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Cavaliers’ small lineup might not be the answer

Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James, left, jokes with teammate Kyrie Irving during NBA practice on Wednesday.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP)
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Poor Cleveland.

Is there another sports city so maligned, so mocked, so needing something — anything — good to happen?

If it wasn’t The Fumble and The Drive ruining the Browns’ playoff fantasies in the 1980s, it was the no-good San Antonio Spurs sweeping the Cavaliers in the 2007 NBA Finals and the meddling Golden State Warriors taking them out last year in six games.

Somebody, please save that city. No more Earnest Byner crying and apologizing on ESPN documentaries for a turnover that happened 29 years ago.

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If there’s one man who can reward Cleveland with its first major championship since the Browns won the NFL title in 1964, he tried to play it cool when asked about the weight of a city of 400,000 leaning hard against him.

“I don’t really get involved into the whole pressure thing,” Cavaliers forward LeBron James said Wednesday, the day before Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Cleveland’s rematch against Golden State.

“I think I’ve exceeded expectations in my life as a professional. I’m a statistic that was supposed to go the other way, growing up in the inner city, having a single-parent household. It was just me and my mother. So everything I’ve done has been a success.”

Sure, but a championship in Cleveland is the one thing not on James’ more-than-respectable list of two championships with Miami, four most-valuable-player awards and two Olympic gold medals.

The Cavaliers, though substantially healthier this time than a year ago, might be fighting fire with petrol. They’ve adopted a small-ball lineup in their playoff run, benching 7-foot-1 center Timofey Mozgov in favor of the more mobile 6-9 Tristan Thompson.

That worked against the near-pitiful Eastern Conference but would seemingly only help the Warriors, in particular Stephen Curry.

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Curry’s effectiveness against such lineups was comparable to “pressing the ‘turbo’ button in a video game,” San Jose Mercury News columnist Tim Kawakami said on Twitter, and who would argue?

Curry is on a serious roll, setting an NBA record for any playoff series with 32 three-pointers against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals. Klay Thompson made 30. The Warriors needed pretty much all of them, becoming only the 10th NBA team to win after facing a 3-1 series deficit.

Curry was as loose as could be Wednesday at his interview session with reporters, even mentioning a 10-minute Uber ride earlier this week with an excitable driver. He revealed it as a way to encapsulate the Bay Area buzz over the Warriors’ second consecutive Finals appearance.

The follow-up question to the two-time MVP, asked somewhat incredulously by a reporter: “Did you just say you were in an Uber?”

“Of course,” Curry said, adding after another follow-up, “I just kind of laugh and chuckle because [drivers] are surprised I’m getting in there too.”

The too-good-to-be-true Curry is apparently just like the rest of us, at least in transportation means.

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James was also asked if he ever used Uber: “I have, but I don’t have an account.”

The Cavaliers could have packed their whole team into an SUV by the end of last year’s Finals. Kevin Love didn’t play a minute of it because of a dislocated shoulder and Kyrie Irving didn’t appear after Game 1 because of a fractured kneecap.

That the Cavaliers made it to six games was something of a victory, though James certainly didn’t see it like that.

“Doesn’t matter if I’m playing in Miami or playing in Cleveland or playing on Mars,” he said after falling to 2-4 in the Finals. “You lose in the Finals, it’s disappointing.”

The Browns have never won the Super Bowl, the Cavaliers stand at 0 for 45 in their previous years of existence. The Indians? Please. That’s so 1948.

These aren’t problems for Golden State and surrounding geographic teams.

“Since I’ve been in the Bay Area, we’ve been blessed with some great organizations,” Thompson said, rattling off the Giants winning the World Series seemingly every other year, the 49ers’ resurgence under since-departed Coach Jim Harbaugh and now the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time. “It’s a great time to be a Bay Area resident.”

Poor Cleveland. If only their sports fans could say the same thing.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

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Twitter: @Mike_Bresnahan

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