The Cleveland Cavaliers are Eastern Conference Finals champions once again after dismissing the young, but tough-as-nails Boston Celtics 87-79 in Game 7.
Though the Cavs have the NBA’s best player on their roster, the team missed its All-Star power forward with the injury to Kevin Love.
Cleveland was the underdog in this series with an overhauled roster that showed inconsistent play since the beginning of the postseason.
Fortunately for the Cavs, Jeff Green and J.R. Smith came through for the team as they scored 19 and 12 points, respectively. James nearly had a near-triple-double in the road elimination game with 35 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists.
In the midst of a historic win by James and the Cavs, infamous LeBron hater and Fox Sports analyst Skip Bayless found time to douse cold water on their accomplishment.
Though Bayless’ argues against putting the Cavaliers on a pedestal after victories over the Eastern Conference’s seemingly weak challengers, it is important to put his comments under closer scrutiny.
Not only was James mostly playing solo against the best of the East, two of those teams he mentioned won more games than most of the teams in the entire NBA. The Toronto Raptors won 59 games (second in the league) while Boston won 55 (third) on the strength of their defense. The Celtics had the number one defense in the league while the Raptors have the fifth-best according to the NBA Advanced Stats.
James will be playing in his eighth straight NBA Finals, the longest streak by any player who didn’t play on the Celtics in the 1960’s. This is his ninth appearance in the Finals which includes a 2007 battle with the San Antonio Spurs for the coveted Larry O’Brien Trophy.
To put down James and the Cavaliers’ most recent accomplishment is just being petty, something that his co-host on “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed,” Shannon Sharpe, will undoubtedly mention on the next episode of their show.
James is averaging 34.9 points, 8.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists in Game 7’s — something that should be admired and elevated, not put into question.