
It was one of the most compelling first halves you’ll ever see. Both teams traded vicious back-and-forth uppercuts, to the tune of a 61-61 tie at intermission. Thompson’s 26 first half points were the most in an NBA Finals game since Ray Allen scored 27 in 2010. LeBron added 25 himself, scoring at will from all over the court.
Catch Game 6 Thursday at 6 pm on KNBR 680.
