CLEVELAND, Ohio -- If LeBron James' free agency is a purely basketball decision, it will boil down to one question and one question only.

Where would he have the best chance to beat the Warriors?

"Now everyone is trying to figure that out," James said Thursday. "How do you put together a group of talent but also a group of minds to be able to compete with Golden State, to be able to compete for a championship?"

The Cavs trail the Warriors 3-0 in the Finals for the second consecutive year, and they could be swept via Game 4 Friday.

What was the tightest of Finals matchups -- Golden State beat the Cavs seven times to Cleveland's six wins over the 2015 and 2016 Finals, with one trophy for each -- has turned into a laugher since Kevin Durant joined the Warriors.

Going to a place where he could win is why, James said on Thursday, he left the Cavs as a free agent in the summer of 2010, because "I knew that my talent level here in Cleveland couldn't succeed getting past a Boston, getting past the San Antonios."

The Heat won two titles and went to four straight Finals, but James came home and joined Kyrie Irving and pushed for a trade for Kevin Love. The Cavs had enough to win a championship, obviously, because that's what happened in 2016.

Then Durant arrived. And now they don't, or so one might deduce. They lost in five games with Irving on their side in 2017, and now Irving's gone. Cleveland's staring down the barrel of a sweep. "We've had an opportunity to win two of these games in this three-game series so far, and we haven't come up with it," James said.

That was his response when asked the golden question, the only question that matters if James' upcoming free agency is only about basketball. Do the Cavs have enough (or, allowing room for a follow up, can they have enough to catch the Warriors?)?

Count James' Thursday session with the media as an early exercise in reading tea leaves until he actually decides what to do in July.

"Obviously, from a talent perspective, if you're looking at Golden State from their top five best players to our top five players, you would say they're stacked better than us," James said, as we ran down the obvious -- Durant joining a team that already had Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green made the Warriors better than, well, anyone.

"We have a lot of talent as well," James continued. "We've been in a position where we could win two out of these three games.

"So what do we have to do? Do we have to make more shots? Is it we have to have our minds into it a little bit more? Is it if there is a ball on the ground we can't reach for it but you've got to dive for it?"

The Cavs should have won Game 1. Referees did them no favors with their questionable video review of a block/charge play involving James and Durant that was changed to a defensive foul on James. George Hill missed a free throw with 4.7 seconds left and JR Smith dribbled out the clock after the rebound rather than attempt a game-winning shot.

When it was James and Irving threading the needle with epic performances in Games 5-7 to lead the Cavs back from a 3-1 deficit in 2016, there were no such mistakes.

In the last two Games 3s in the Finals, Kyle Korver has missed wide-open 3s, Durant burned them with 3s at critical junctures, and the Cavs suffered lapses (like the third quarter on Wednesday) they couldn't afford. They led by 13 on Wednesday.

James is averaging 37.7 points, 9.0 rebounds and 10.7 wins in this series, and has no wins to show for it. He's put together a postseason for the ages and enjoyed arguably the best regular season of his career, at age 33. He knows any team he's on can get to a Finals, or, if he's out West, will go until they meet the Warriors in the playoffs. But where, if anywhere, will there be enough talent, enough basketball "minds" as he kept saying Thursday, to beat the Durant-led juggernaut?

There isn't an answer for that right now. He'll spend June and the first part of July trying to figure it out. In the meantime, James said "every player does not want to -- sad to say, but every player doesn't want to compete for a championship and be in a position where every possession is pressure."

It's hard to say if that was a veiled shot at Irving, for asking to be traded away from James and the Finals-bound Cavs, if he was offering commentary on current teammates, or perhaps speaking generally about conversations he's had with players he'd potentially partner with in the future.

James also, for the first time, acknowledged that he's thought about what his best friend and three-time champion Dwyane Wade might've meant to the Cavs in the playoffs.

Wade was traded to the Heat on Feb. 8 for a future, conditional second rounder. James didn't condemn the trade at all when it happened.

"Not only from a brotherhood aspect and what we know about one another, and also from an experience factor," James said. "I believe that he would have been very, very good for us in the postseason. He's a guy that's kind of built for the postseason at this point in his career, who lives for the moment.

"So definitely, definitely think about that. It seems so long ago that he was even a part of this ballclub, but definitely think about it from time to time."