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OAKLAND – Even with a sore jaw and perhaps a little bit of bruised psyche, LeBron James didn’t mince words.

“They put it on us … they put it on us real good,” said the Cleveland Cavaliers’ star after the Warriors hammered the NBA champions 126-91 at Oracle Arena Monday. “They played a hell of a game, and they were clicking in all facets of the game.”

Like the entire Cavs’ team, LeBron had a rough day – 6 for 18 shooting en route to 20 points, but he committed six turnovers, logged just two assists, had his shot blocked three times and was even called for a rare traveling.

Then there was the clothesline hit he took from Warriors forward Draymond Green in the second quarter that knocked him flat to the court and left him a but woozy while Green mocked his embellishments from the collision.

James maintained he was unfazed by it, and expressed no verbal malice toward Green afterward, even though the collision drew a flagrant-1 foul call.

“His shoulder hit me in the face,” he said. “It happened so fast I didn’t even know who it was. But I’m all right. I’m a football player.”

Like Cleveland’s football team, the Cavs quickly fell behind 7-0 and it only got worse from there. The Warriors raced out a 15-point lead at the end of the first quarter and a 29-point advantage by the end of the second, 78-49. It stood as the worst halftime deficit James had ever personally faced in his NBA career.

James said it shouldn’t have been that surprising considering how easily the Cavs let the Warriors get out and run. He bemoaned the fact that the Warriors piled up 37 transition points in the first two periods alone and said that every turnover was like throwing Golden State a “pick-six.”

The Cavs also couldn’t bottle up Stephen Curry, whom they limited to 13 points in the two teams’ last meeting on Christmas Day and also relentlessly badgered on the back end of last year’s NBA Finals.

“I thought tonight he just ran around too free,” said Cavs coach Tyronn Lue of Curry, who scored 20 points and dished 11 assists. “He was free and coming off screens. No one was there by him. That’s not the way we want to play him.”

James said there wasn’t necessarily a breakdown on Curry. It was more a case of the Warriors guard upping his game from the last time around.

“What was different? He’s a two-time MVP,” James said. “You don’t expect anything less of him. He put himself in a position to be successful. He had nine first-quarter assists, which then allowed him to get off because you’re keying in on other guys. But it’s no secret. He’s capable of doing that every night.

“He was making shots, simple as that,” said Curry’s point counterpart Kyrie Irving. “In transition, off pick-and-rolls, doing what he does. That’s what makes him a great player.”

The pasting by the Warriors ended a patchy 3-3 road trip over the course of 12 days in which the Cavs tried to integrate freshly acquired sharpshooter Kyle Korver and also dealt with myriad minor injuries, the latest a case of back stiffness that forced forward Kevin Love out of the game after 16 first-half minutes in which he was just 1 for 6 and scored three points.

Lue said the Warriors like a team possessed in this latest confrontation between two teams that have met in the NBA Fiuals back-to-back years with a decent chance of meeting once again this season.

“I didn’t expect it like this,” Lue said. “They played well. Give them credit. That’s what champions do. They had lost four in a row (to us), five out of six. They played like a team with its back against the wall.”

That said, the Cavaliers’ two main stars, James and Irving, continued to dismiss Cleveland-Golden State as a rivalry.

“I don’t think it’s a rivalry,” said James. “I think it’s two great teams that have aspirations. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a rivalry in the NBA. Too many guys move, it’s totally different from the ‘80s, when obviously we saw the Celtics and Lakers go at it so much. I don’t look at it as a rivalry.”

Added Irving, “I think you have to give it a few more years to call it a rivalry. Hopefully our two teams can stick together and we can call it a rivalry over the course of a few years but both teams have changed so much in the three-year span we’ve been playing each other. If we meet in Finals again, great. We’ll leave it out on the floor and move on.”