Heat bounce back to even score with Spurs
LeBron James leads the way with 35 points and 10 rebounds
The Miami Heat, boosted by LeBron James’ 35 points, defeated the San Antonio Spurs 98-96 in the NBA Finals on Sunday to level the best-of-seven series at one game each.
The defending champions were trailling 93-92 with 2:25 remaining, then scored the next six points to take a 98-93 lead before a three-pointer by the Spurs’ Manu Ginobili at the final buzzer ended the scoring.
Showing no effects from the leg cramps that forced him to miss most of the fourth quarter of game one, James hit 14 of 22 shots, including all three from beyond the arc, and had a team-leading 10 rebounds.
We didn’t take advantage of things, we made bad decisions
James worked inside in the first half but then scored from the perimeter in the second.
“Just play,” he said. “I just try to put teammates and myself into position to succeed and I live with the results after that.”
Tony Parker led San Antonio with 21 points, followed by Ginobili’s 19 and Tim Duncan’s 18.
“LeBron with the ball did a great job at his end and we had to be really pretty perfect at the other end and we [weren’t],” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.