CLEVELAND - LeBron James chewed on his fingernails as he talked quietly with Mo Williams in the corner of Cleveland’s muted locker room.

As they reviewed the game’s final seconds, the two stars stared blankly at a boxscore floating in an ice tub above James’ feet.

They looked stunned. And for good reason.

No longer untested, no longer unbeaten. The Cavaliers finally met their match in the playoffs.

Dwight Howard scored 30 points, Rashard Lewis added 22 and the Orlando Magic rallied from a 15-point halftime deficit to hand James and the Cavaliers their first loss of the postseason, 107-106 on Wednesday night in the Eastern Conference finals opener.

James finished with 49 points, eight assists and six rebounds, but the league MVP limped off the floor after Cleveland’s loss — just its third in 46 home games.

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” said Cavs guard Delonte West, who missed an open 3-pointer with five seconds remaining. “This one hurts.”

Lewis made a 3-pointer with 14.7 seconds left and the Magic, who dethroned the champion Boston Celtics in seven games in the previous round, survived two shots by Cleveland in the closing seconds. Williams missed a catch-and-shoot jumper off a jump ball as the horn sounded, dropping the Cavs to 8-1 in the postseason.

“It’s a big victory,” said Howard, who broke one of the shot clocks with a dunk in the opening minutes. “We kept fighting the whole game. We kept believing we could win.”

Hedo Turkoglu scored 15 points with 14 assists for Orlando.

Game 2 is Friday night at Quicken Loans Arena, which fell eerily silent after the Magic’s win.

As fans headed to the exits, they turned to observe James still on the floor and bent over in obvious pain. He seemed to be bothered by cramps in the fourth quarter and was tended to by Cleveland’s training staff before slowly making his way to the locker room.

Perhaps the long layoff — the Cavs hadn’t played since May 11 — contributed to James not being himself at the end.

Cleveland gave this one away. The Cavaliers lost their grip on the game with a stagnant third quarter that carried into the fourth.

Orlando, which went 2-1 vs. Cleveland in the regular season, took its first lead at 85-84 with 10:06 left when Anthony Johnson buried a 3-pointer from the left corner. The bucket seemed to suck the air out of the raucous building and Cavs coach Mike Brown quickly called a timeout to stop the Magic’s run and get James back in.

The Magic, though, kept making big shots with Lewis hitting a jumper with 31.6 seconds left to give Orlando a 104-103 lead.

James then drove and scored on a runner while drawing a sixth foul on Howard, who added 13 rebounds. James completed the three-point play for a 106-104 lead but Lewis came down and nailed his 3-pointer over a closing Anderson Varejao.

Source (article): NBCSPORTS

Source (pictures): EVERYJOE, BBALLCITY

On this day in 1991, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson stuns the world by announcing his sudden retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers, after testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, many Americans viewed AIDS as a gay white man’s disease. Johnson (1959- ), who is African American and heterosexual, was one of the first sports stars to go public about his HIV-positive status.

Revered as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Johnson spent his entire 13-season NBA career with the Lakers, helping them to win five championships in the 1980s. The 6′9″ point guard, a native of Lansing, Michigan, was famous for his extraordinary passing skills, contagious smile and love of the game. In 1981, he signed a 25-year deal with the Lakers for $25 million, one of the NBA’s first over-the-top contracts.

Johnson, a three-time NBA “Most Valuable Player” and 12-time All-Star team member, didn’t completely hang up his basketball shoes after announcing his retirement in 1991. He was voted most valuable player of the 1992 NBA All-Star Game and played on the Olympic “Dream Team” (alongside Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Patrick Ewing) that won gold for the U.S. in Barcelona that summer. He briefly returned to the Lakers for the 1993-94 season as head coach and made a short-lived comeback as a Lakers player in the 1995-96 season.

Today, Johnson is a prominent spokesman for AIDS awareness and a successful businessman, earning millions from a range of ventures, including movie theaters and restaurants. He serves as an example of how a variety of drug treatments have transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition for many people in the U.S. Still, some 25 years after the first AIDS cases were reported, 25 million people worldwide have died of AIDS and another 40 million have been infected with the virus.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2008-11-07