With just under 20 seconds left in the third quarter of a very entertaining Wednesday night matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors, two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas managed to do the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time.
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With the Cavs leading 82-74, James isolated up top against Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan. After getting a screen from power forward Tristan Thompson, James dribbled right and drove into the teeth of the Toronto defense, where he was met in the lane by Valanciunas. Not wanting to give up a layup, or even allow James to get up a shot that would open the door to an and-one continuation, the Lithuanian big man reached out, grabbed hold of the four-time MVP around the shoulders, and took him to the ground.
Valanciunas wound up receiving a flagrant foul-1, which was not an optimal result, but still: generally speaking, the right play. (Especially considering James continued his recent free-throw woes by missing both of his flagrant freebies.)
And yet, wrapping James up and spilling him to the deck is a bad idea in the grand scheme. LeBron had been content to devote most of his attention to orchestration through the first three quarters, scoring a relatively pedestrian 12 points on 4-for-10 shooting while dishing out 11 assists. Following Valanciunas' flagrant, though, James chose a different course — attack, attack, attack.
“You have to understand the game is more important than trying to deliver a hard foul,” James said after the game, according to Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal. “At that point we all know everyone is looking for the reaction. It’s the old elementary school house rule that the second guy always gets caught. So you just relax and play the game.”
When the time came, as has so often been the case in the past, James seemed to be playing a different game than everyone else.
James scored 17 points in just under nine minutes of work after Valanciunas' flagrant. After a brief rest to start the fourth quarter that saw the Raptors chop an eight-point lead down to one behind a monster surge from Toronto guard Lou Williams — taking on a larger role in the Raptors' offense over the last few games, as All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry sits to rest his aching body — James returned at the 8:44 mark of the final frame and promptly put the Cavaliers on his back.
He set up a J.R. Smith triple, then drove to the basket looking for a dunk; he missed it and felt he was fouled, but got no help from the officials. On his next trip, then, he made sure not to leave the question in their hands:
He drove and kicked a dart out to former Miami Heat running buddy James Jones, who's made a return to David Blatt's rotation over the last few games and looked sharp from beyond the arc on Wednesday:
After hitting a pair of freebies to push Cleveland's lead to five, James punished Toronto swingman Terrence Ross, dotting him with a pair of shot-clock-beating 25-footers to give the Cavs a bit of breathing room:
Even without their ailing leader, though, the Raptors remained game for the challenge, continuing to scrap behind Williams (a Raptors franchise-record 21 points in the fourth quarter) and Valanciunas (26 points, 11 rebounds, two blocks in 31 minutes against the Cavs frontline) and making it a one-possession game after a Valanciunas tip-in with 2:25 remaining. But James, again, had the answer, feeding Smith for another triple before knifing through the lane for a swooping layup that essentially put the game away with 55 seconds left:
James' final tally: 29 points on 9-for-16 shooting, 14 assists, six rebounds and just three turnovers in 37 1/2 minutes, leading the way to a 120-112 win that puts the Cavaliers (39-24) in a virtual tie with the Raptors and Chicago Bulls (both 38-23) for the No. 2 seed in the East. Moreover, the victory clinches a 3-1 Cleveland win in the season series with Toronto, giving LeBron's crew the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Raps should that come into play for postseason seeding. They've won two of their first three meetings with the Bulls, too, with the fourth and final contest — which could wind up deciding the Central Division crown — coming one month from today.
The Raptors played tough, and well, throughout the contest, clawing back from a 19-point third-quarter deficit to take the lead midway through the fourth. They figure to be an awfully tough out should a rested Lowry return to his early-season form come playoff time. Still, James' play during the final nine minutes laid bare a cold, hard fact about the way these things can tend to do go in high-leverage moments, as crystallized by Eric Koreen of the National Post:
Since about the middle of January — with apologies to a certain towering inferno raging in Oklahoma City — the Cavaliers haven't had that problem.
“If you want to win one game, you want to win three games, five games, whatever, I think everybody in this league would say, I’m going to take LeBron first, and I’ll build my team from there,” the Cavaliers' Smith — who finished with 15 points, eight rebounds, two blocks, a steal and an assist in 37 minutes — said after the game, according to Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star.
“If you blitz him, he’s going to find James Jones. He’s going to find Smith. If you don’t blitz him, he’s going to buffalo right to the rim,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said, according to Koreen. “So you pick your poison."
And when you're dealing with an angry version of the four-time MVP, the choice often doesn't matter; you're going to die either way.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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