Looking ahead to Game 4: Golden State vs. Cleveland
Previously, on ‘Warriors vs. Cavaliers’ …
It took a grounding, of sorts – the removal of all LeBron James’ hoped-for toys – for the Cleveland Cavaliers to reveal Golden State’s blood orange sky. A subpar defensive team during the regular season, one that merely turned into a mediocre defensive team following some midseason personnel upgrades, the Cavs turned the NBA’s highest-scoring regular season team into a shell of itself at the worst possible time. Cleveland is burrowing holes into Golden State’s foundation, and they’ve earned a 2-1 NBA Finals lead.
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No, the Warriors weren’t the best offensive team in the NBA during the regular season, but they weren’t that far behind the top-ranked Los Angeles Clippers, and they certainly hold the potential to drop 122 points on whoever decides to try and stay in front of the squad’s seeming cast of all-around threats.
It’s not always about NBA MVP Stephen Curry and fellow Splash Brother Klay Thompson, you know. Harrison Barnes is revitalized as a James Worthy-styled fill-in-the-blanks guy as a starter this season. Andrew Bogut may not be able to shoot much anymore, but his screen-setting and passing make him a formidable presence on the offensive end. And Draymond Green! The shooting, the slashing, the passing, the effort! Is there anything he can’t do?
That was the ideal, at least, and Cleveland has spent 154 Finals minutes (with LeBron James on the court for right at 142 of them) chipping away at the burnishing that Golden State’s 67-15 regular season record and 12-3 traipse through the Western Conference bracket that GSW’s pre-Finals run provided. Suddenly, Bogut seems pointless on the offensive end. Suddenly, Barnes is playing like your timid cousin that can’t make it through a wedding toast anecdote without giving up on a joke that wasn’t going to be all that funny anyway. Suddenly, Draymond Green almost seems like an offensive zero.
Toss that in with exacting attention tossed Curry and Thompson’s way, and you have a GSW squad that is struggling to score. And the whole point of this operation, still, is to outscore your opponent.
Golden State tied a season-low in Game 3 with just 37 first half points, and its drooped shoulders and half-hearted attention to detail in an 18-point third quarter helped Cleveland build a 22-point lead. The Warriors came back to make a game of it, turning this into a one-point game with just two and a half minutes to go on a Stephen Curry three-pointer, but Cleveland managed to turn the scrum its way and hold onto the lead down the stretch of a goofball fourth quarter.
Whether or not any of this is sustainable, or the product of an odd three-game sample size is anyone’s guess – because we’re still guessing at this point. Cleveland had to completely re-shape its image on the fly due to a series of trades, and then injuries. Golden State, not exactly fat and sassy but hardly in danger for the season’s first seven months, may now have to do the same.
Three Things to Look For in Game 4
LeBron’s Legs
Sound familiar? Sue us if we play too long.
It’s partially due to the heavy minutes, it’s partially due to the heavy usage, and it’s partially due to the lack of other options, but it’s mostly due to his brilliance. LeBron James is averaging an absurd 41 points, 12 rebounds, and 8.3 assists per game in the Finals. These are not normal numbers. What we are seeing is not correct. At some point someone is going to have to pinch me, and either tell me that my own solipsism is leading to some assumption that I am the only one watching this series, or that I’m dreaming some weird rapid eye movement scenario that somehow isn’t featuring me playing point guard for the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls with a still-alive John Lennon cheering from the sideline.
Instead, from all accounts (and I’ve asked around!) LeBron James is actually doing this in real life.
He might be hitting just over 40 percent of his shots in the series, going against his better nature while purposefully gunning away, but his teammates have hit nearly half of the shots they’ve taken off of his passes. This squad has somehow remodeled itself on the fly in his image. Not the vision of the preening superstar, bragging about how many titles he’s about to win alongside a cadre of his well-paid buddies, but the guy that has absatively no choice but to chip out the best possible possession available, even if it means winning a game with a team field goal percentage of 32.9 percent.
Is there a wall, there, guys?
One would presume, after a week like this, but LeBron may have worked himself around this, despite what he’s put into the last five weeks.
If sitting Tim Duncan and Tony Parker in a random game in December matters in June, then how much does sitting a full two weeks in winter matter to a man who has played into the last week of May and beyond in all but two of the last eight seasons? Toss in the eight-day layoff between Cleveland’s sweep of Atlanta and these NBA Finals, and you may have a LeBron James that is suited to average 47.3 minutes per game in the Finals.
While taking 35.7 shots per game.
While acting as the most fearsome defender on the floor.
Game 4 will be LeBron James’ fourth game of basketball in 16 days. He might be able to make it through this, shockingly.
Making Tigers Out of the Helpers
James’ Cavaliers were supposed to be the doofuses, here, overreaching in an attempting to make up for the loss of two All-Stars. Golden State’s heralded depth was supposed to be the tipping point even against a Cleveland Cavalier (or Atlanta Hawk, or Chicago Bull) squad in these Finals, entering the postseason. The Warriors sat two former All-Stars prior to the regular season, adding them to a bench that was already widely respected, while welcoming back a healthy Festus Ezili and Marreese Speights to the equation.
And yet, there we all were watching Game 3, watching James Jones burn a 67-win team, watching Matthew Dellavedova hustle his way into a weird text from your dad about “hustle,” wondering where Golden State went wrong.
GSW has its options. Leandro Barbosa did not play expert basketball in Game 3’s loss, but he also seemed to be the rare Warrior that had his head on a swivel on both ends, while showcasing an aggressive touch in 10 minutes of play. Ezeli was the opposite, tentative and frustrated both defensively and offensively, but he’s proven to be someone who can give the Cavaliers fits. Bogut’s two makes in Game 3 were both from his right hand, which has to be some sort of sign to look out for a meteor shower or an actually blinking turn signal from someone in a Cayenne SUV.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr, somewhat famously, has spent decades preparing for this gig. Not just the chance to push a very good team into acting like a great team, but the opportunity to turn a team’s fortunes around in an instant. In a 48-hour spell. As Lute Olsen did in 1988. As Lenny Wilkens did in 1992 against those Celtics. As Phil Jackson did, without Jordan in 1994 and with MJ in 1998. As Gregg Popovich did in 1999 and 2003. As his seatmate Alvin Gentry did in 2010, during a still-underrated playoff run with Kerr’s old Phoenix Suns.
He has short time to make a threat out of Green, and an All-Star out of David Lee all over again. Unfortunately for Kerr, his list of tasks doesn’t end there.
We were ready to slough off Harrison Barnes as a limited, Calbert Cheaney-type after a miserable second season in 2013-14. We were ready to slough of J.R. Smith as a bit of a joke who could provide merely a bi-monthly 22-point game until he started playing defense and actually moving with purpose without the ball alongside LeBron James. We were ready to commit to Draymond Green as our out-and-out hero until we saw him pass up on wide open three-pointers (or even 13-footers, after two dribbles) prior to watching him, frightened about what his stroke would look like on national TV, drive fruitlessly into the lane.
Confidence is a dangerous, double-edged thing. You mustn’t have too much of it, as it will sometimes act as the dividing wedge between a ridiculous J.R. Smith-styled 26-foot make with a hand in his face, and a wide-open J.R. Smith styled-miss from the corner in the game’s final minutes. The Warriors should have played blameless, thoughtless (that’s a good thing!) basketball while on the road in Game 3, and instead things tightened up. Will the non-LeBron Cavaliers do the same in Game 4?
We don’t know. We’ll never know. These are two teams without precedent, figuring things out along the way. We should be so lucky.
We’re due a blowout, at some point. History wants to prescribe us that sort of designation for either Game 4, or whatever the heck happens after Game 4. These two teams can’t help but stay close to each other, though, and it might be the contributor who is pressing his arch on that fine line between over-exuberance and outright belief that puts Game 4 away for his team.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
