From the outset of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the Atlanta Hawks pressured Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving with double teams in an effort to get the ball-dominant guard to pass to an open teammates.
On the advice of his coach, Tyronn Lue, and teammates, Irving learned how to handle the pressure, particularly in the fourth quarter when he scored 12 points, handed out an assist and stole a pass. As a team, the Cavaliers were a plus-19 during Irving more than 11 minutes of action.
“Coming out on the initial jump ball and the first possession that we have, I see that they’re blitzing me,” Irving said. “I was coming to the gym bench kind of looking for answers for myself because they were up by a certain amount of points, and they took me out of a rhythm I’m usually in coming into games, especially in the first half, but my teammates did an incredible job, especially the guys to the right of me (LeBron James and Channing Frye) of having their focus, knowing what’s important, what’s the task at hand and what we had to accomplish, especially to finish the basketball game.
“When you have those types of teammates and tight pieces where we’re kind of in a bind, six points down, eight points down, we just have resilient guys that believe in me and I’m glad we got this win.”
In 40 minutes of play in the win over the Hawks Friday night, Irving knocked down nine of his 19 attempts from the field and four of his five three-pointers on the way to scoring 24 points. Irving was one of four Cavaliers who scored 21 or more points in the Game 3 win.
In the fourth quarter, Irving converted four of his seven shots from the field, including both of his three-point tries and a pair of free throws. In addition to Irving, power forward Channing Frye came off the bench to score 11 of his team-best 27 points in the fourth quarter.
Together, Irving and Frye served as the catalysts for the Cavaliers’ 17-2 run that permanently turned the fortunes of the game in Cleveland’s favor.
“I just tried to stay on Kyrie the whole game,” small forward LeBron James said. “In the middle of the third, I told him, ‘I don’t care what happened up to this point. Just hit the reset button. Hit the reset button because at the end of the day, we need everything from you. We need you to lead us.’
“And from that point on, from the four-minute mark in the third quarter all the way to the fourth, he just did what Kyrie does. He hit big shots for us. When he felt like the defense was starting to react because he hit a couple shots, he just threw it back to Channing, and he hit a three and made them call timeout. These two guys definitely carried us tonight, and it was special.”
Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue added, “I just told Kyrie, ‘I want you to be aggressive. We can play fast and early and try to play without the screen. At times, you can get to the basket’ because they were trying to trap him and double-team him. He did a great job of carrying us for that first half of the fourth quarter, and we brought LeBron back and it was a total team effort.”
Through the first seven games of the 2016 NBA Playoffs, Irving averaged 24.9 points, 5.1 assists, 1.9 rebounds and 1.4 steals over 35.4 minutes per game. He shot 47.4 percent from the field and 55.1 percent from three-point range.
Despite helping the Cavaliers to seven straight postseason victories heading into Game 4 at Philips Arena tonight, Irving still credits a fourth-quarter collapse in Chicago as motivation for stepping up his play and leading the team, especially when James is not on the floor.
“I wouldn’t say we do it without him, but I really still think back to that Chicago game,” Irving said. “I have to be an extension of him and Coach Lue while he’s resting, and I have to give him that time to almost get his legs back so he can close the game out for us.
“It’s really important that we have energy and we have a set game plan, especially when our different lineups are in. As professionals, we’re doing an incredible job of that right now, where we’re having different lineups. Guys are in different spots, and when we’re seeing things that we can execute and be really good at, we’re attacking it.”
