Three Things to Watch For: Golden State vs. Cleveland Game 4
So much for the sweep. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ resounding 120-90 victory over the Golden State Warriors in Game 3 of the NBA Finals breathed new life into a series that had looked very one-sided through two games in Oakland. Friday’s Game 4 now carries great meaning for both teams — the Cavs can tie the series at 2-2 and the Warriors can put themselves in a position to clinch back-to-back titles at home in Monday’s Game 5.
It’s difficult to know which team will come out on top Friday night. Recent history would suggest that the Warriors have the better of the matchup, but the Cavs were clearly the better team on Wednesday and could carry the significant strides they took in that victory into the rest of the series. Predicting any one game is a near-impossible task in most cases, but this time it feels especially so.
What does seem clear, though, is the matchups that the series will hinge on. Three games have set the terms of engagement and revealed several trends. Although this list is by no means comprehensive, the outcome of Game 4 could very well depend on these three aspects of the contest:
Cleveland’s Early Effort
The Cavaliers were the more intense and focused team in Game 3, which makes sense considering that the stakes were so much higher for them than they were for the Warriors. Nevertheless, it was a welcome sign from a group that had looked so unprepared to face Golden State on the road. Cleveland locked in at the defensive end, got the required improvements offensively from Kyrie Irving and J.R. Smith, and generally looked like a team that wanted to be in the NBA Finals for the first time all series.
At the same time, it’s not clear that they made any series-shifting tactical shifts. Yes, the Cavaliers switched fewer screens with Kevin Love unavailable and were able to tailor more matchups to their liking with Richard Jefferson and LeBron James as forwards. For the most part, though, the biggest difference between this win and Games 1 and 2 was the masterful adjustment of “playing better.” It sounds simple, but that’s often the difference between getting embarrassed and embarrassing the opposition.
That simplicity is both good and bad news for the Cavs. On one hand, they won’t have to match some otherworldy level of execution and can stay confident in their very high level of talent. On the other hand, the Warriors didn’t suddenly lose the matchup advantages that helped them to win seven straight over Cleveland before Wednesday. The Cavaliers are likely going to have to tie this series up in the same way they won Game 3 — by getting big early production from their stars, feeding off the intensity of the crowd, and forcing the Warriors into mistakes. That’s not an impossible task by any means, but they won’t be able to depend on any clear tactical advantage — like, say, the Warriors have with their Death Lineup — to do it.
The question, then, is how they can put themselves in the best position to recreate that Game 3 effort. If Love comes off the bench as early reports indicate, then Cleveland should be able to come out with the same energy. Irving and Smith will have to make shots, Jefferson will need to fight off fatigue after taking on more of a workload than was expected of him heading into the series, and Love will have to slot back into the rotation without disrupting the defensive mojo that frustrated the Warriors so thoroughly in the Cavs’ first and third quarter periods of dominance. (It’d also help if Steve Kerr does not go small and play Draymond Green primarily at center.)
That’s a lot of variables that have to go Cleveland’s way. If any do not, or Golden State returns to the form that carried them to their two series-opening wins, then it could be another rough night for the Cavaliers.
The Star Golden State Really Needs
Much has been made of the struggles of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in this series, and they are considerable. While both were just fine in the Game 2 blowout win, something is off when neither player has scored 20 points in three straight games for the first time since February 2014. The Warriors are obviously a far more dangerous team when the Splash Brothers play at a high level, and it would be fair to expect more of them over the rest of this series.
However, it seems fairly apparent at this point that Draymond Green is the most important Warriors All-Star in the matchup with the Cavs. Green teamed with Andre Iguodala to change the course of last June’s series and served as the Finals MVP frontrunner after the Warriors’ first two wins this year even if you don’t take into account his 30 points in Game 2, establishing himself as a nightmare matchup for Cleveland. While virtually every Warrior was terrible in Game 3, it’s perhaps not a coincidence that Green finished with six points on 2-of-8 from the field, seven assists, seven rebounds, and a starter-best minus-15 in 36 minutes. Green was very bad, to be sure, but the mere fact that he was able to put up some meaningful stats suggests that the advantages he holds over the Cavs don’t go away when he struggles.
As our Dan Devine wrote on Thursday, Green is especially effective vs. Cleveland when he plays as a center in the Warriors’ small lineups (Death, Coma, Light-to-No Coma, etc.), although Kerr does not yet seem inclined to play him in that spot for 30-plus minutes just yet. That’s understandable, and not just because the Warriors have won 87 games without forcing Green to exert himself so much. As Golden State showed in Oakland, they’re perfectly capable of beating Cleveland with Green getting plenty of minutes as a forward.
Perhaps the key is merely to enter Game 4 with a different mindset, not a fresh lineup. In describing his and the team’s struggles in Game 3, Green focused more on approach than who played:
I don’t know. If I had an answer, it wouldn’t happen. But I think we were extremely soft. We got bullied, punked, and any other word that you can find for it. That’s pretty much what it was, and that’s why the game went the way it went.
It’s probably not as simple as coming into the game with new focus, but it should help. Green showed in the Western Conference Finals that he can use a mental refresh to improve his play, and it’s fair to guess that he can do the same here. That task could become more difficult if LeBron James continues to see more minutes as his primary defender, but a simultaneous jump in scoring from either Curry or Thompson could force the Cavs to pick their poison. Whoever takes him on, Green should be the bellwether for the Warriors on Friday.
LeBron’s Shooting Stroke
LeBron James has at times been good at every single task a player must undertake on a basketball court, but that’s not exactly true of his current self. This season’s LeBron has struggled from the outside, taking and making relatively few jumpers. That approach has resulted in some interesting stats — his current dunk rate is pretty much unprecedented for a forward — but it also means that the Cavaliers are relatively easy to defend when others’ jump shots aren’t going down. It’s no great surprise that the Warriors defense dominated Games 1 and 2 by going under every screen from James. They had no reason to play his jumper and shut off every other lane because of it.
That defensive plan might have to change if James continues the shooting form he found in Game 3. As the shot chart shows, LeBron went 4-of-5 on shots from the mid-range or from deep, a small sample size that nevertheless suggests he can make these shots when called upon:
It’s very unlikely that LeBron will make 80 percent of these looks for the rest of the series, but even the threat of these shots could change the way the Warriors have to defend the Cavs. If LeBron keeps making jumpers, it’ll be much more difficult to go under screens and potentially free up more driving and passing lanes for one of the best facilitators of his generation. There is no good way to defend LeBron in this scenario, which would give the Cavaliers a clear tactical advantage to counter the several that belong to the Warriors.
In other words, it’d be a legitimate series-changing development. The Warriors would be forced out of their comfort zone and likely need to depend on the Splash Brothers in a manner similar to that of their comeback over the Oklahoma City Thunder, an event that may not be reproducible. The Cavaliers wouldn’t only get back in this series — they’d arguably have the upper hand.
– – – – – – –
Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
