This wasn’t supposed to happen. Even before Kyrie Irving shattered his knee cap, Cleveland weren’t expected to put up much of a fight. Yet amazingly, after the first two games in Oakland, they’re only an Iman Shumpert rim-out shot at the buzzer away from being 2-nil up.
Although the first two games were wildly entertaining, that’s been largely down to the Warriors rallying late and forcing overtime in both games.
Game 2, in particular, was a mess. That third quarter was one of the worst exhibitions of basketball – if you can call it that – I’ve ever seen.
But that’s the only way the Cavs can beat these Warriors, by bringing the game and the Golden State offence to a virtual halt.
That, plus LeBron James going beast mode and Matthew Dellavedova hustling his arse off.
For the most part though, for the Cavs to become 2015 Champions they must suck the life completely out of the game. And that’s exactly what they’ve done so far in this series.
Forget the Grizzlies being the kings of grit ‘n’ grind, the Cavs are now the new leaders in that category.
They’ve managed to slow the game down to a snail-like pace, evoking memories of the NBA in the early 2000s, and in the process turned a once fearsome juggernaut of an offence into a fumbling, blubbering mess – cue Mareese Speight’s missed dunk attempt.
In the second half of Game 2, the Warriors’ offence was almost unrecognisable to the one that blew everyone away all season. Where were the pick and rolls, and the ball movement that made this team so fun to watch?
Yes, the Cavs are playing the Steph Curry pick and roll perfectly, by basically trapping him, but that leaves the screener open every time. Early in Game 2, Draymond Green had numerous forays towards the rim out of the pick n roll, but wasn’t able to make the Cavs pay. He fluffed a couple of easy lobs to Andrew Bogut, which are plays he normal makes.
The Cavs aren’t reinventing the wheel here, it’s a defence the Warriors have seen before, even though Dellavedova is executing it to near perfection. He’s been unbelievable at fighting through screens and staying attached to Curry’s hip.
But even so, Golden State still had plenty of open looks, they just weren’t able to bury them. Their shot has gone colder than a Siberian winter. Curry even missed a left-corner three, a shot he’s been hitting at over 90 per cent this postseason.
Don’t throw away your Curry jerseys just yet though, there’s no way Steph’s shooting slump continues, even with Dellavedova’s stout defence. The law of averages say so – he’s a career 44 per cent three-point shooter!
Realistically, even with the Warriors playing so poorly on offence, they don’t need to improve by that much to win the next three games.
With the Cavs playing such a LeBron iso-heavy offence, their margin for error is extremely small. All it takes is for LeBron to be one notch below super-human level and Cleveland are toast.
Also if Golden State really want to speed the game up, they could try double teaming and trapping LeBron on every possession, forcing the ball out of his hands. This would create open looks for the other Cavs shooters but could come at the expense of turnovers.
Soon enough Draymond will start making plays, Harrison Barnes will hit the open three, and Mareese Speights will learn how to dunk again and all will be restored.
The Warriors will eventually figure it out – for the sake of all basketball lovers they have to!
We can’t have this beautiful Warriors offence outplayed by iso-ball. We’ve only just dug ourselves out of the doldrums that Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis created, please for the love of Jerry West don’t take us back there.
Charles Barkley can’t be vindicated for his ramblings on how jump-shooting teams suck and how analytics have ruined the game.
It can’t happen.
We’ve come so far, there’s no turning back now.
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