CLEVELAND – With his Cleveland Cavaliers trailing 2-0 in the NBA Finals, LeBron James said Game 3 was a “do-or-die game” for he and his teammates.

James backed up his words, finishing with 32 points, 11 rebounds and six assists – including 13 points in the decisive third quarter – to power the Cavaliers to a 120-90 victory over the Warriors in front of a raucous sellout crowd at Quicken Loans Arena and give Cleveland life in this best-of-seven series.

The Cavaliers never trailed, jumping out to a big lead in the first quarter behind 16 points from Kyrie Irving. And after the Warriors managed to cut what was once a 20-point lead down to eight at halftime, James took over in the third to put the game away.

He scored 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting in the period, nailing a series of midrange jumpers before hammering home an alley-oop to put the nail in Golden State’s coffin.

It wasn’t a coincidence Cleveland’s runs came in the first and third quarters – the two quarters when the Cavaliers primarily had their starting lineup on the floor. With star forward Kevin Love forced to sit out of Game 3 because of a concussion he suffered from an inadvertent elbow from Warriors forward Harrison Barnes in Game 2, Cavaliers Coach Tyronn Lue opted to go with a small starting lineup, using 35-year-old Richard Jefferson in Love’s place.

“Coach had a game plan,” James said, “and we executed it for 48 minutes.”

The moves worked, as Cleveland wound up outscoring Golden State by a combined 29 points in the first and third quarters.

While James and Irving (30 points) were stellar, the Warriors got nothing from two-time MVP Stephen Curry. He finished with 19 points in 31 minutes, but had six turnovers and scored most of those points after the game’s outcome had already been decided.

The Warriors dropped to 2-6 in Game 3’s of playoff series the past two seasons under Coach Steve Kerr – including 0-4 this postseason.

The Cavaliers blitzed the Warriors right from the opening tip, scoring the first nine points and forcing Kerr to call timeout two and a half minutes in to try and get things under control. That didn’t help, either, as Cleveland continued to torch Golden State throughout the opening 12 minutes.

By the time the dust had settled, Cleveland had shot 15 for 21 (71.4 percent) in the quarter, led by 16 points from Kyrie Irving, and had taken a 33-16 lead after one. Not only could Golden State not get anything to fall – going 7 for 20 from the field, 1 for 10 from three-point range and 1 for 4 from the free throw line – but the Warriors also saw Klay Thompson exit the game after taking a knee to the thigh on a screen set by Cavaliers center Timofey Mozgov.

Though Thompson eventually returned to the game in the second quarter, it was emblematic of the disastrous start for both he and Curry. The pair missed their first eight shots before Thompson made a layup upon his return midway through the second.

But once Golden State started the second quarter employing its small lineup – featuring Draymond Green at center – things began to change. Although Cleveland continued to keep knocking down three-pointers, the Warriors took control of the game at both ends, and slowly began reeling the Cavaliers in. Thompson caught fire, scoring 10 points upon his return, and Golden State cut Cleveland’s to 51-43 at halftime.

The assumption after the way Golden State played in the second was the Warriors would begin the second half with their small lineup again. Instead, they went back to their traditional starting lineup, featuring Andrew Bogut at center.

The results looked familiar. Cleveland scored seven straight points to open the third, at one point ballooning its lead to as many as 22 points. After James looked terrified to shoot jumpers in the first half, he knocked down four straight for the Cavaliers midway through the quarter, then put an exclamation mark on his night with an emphatic slam off an alley-oop from Irving after stealing the ball from Curry.

Golden State made a brief push back into the game behind a few buckets from Curry, but the outcome was never seriously in doubt again. After two blowouts in Oakland made it seem like the Warriors could cruise to a second straight championship, James and the Cavaliers turned the NBA Finals into a series again.

Game 4 is Friday in Cleveland and James knows what is required.

“The same effort,” he said. “We have to get the same effort on Friday. We finally started playing our basketball, like the coaching staff wanted us to do, and it resulted in us having a great game.”

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