By Jeff Lenchiner
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The Cavaliers beat the Warriors in seven games to win the 2016 NBA championship. Here’s what Cavs star LeBron James averaged in the Finals series:
29.7 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 8.9 apg, 2.6 spg, 2.3 bpg, on 49% shooting.
That’s… insane.
Those are video game numbers.
Those are the type of stats your buddy in the park makes up, as a joke, about some rec league he allegedly dominated that you happen to have never heard of.
Except, they’re real, and they accurately represent what LeBron accomplished in the NBA Finals, against a team that had just won more regular season games than any team in the history of the NBA.
Cavs guard Kyrie Irving was excellent in the Finals too of course, averaging 27.1 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 3.9 apg and 2.1 spg, shooting 47% and hitting 40.5% from three-point range. He will never average a ton of assists in the current makeup of the Cavs team. But he produced, and often stepped up when the team seemed to be in an offensive lull. He did his job.
Third in scoring for the new champs was shooting guard J.R. Smith at 10.6 ppg (40% FG, 36% threes), then Tristan Thompson at 10.3 ppg and 10.1 rpg.
Kevin Love was quiet in the Finals, averaging 8.5 ppg and 6.8 rpg in 26.3 minutes per outing.
Back to those LeBron 2016 NBA Finals stats: have fun trying to come up with proper adjectives to describe just how awesome they are. And after you do that, just stare at them for a while, because they don’t happen often.
