Cavs end regular season with loss to Knicks, look ahead to Playoff matchup with Pacers; three takeaways

2. Early night for LeBron

As expected, LeBron James played on Wednesday, but it was an early exit.

Pregame, head coach Tyronn Lue said that he tried to convince James to sit Wednesday’s game. But given the fact that this was the first time in James’ 15-year career that he had a chance to play in all 82 games, it isn’t surprising that he wouldn’t acquiesce to his head coach.

Lue didn’t have the luxury, however, of putting James in for the jump ball and subbing him out at the first dead ball. Since before Wednesday, James had scored in double figures in an NBA record 872 games, the Cavs had to let James play until he scored 10 points.

He did so fairly quickly, scoring his ninth and 10th points on a layup with 2:16 remaining in the first quarter. Lue called a timeout a few possessions later and James was done for the night.

For the regular season, James averaged 27.5 points, 9.1 assists and 8.7 rebounds. Both the assist and rebound numbers are career highs.

“This is the best I’ve felt, and I’ve got the numbers to back it up and I’ve got the wins to back it up as well,” James said. “Me personally, I’ve just tried to be available to my teammates every single night and do everything that I could to help win ball games, either by scoring, by rebounding, by defending, by assisting, taking charges, whatever the case may be. And obviously, statistically, it all speaks for itself.

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