Game 4 precursor? LeBron James to do more when Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving struggle

During the Cleveland Cavaliers Game 3 loss in Toronto against the Raptors, which was their first loss in the 2016 playoffs, stars Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving struggled. Obviously, no player is immune to bad games, but LeBron James admitted that when two of the team’s Big Three are struggling, he needs to take the burden onto himself, per cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon.

“But there is a point in time where you say, okay, some of the guys are not going, maybe let me see if I can get it going. But last night just didn’t happen that way, and we’ll have a better game plan going into Game 4.”

And, the struggles were real. Love made just 1-of-9 shots to go along with three points, four rebounds, and two assists. Irving had 13 points, four rebounds, one assist, and one steal while shooting a dismal 3-of-19.

For his part, head coach Tyronn Lue confessed his mistake in not forcing the issue through James earlier.

“I think I should have called more plays to make him dominant … I think we continued to run plays that had been effective and working throughout the course of this series, knowing that Kyrie and Kevin could get going at any time, and I should have put the ball in LeBron’s hands a little bit more to let him create and let him draw double teams. So that was more on me.”

In case you haven’t noticed yet, James is being used much less during the 2016 playoffs than he was in 2015. During last year’s playoffs, the 31-year-old touched the ball on 37.4 percent of possessions and scored 35 percent of the team’s points; this season, James has a 29.5 percent usage rate and has scored 28 percent of his team’s points. Of course, both Love and Irving missed substantial time during those games.

James though still has confidence in the game plan. Either Irving or Matthew Dellavedova should be the initial distributor.

“Well, it’s always a fine line for sure. Obviously the ball — as far as me initiating offense, it’s not as — I don’t handle it as much. With Kyrie kind of setting the offense and then Delly coming in, the ball has kind of been taken out of my hands a little bit, so I’m okay with that.”

James criticized his head coach for what seems like the first time since Lue took over, but it was on the back of being controlled throughout the game by an inferior Raptor team. The Cavs are still ahead 2-to-1 and have home-court advantage, and James knows that the team has to continue to count on Love and Irving even after their struggles in Game 3.

So, don’t expect a return to the LeBron James from Game 5 of the 2007 NBA Playoffs versus Detroit.