CLEVELAND: Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James was expecting his teammates to step up their game when the NBA Finals shifted to the Quicken Loans Arena early this morning, a boost his team will need to avoid falling into a 3-0 hole in the best-of-seven series.
James was sensational in the two losses to Golden State on the road in Oakland but despite scoring 51 points in Game One and having a near triple double in Game Two, he has mostly been a one-man army against the deep and talented Warriors squad.
“I always believe the role players play much better at home than they do on the road,” James told reporters in Cleveland on Tuesday.
“They feed off the crowd. They feed off the familiarity with not only being home but being on their home floor, having their own locker and things of that nature.
“So I think that’s definitely helped us out a lot throughout this post-season thus far. Pretty much in the post-season since I returned a few years ago.”
James has good reason to think the Cavs will be a better when the ball goes up on their home court, where they have only dropped one game this post-season and have at times looked like an entirely different team.
In the Eastern Conference Finals the Cavs won all three of their home games against the Boston Celtics by comfortable margins but were blown out in three of the four games they played at TD Garden.
The Cavaliers stole Game Seven of that series on the road to advance to the Finals, where they are battling the defending champion Warriors for the fourth consecutive year.