Cavaliers complete epic comeback, take NBA title from Warriors with 93-89 Game 7 win

OAKLAND - After 82 regular-season games, 23 postseason battles and 43½ minutes of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the Warriors' dramatic season was an open book.

Klay Thompson scored on a driving layup to knot the game at 89-89 with 4:39 remaining Sunday, and history hung in the balance. The Warriors would either complete the most successful season in basketball history, or they would be remembered for the biggest collapse ever in the finals.

The partisan crowd at Oracle Arena knew which way this thing was headed. Finally, the team that had set records virtually every time it stepped on the court in 2015-16 was rising to its natural level of excellence, and would doom Cleveland to at least one more year of failure.

But the home fans were wrong. Golden State did not score again after Thompson's layup. The most prolific offensive team in the NBA, the greatest long-distance-shooting squad in history, didn't log a single point over the final 4:39, and the Warriors lost 93-89.

Just as the Warriors celebrated on the Cavaliers' home court a year earlier, it was the Cavs' turn to hug and dance and smile and don official NBA-champion merchandise at Oracle.

“Yeah, yeah, we're stunned,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “We thought we were going to win.”

Even after Cleveland had rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win Games 5 and 6 and force this final showdown. Even after the Cavaliers went up 70-63 on a Tristan Thompson basket with 3:18 left in the third quarter. And even during an official timeout with 2:50 remaining in the game, because the Cavs were having difficulty scoring, too.

After that, though, it was the visitors who made the key plays. The biggest were an out-of-nowhere chase-down block by LeBron James when Andre Iguodala thought he had a fast-break layup at the 1:50 mark, and a killer 3-pointer by Kyrie Irving over Stephen Curry with 53 seconds on the clock.

It was fitting that James and Irving typed the punctuation marks for Cleveland. Both were fantastic in the finals after starting slowly in the first two games. In Game 7, James had 27 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists and three blocked shots. Irving scored 26 points.

James, a native of Akron, Ohio, was named finals MVP.

The Warriors' leaders, meanwhile, came up empty down the stretch. Golden State missed its final nine shots of the game, and four of those were 3-point attempts by Curry. On the possession after Irving's long-distance make, the Warriors barely got a shot off, with Curry failing to shake Kevin Love's defense and getting off a desperation miss at the end of the shot clock.

“A lot of it was myself leading the charge and settling too much,” Curry said. “At home in the fourth quarter, I felt like we could go for that dagger punch and didn't really put any pressure on the defense getting to the paint and trying to force the issue that way.”

The Warriors set a record for Game 7s by making 15 3-pointers, but it didn't feel that way. Curry hit 6 of 19 and Thompson 6 of 17, continuing their low-percentage shooting in this series.

The guy who kept the Warriors in the game was Draymond Green, who emerged from a funk with the performance of a lifetime. Green's line: 32 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists. It was the first 30/10 game of his career, regular season or postseason, and his 22 points in the first half were the most before intermission of an NBA Finals Game 7 since Walt Frazier scored 23 for the Knicks in 1970.

“I thought Draymond was brilliant,” Kerr said. “He had one of the best games, one of the best Game 7s, that I've ever seen. Knocking down his shot, rebounding, moving the ball, playing incredible defense. Draymond did everything he could.”

As Bay Area sports fans come to terms with the Warriors' shocking demise, it's hard not to smile for Cleveland. The city had gone 52 years without a major sports champion, since the Browns won the NFL crown in 1964. Since then, Cleveland had lost two NBA Finals, three NBA Eastern Conference finals, two World Series, two American League championship series, one NFL championship game and five conference championship games.

The Warriors weren't exactly happy for the Cavaliers, but they were respectful afterward. That included Green, whose physical exchange with James in Game 4 resulted in a one-game suspension. After the final buzzer, Green headed to the locker room, then decided to return to the court to honor his opponents.

“It sucked to watch them celebrate, and we wish that would have been us,” Curry said. “But at the end of the day, you congratulate them for accomplishing what they set out to do, and it will be a good image for us over the summer and all next season to remember so that we can come back stronger.”

Before the final 4:39, when the teams combined to shoot 1 for 17, this was a brilliant and energetic game. There were 20 lead changes and 11 ties. Neither team ever led by more than eight points. None of it means much to the Warriors now as they sort through the wreckage of a 73-9 regular season and their own improbable 3-1 comeback against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.

History, and sports media, will not be kind to this team. In the immediate aftermath of the loss, the Warriors weren't willing to tear down what they have done.

“Obviously everybody will say, oh, man, they won 73 but they didn't win a championship,” Green said. “We didn't. But I think this team accomplished a lot of great things individually and as a team, and those things can never be taken away.”

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.