BOSTON -- Game Seven.
"The best two words in sports," is how LeBron James talks about it.
And when LeBron James is on your team -- Game Seven is a thing of beauty.
Game 7 is James scoring 35 points and leading the Cavs past the Celtics in Boston's TD Garden.
Game 7 is LeBron James playing all 48 minutes.
Game 7 now belongs to LeBron James when you look at it in terms of NBA history.
The final score: Cavs 87, Boston 79.
The final verdict: A fourth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals for the Cavaliers.
Or how about this?
It's eight in a row for James, dating back to his days with the Miami Heat.
Or this?
James has a 6-2 record in Game 7's, having won his last six in a row.
Odds are we may never seeing anything like this on the Cleveland sports scene with any franchise.
Every game, every playoff round, we are witnessing history from a player making a bid to be the greatest of all time.
And that player is a local son from Akron.
LOOK AT THE NAMES
When the Cavs stepped on the court for the opening tap, I looked at the other Cleveland starters besides James:
Jeff Green, Tristan Thompson, George Hill and J.R. Smith.
James was going to win the biggest game of the season on a court where Boston is 10-0 in the playoffs ... with those guys?
Second-leading scorer Kevin Love was out with a concussion.
James was playing his 100th consecutive game. No player had piled up more minutes in the regular season ... or the playoffs ... than James.
In Friday's Game 6 win-or-go-home, James played 46 minutes and scored 46 points.
He should have been exhausted. He was sweating buckets. His right leg was bothering him after a slight injury.
"My leg has been better," James said before the game. "I'll be ready."
Ready indeed.
At the end of first quarter, Boston was leading 26-18.
In the middle of the second quarter, the Cavs were losing by 12.
I thought, "It's over. The Cavs are finally done."
I was wrong.
James was not done. Not at all.
THERE WAS HELP
Then came ... Jeff Green?
That's right, Jeff Green!
On a night when it seemed both teams were shooting at those tiny rims at a local carnival.
So this was about grit and will and yes ... LeBron James.
But Green delivered 19 points and eight rebounds.
J.R. Smith, Tristan Thompson and George Hill had their moments.
Thompson made all four of his shots and finished with 10 points to go with eight rebounds. Smith scored a dozen points.
But it was Green who was there with James when it meant the most.
"Their defense is more unpredictable in a lot of ways (without Love)," said Boston coach Brad Stevens. "Jeff (Green) gives them another long, versatile athlete on the defensive end of the court."
And the Cavs did what James said was needed when he spoke before the game.
"They are not going to show us anything in Xs and Os that we haven't seen in the first six games," said James. "It comes down to making shots. Getting defensive stops. Getting 50-50 balls. Being the first man to the floor."
And they did just that.
When it meant the most the Cavs were more determined on defense, tougher on the boards and showed more poise when neither team could make an outside shot for long stretches.
The Cavs held Boston to 34 percent shooting, including 18 percent on 3-pointers. The younger, quicker Celtics had only three fast-break points.
James led the way with 15 rebounds. No one else had more than eight on either team.
The Cavs won this game the hard way on the road in front of a wild, hostile crowd.
"We've been counted out for a long time this season," James said to ESPN after the game. "This is a heckuva accomplishment for our ball club."
And for James.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- LeBron James had every reason to not trust his teammates in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.
They really didn't do much to earn it. In the first quarter, as the rest of the supporting cast looked timid and indecisive in a hostile environment, James was forced to score 12 of Cleveland's first 18 points.
It looked like it was going to have to be one of those nights.
For the Cavaliers to survive against the plucky Celtics, LeBron was going to have to go for how many? 40 points? 50? 60?
He certainly looked capable. Despite the Celtics trying a variety of defensive coverages and throwing a few different bodies in his path, they could only watch as he stabilized Cleveland's shaky offense early. His outside jumper was dropping and he was plowing his way to the basket -- scoring buckets inside the paint and earning repeated trips to the free throw line.
But that's not who James is. And that's not how the Cavs have gotten to this point.
Yes, James' fingerprints are all over this trip back to the NBA Finals. He was exquisite in another Game 7. He's been so good, so dominant in the playoffs that there aren't any superlatives left to summarize his greatness.
But this is a team sport. James learned that growing up. Even after watching his teammates brick shots early, going just 2-of-9 from the field in the first quarter, James' faith in the others, as irrational as it may have have seemed to outsiders, never wavered.
It took some time. It looked bleak. Then it was finally rewarded.
Late in the second quarter, as the Cavaliers were making their surge, James fired a pass to Jeff Green for a basket. The very next possession, James drove right of the lane, drew a second defender and found JR Smith for a 3-pointer in the opposite corner -- his first on the road in this series.
It was in that moment when poor body language and slumped shoulders turned into a gigantic exhale. From James. From Smith. From Tyronn Lue. From Cavs fans all across the world.
James, without any rest in the first half, needed someone to lift the offensive burden, to help close the gap going into halftime. His teammates were there for him.
The non-LeBrons continued that in the final two quarters, scoring 30 of the team's 48 second-half points. There was Smith's 3-point answer following a Marcus Morris triple in the fourth quarter and Kyle Korver sprinting off a screen to bury one of his patented 3-pointers at the top of the arc and break a tie game in the fourth quarter. There was the biggest shot of Green's life, an answer triple after Boston briefly reclaimed the lead and the crowd became reenergized at the six-minute mark, and Tristan Thompson's uncontested dunk that helped punctuate a second-half comeback.
In all but one of those possessions, James made the pass to set up those buckets. In each case, he initiated the offense.
Playing all 48 minutes of Game 7, James created 21 field goal attempts off his passes, 13 of which were classified as "open." He finished with nine assists.
That's been part of the Cavs' postseason formula, giving James just enough of a scoring boost. On Sunday, four players reached double figures, improving their record to 10-1 in the playoffs when that's been the case.
Green, who started in place of All-Star Kevin Love, led the supporting cast, scoring 19 points on 7-of-14 from the field to go with eight rebounds, one assist and a block. With him on the floor, the Cavs outscored the Celtics by seven points.
"You want to be there for him," Green said of James. "You want to be in the trenches, in the battle, helping him achieve the ultimate goal. You're right with him. For me, it's a no-brainer to go out there and give it all I have. No matter how many minutes I play, I'm going to go out there and just play hard and just be there for him, be there for all my teammates, and do whatever it takes to win games. That's what I've been doing, and I'm going to continue to do that."
Smith bounced back from three horrible road games, pouring in 12 points on 3-of-8 from the field and 3-of-8 from beyond the arc in 42 minutes.
Thompson added 10 points, making all four of his shot attempts.
James didn't need one of those scoring explosions. Turns out, 35 was enough.
"As much as I was passing in the first half and my guys wasn't knocking them down I believed in the second half they would," he said on the court after the 87-79 win. "I believed that the Celtics would try to put as many bodies on me, in front of me and invite the pass to my guys and dare my guys to shoot and make. I just kept the faith in them and they did that."
On a night when James had his eighth straight Finals trip hanging inside the TD Garden, he stayed true to himself and what he learned so many years ago.
James did it his way -- trusting his teammates till the very end.
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Jeff Green will play in the NBA Finals for the first time in his career after he scored 19 points to help the Cleveland Cavaliers upend the Boston Celtics 87-79 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.
Green started in place of the injured Kevin Love, who was placed in the league's concussion protocol on Saturday after knocking heads with Celtics rookie Jayson Tatum in Game 6 on Friday. Love made the trip to Boston and was in attendance Sunday night.
"We said we want to do this for Kevin,'' Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said. "Kevin wanted to play, to be in a Game 7 situation like this in the Eastern Conference finals, being an All-Star, being our second-best player, and he just wasn't able to go. The guys picked him up, so now he has another chance when we get to the Finals to be ready.''
Making his first start since the first-round opener against Indiana, Green added eight rebounds, an assist and a block in addition to his 19 points.
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"I worked hard to get to this position. I can't put into words, man," Green told ESPN's Dave McMenamin after Game 7. "Hard work, dedication, I gave everything ... I still got more to go, not satisfied, gotta continue to work, to get better."
Green was second on the Cavs in scoring Sunday night, behind only LeBron James (35), as Cleveland came back from a 12-point second-quarter deficit to hand Boston its first home defeat this postseason.
"Jeff is my guy," James said in his on-court interview after earning his eighth straight trip to the NBA Finals. "Every time before a game, we do our 'Wakanda Forever' handshake. When his number was called, he answered the bell."
Green, who finished the night 2-for-9 from beyond the arc, was asked about the Celtics daring him to shoot the 3 in Game 7.
"I'ma shoot 'em, I'ma shoot 'em," he replied. "I got all the confidence in myself. I work on my game."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
