<\/div>\nGilgeous-Alexander said the Thunder, who swept the Phoenix Suns in the first round, will \u201cabsolutely\u201d be aiming to finish off the Lakers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would never want to waste an opportunity to win a basketball game,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to do the same thing we did in the first three games — be the aggressor, play the right way together.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Cleveland, Donovan Mitchell added 10 rebounds and four assists. Harden, a three-time NBA scoring champion, scored nine of his 19 points in a tight fourth quarter, drilling a trio of baskets that included a dagger trey that pushed Cleveland\u2019s lead to four with 25.9 seconds left.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it,\u201d Harden said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen your number\u2019s called, just getting to my spots. And it\u2019s something that I work on literally every day.\u201d <\/p>\n
Harden\u2019s lackluster offensive numbers and late-game miscues in games one and two sparked criticism, but the veteran said he\u2019d taken the \u201cchatter\u201d in stride.<\/p>\n
\u201cChatter is going to be chatter regardless,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you do something good, whether you do something bad, you give me opportunities in this fourth quarter, and I take advantage of them.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Cavs withstood a 27-point triple-double from Detroit\u2019s Cade Cunningham, who added 10 rebounds and 10 assists.<\/p>\n
Cleveland led 64-48 at half-time and pushed the lead to 17 early in the third before the Pistons clawed back.<\/p>\n
Detroit managed to edge ahead with less than four minutes to play before Cleveland responded again.<\/p>\n
They will try to get the series back on level terms when they host game four on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder used another explosive second half to beat LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers 131-108, pushing the Lakers to the brink of elimination in the NBA playoffs. Watch NBA with ESPN on Kayo Sports | Stream an average 9 LIVE Regular Season games per week plus the best of the NBA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6807],"tags":[156],"class_list":{"0":"post-242658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leagues-cups","8":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}