LeBron James went on the offensive to defend teammate Matthew Dellavedova being called a dirty player after the exhausted and injured star player carried the Cleveland Cavaliers within one victory of the NBA Finals.
James shook off the worst playoff start in his career — missing his first 10 shots — to score 37 points, grab 18 rebounds and pass for 13 assists in the Cavaliers’ 114-111 overtime victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night, giving Cleveland a commanding 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals.
James, who registered his 12th career playoff triple-double, scored Cleveland’s final five points in overtime, including a go-ahead 3-pointer, and altered guard Jeff Teague’s potential go-ahead shot with 31 seconds left in overtime.
More than an hour after the game, James shared the podium with Dellavedova to face reporters, and strongly refuted suggestions that the Cavaliers point guard is a dirty player.
“I’m a little bit off about it because this is my guy, this is my teammate and this is a guy that goes out and works his tail off every single night and people are trying to give him a bad rap,” James said. “He doesn’t deserve it and I don’t like it.”
Typically mild-mannered Hawks center Al Horford was assessed a flagrant-2 foul and ejected in the final minute of the first half with the Cavaliers leading 48-47, after getting tangled up with Dellavedova.
Dellavedova and Horford were fighting for rebounding position when Dellavedova stumbled over Atlanta forward DeMarre Carroll and fell into Horford’s right leg.
“He went after my legs,” Horford said of Dellavedova after the game. “If it was on purpose, we don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t on purpose. But with just his track record, I just felt like it was and, again, on my part, very poor for doing that.”
Following a referee review, Horford was ejected and Dellavedova received a technical foul.
Referee Ken Mauer, the crew chief for the game, told a pool reporter that Horford received a flagrant-2 foul because “he made contact above the shoulders, to the shoulder and head area, of Dellavedova.”
As for Dellavedova’s technical, Mauer said: “We felt that he made contact with his head and shoulders into the knee area of Horford. So we ruled that a live-ball physical taunt technical foul.”
In Game 2, Dellavedova collided with Hawks guard Kyle Korver while pursuing a loose ball in the third quarter of Cleveland’s 94-82 win. Korver will miss the rest of the postseason because of a high right ankle sprain suffered on the play.
“I saw the ball (on the play with Korver). I dived on the floor,” Dellavedova told reporters after Game 3. “If I stay on my belly, it’s going to be a jump ball. So I protect the ball and kick it out to a teammate.”
James, who played with cramps and other pain during the game, believed Dellavedova was in the right on both plays.
“Well, you just play the game the right way,” James said. “At this point, you try to do whatever it takes to win. You don’t want to hurt nobody. No one, I think, in our league goes around trying to hurt people. But you don’t take the aggressive nature out of the game.
“I think in the case of (Dellavedova), ever since you were a kid, the ball on the floor, the first man to the floor usually gets the ball. There’s no difference to what Delly did to Kyle Korver last game and 18 guys diving on the floor late in the game tonight. It was like six or seven guys diving on the floor for that loose ball. Delly was on the floor, J.J. (James Jones) was on the floor, Mike Scott was on the floor, Shump (Iman Shumpert) was on the floor, J.R. (Smith) was on the floor. Just no one got hurt.
“And there’s no difference between me boxing out, or Al Horford boxing me out and Delly boxing someone out. That is a fundamental box out. That’s all it is. And we all know that. We don’t never want to play with the integrity of the game and try to get people hurt. That’s not what it’s about. Because we all want brotherhood at the end of the day, an NBA family. But you play to win the game and you play aggressively. That’s what it’s about.”
The Cavaliers will go for the sweep at home Tuesday night.