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The 2007 NBA Finals will be a franchise first appearance for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Cavs are playing with a lot of confidence as their young basketball prodigee LeBron James has seemingly elevated his game to another level.
‘The King’ scored 48 points in an instant NBA Classic double overtime victory over the Detroit Pistons.
James is averaging 25.8 points, 8.3 assists, and an identical 8.3 rebounds.
LBJ and the Cleveland Cavaliers will attempt to ride their momentum and displace the greatest basketball franchise of the past decade.
“They’re real excited about it. And you can tell in the way they’re talking, the type of celebration they had last night,” San Antonio’s Tim Duncan said Sunday. “They’re super-excited and they’re coming in here on a high. And we have to counter that, we can’t play into that. Those guys are going to be as confident as anything and I think the confidence is what carries you.”
For San Antonio, things have been business as usual. This NBA Finals appearance will be the Spurs’ fourth since 1999.
All three previous appearances resulted in NBA championships.
The NBA is well rehearsed in manufacturing rings for the Spurs. I’m sure they have TD’s ring size on file.
Production on Duncan’s fourth ring might as well begin now because there is NO WAY that LeBron James and the Cavaliers will deny the greatest power forward of all time another title.
Duncan is averaging a team high 23.2 points and 11.4 rebounds.
Cleveland’s only hope lies with LeBron James. As impressive as his Eastern Conference Finals series versus Detroit was, he’ll need to play even better to have a chance against the team defense of San Antonio.
“Pick a problem, we have it, with LeBron,” said coach Greg Popovich. “He’s fantastic in every way so, pick any aspect of the game, he’s a problem.”
Bruce Bowen will be assigned the unenviable task of trying to contain the King.
“We’re going to count on Bruce to do a good job, try to contain him,” Spurs guard Tony Parker said. “He’s playing very well right now, a lot of confidence. But I don’t think we’re going to double or triple-team him. We’re going to see how Bruce does and go from there.”
San Antonio’s defensive schemes will focus on LeBron but they will pay equal attention to Cleveland’s role players.
“You have to respect someone like that and focus a little more of the attention toward him,” Duncan said. “But they’re going to need a team to beat us, LeBron’s not going to do it by himself.”
Gibson, Gooden, Hughes, Varejao, and ‘Big Z’ must match the production of Tim Duncan’s supporting cast of Parker, Ginobili, Oberto, Finley, and Horry.
Steve Nash played fantastic in Phoenix’s semifinal series versus the Spurs but San Antonio all but x’d Barbosa (NBA’s 6th Man) and Marion (All-Star) out of the equation.
LeBron James’ supporting cast will suffer the same fate. They will not be capable of countering San Antonio’s impeccable defensive rotations and overall intensity.
James has had a memorable run but the NBA Finals came early this postseason.
San Antonio won the NBA championship with their May 18th victory over the Phoenix Suns.
These NBA playoffs may have marked the rise of the greatest player ever and the beginning of the end for the rest of NBA but all that remains now is a foregone presentation of San Antonio’s championship hardware.
