Cavaliers beat Warriors to win NBA title and end Cleveland's 52-year drought

09:55, 20 June 2016

NEW YORK. KAZINFORM - Astounding. That's not the only adjective to describe the Cleveland Cavaliers' 93-89 Game 7 victory and first NBA championship in franchise history. Remarkable or sublime would work too. No team has ever come back from 3-1 down to win the NBA finals, until now. A series defined by back and forth body blows (both figurative and literal) ended in similar fashion - two teams trading runs and pushing each other to the limit. The moment LeBron James returned to Ohio for has finally arrived. He got one for the Land, The Guardian reports.

"I'm happy to be a part of history," James said. "I'm home. I'm home ... I'm at a loss for words. This is unbelievable."

Leading his team with a seventh career finals triple-double (27 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists), James refused to be denied his third NBA championship and third finals MVP trophy. A hard bump on a shooting foul late in the game was one final obstacle to overcome. His free throw off that foul helped give the Cavs a four-point lead that iced the title. James was also vital on the defensive end, swatting three blocks, including a huge denial of Andre Iguodala, last year's finals MVP and noted LeBron stopper, that prevented the Warriors from taking the lead with less than two minutes to go.

But as we learned from years past, as transcendent a player as LeBron is, he can't do it alone. The 2016 finals will be remembered partially as the coming out party for Kyrie Irving, a player who's been much maligned for his inability to function effectively as James's sidekick. That should end now, with Irving's 26 points and six rebounds and knack for making momentum-turning shots. With 53 seconds left - after both teams failed to grab hold of the game late - Irving buried the three that would give them the advantage for good. Kevin Love, the third member of the Cavs' Big Three who never figured out his offensive game, brought down 14 vital rebounds to lead his team's interior dominance.

Cleveland controlled the paint with Andrew Bogut missing for the Warriors, outscoring the 2015 champions 48-28 inside the lane. Bogut's replacement, Festus Ezeli, had about as painful a game as one can have in these kinds of moments: zero points on 0-4 shooting in 11 minutes of action, with one rebound and one assist. He was 0-3 in just the first five minutes of the game and never found his footing. That his misses were at the rim and high percentage shots will only make it harder to reconcile in the post-game analysis, of which there will be plenty.

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