LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers wowed us for at least one final time in Game 4 of the NBA Finals when they put on a phenomenal show on the offensive side of the ball in a 137-116 win over the Warriors to force a Game 5 back in Oakland. There were big three-pointers, crafty drives to the basket, and tricky finishes at the rim, but the defining moment from Game 4 was LeBron James’ off-the-backboard alley-oop to himself.
James ever so casually broke out a play that’s normally reserved for the All-Star Game when his initial course of action broke down. As he floated into the lane, having already picked up his dribble, the Warriors smartly covered up all his passing lanes. This led to James having no options for getting rid of the ball, and should have resulted in an awkward push shot that would’ve had a very low probability of going in.
Except this is LeBron James, so he did this.
LeBron tosses it off the glass to himself for the showstopper SLAM! #NBABreakdown #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/0p5QngDPLD
— NBA (@NBA) June 10, 2017
It’s an incredible play on its own, but the spontaneity of James to go from out of options to a spectacular play also makes for some amazing calls of the play. Mike Breen handled it with his normal brilliance on ABC’s call, but James’ dunk gets even better when you listen to the supercut of all the international broadcasts of the game and how broadcasters in Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Mandarin, and Arabic.
The very best for me is the Mandarin call from Tencent, in which there’s just silence as James does his thing before the entire booth erupts into “Ooooooh.” LeBron James’ incredible talent has the ability to elicit just about the same reaction no matter what language someone speaks.
