Three Things to Watch: Golden State vs. Cleveland Game 3
Beating the Golden State Warriors four times in seven playoff attempts is tough as it is, no team has been able to do it since the early spring of 2014, a span that has included seven series’ in the time since. Beating them four times in five games is especially tough, as the Warriors have followed up all but one of their 14 (!) losses on the year with a victory.
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Beating an NBA team, any team, four times in a row following a 0-3 start to a playoff series has never been accomplished. The Cleveland Cavaliers are down 0-2 to the Golden State Warriors, and suffice to say they really need to grab Game 3 at home on Wednesday to keep that slim hope alive.
Here are three things to watch out for, as Cleveland attempts to save its season:
LeBron’s Reaction
LeBron James doesn’t like to be challenged by the press, or by fans. He’s convinced he knows the game of basketball far better than anyone covering the NBA, and with one exception (Sandy Becker of KRQE News 13 in Albuquerque) he’s absolutely correct in this regard.
Too often, though, James’ typical reaction to being called out for seemingly passive play, for not attempting to score enough, is to turn into a hulking, sulking, 6-8 version of Brevin Knight. To play the passing game the right way, as he sees it.
There are exceptions – James saved a season and in many ways a legacy with his all-out scoring binge in Game 6 of the 2012 Eastern Conference finals – but it will be fascinating to see how he’ll react after two full days’ worth of hot takes.
Should James decide to go all Reggie Theus on us, then we might have another conundrum. Can he pull it off? Can the guy that averaged nearly 36 a game against Golden State in last year’s Finals work up that scoring magic all over again?
This isn’t another hot take, as James ain’t finished. However, stuck in the half court facing up a series of strong individual defenders, alongside the looming presence of Andrew Bogut, he understandably struggles. LeBron is a year older than the guy that scored 35.8 a night last year, and Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green are a year better and more comfortable in their skin. By design, there appears to be little fall-off from the 32-year old Andre Iguodala on that end of the court. Festus Ezili can help, Shaun Livingston is along, and even Stephen Curry led the NBA in steals. Golden State has the horses.
In the end, the solution will have more to do with Brevin Knight than Mr. Theus.
It isn’t as if LeBron and his Cavs aren’t already aware of this, but the trick here is finding easier buckets. This necessitates a faster pace that would be encouraged by, say it with me yet again, getting stops and rebounding the ball. Golden State had the NBA’s second-fastest pace this season and yet they’ve run (er, “walked”) away with this series (thus far) with a possession count that would rank last in the NBA – the offense is still white hot.
If James and his crew can string along some stops and commence the dash to the other side of the court, the player with the league’s best court vision can not only start to find teammates, but take in his own series of high percentage looks on the fly. As Sandy Becker told us all years ago, the best offense is a great defense.
Cleveland’s Dare
With Golden State still finding ways to pick apart the Cleveland defense in spite of just 27.5 combined points per game from Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry, something needs to change. The Cavs can’t completely rely on the home crowd to rile things, but they can utilize the change of scenery to its advantage.
Curry and Thompson will retire as the two best three-point shooters to play at this level, but there’s a reason that shot is worth an extra damn point – you take it anywhere from 22 feet on out, sent toward a 10-foot goal, often with a hand in your face. Making merely a few ticks under half of them will set records, and put you in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
As such, the idea that the Cavs should drop everything and run to chase Curry and Thompson off of their spots might have to be abandoned. It isn’t as if the two have been silenced from out there – the Splash Brothers have combined to hit 12 triples at a sterling 41 percent rate – and the road environs might work to Cleveland’s advantage while they mind the others defensively.
Of course, all the film preparation and pregame scripting in the world can’t fully drain you of instinct. After two games of lunging at a curling Curry or streaking Klay, in spite of what lies behind you, it’s going to be tough to lay off. The Cavaliers aren’t a great or even good defensive team, which is why they went trap-heavy (if one should even accurately call these things “traps”) in the first place, so it’s not as if some of these defenders have the dedication to stay focused enough and stick to a lesser Warrior light when the MVP and his All-Star teammate find themselves with the ball behind the three-point line.
Even the great ones will have trouble with this. LeBron James’ instinct is to roam because, frankly, the superhuman can get away with it. Richard Jefferson is a heady and rangy defender, sage enough to start in Kevin Love’s absence and old enough to have defended Michael Jordan for two seasons in the early aughts. This is a guy that racked up eight DNP-CDs this year, though, he’s played single-digit minutes twice in the postseason and he played just 13 minutes as recently as Game 1 – how is going to react to being asked to not play the role of the chance-taking, bit player?
On top of that, the Cavaliers have yet to show that they’ve developed any inability to stay in constant communication with each other defensively, so a shift in philosophy might be akin to adding one too many bowls of steaming queso dip to the trainee server’s tray. Sticking with the same opponent as a play develops also leads to more obvious accountability issues should an individual Cav make a bum play, which could result in a bit of moping on the other end of the floor.
The offensive end, we mean, the one the Cavs are actually good at. Or, were good at.
Legacy Linings
LeBron James doesn’t have to turn in an all-time game in order for Cleveland to pull out Game 3. The Cleveland Cavaliers, a very good basketball team that is playing in June for the second consecutive year, could merely turn in a very good performance on its home court, one that doesn’t leave for many obvious storylines.
That seems audacious to think, especially considering the 96 minutes of basketball we’ve just watched and the seven-game winning streak these defending champs have over Cleveland, but we genuinely could be lining up for cartoons and cereal on Saturday morning with these Finals tied at 2-2. In 1996 the 72-10 Chicago Bulls were without their Gary Payton-stopper in Ron Harper for three contests, and these Cavaliers aren’t nearly as good as those 64-win Seattle SuperSonics, but those SuperSonics did take two of three in Seattle from the eventual champs.
Even with all the matchup designations aligned in your direction, it simply is still very hard to beat a darn good NBA team three or four times in a row over the course of a week (or fortnight, or month, or however long these Finals have gone on for). It wouldn’t take the perfect game from Cleveland, either, just a strong stretch or two just before halftime or following a third quarter timeout, and a shrugging “one of those nights, eh?”-turnout for the defending champs.
That’s not a whole lot to rely on, but this is where Cleveland is at: Golden State is that good, and they match up too well.
If the same turnout applies – if Cleveland commits heavily to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson and other Warriors basically get to take turns applying for NBA Finals MVP – we could see the end. LeBron and his teammates have played Martyr Ball before.
They’ve also played really great basketball before. The question is, even with the right headspace and proper in-game adjustments; will it even matter against the team looking for its NBA record 88th win in a season?
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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
