Three Things to Watch: Golden State vs. Cleveland, Game 7
Sunday night will provide the NBA and its fans with the most important game in league history. It will feature a superstar that could one day retire as the greatest player in league history working against a record-setting squad fighting for its chance to be regarded as the best team in NBA history.
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At no point in NBA Finals lore have the stakes ever been higher. Previous outfits from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Antonio to Los Angeles failed in their attempts to create something as lofty. The heft behind Sunday night’s winner-take-all Game 7 cannot be overstated, though we’ll certainly go down trying.
Here are three things that might stick out, in the game that will decide the NBA’s 2015-16 championship.
The Legend of LeBron
It says far, far too much about how LeBron James’ career has been handled, to date, that his work in Games 5 and 6 has been considered somewhat surprising to some. And that his play during the first four games of the series was looked on as somehow disappointing. Some 15 years after meeting the guy, we’re still getting him all wrong.
Gaps in the typically strung-up Golden State defense and a terribly timed back injury to Andre Iguodala have allowed James to dominate the last two games of this series, prior to his pedestrian 24.7-point, 11-rebound, 8.2-assist start to things between Games 1 through 4. Further clarity has helped limit his turnovers: James has turned it over just three times in the last two ballgames, a ridiculous amount, down from a combined 24 spread out over the initial four games of the Finals.
The pick and roll switching just isn’t helping anymore. James isn’t afraid of the front of the rim with Andrew Bogut gone, Festus Ezili missing assignments and Mo Speights missing games. LeBron just doesn’t consider Anderson Varejao much of a deterrent, for good reason, and Draymond Green’s versatility mattered little during that second half stretch in Game 6 that saw James famously provide a score or assist that led to 35 out of Golden State’s 36 points. The lone missing point, a technical free throw hit by Kyrie Irving, was handed to the Cavaliers after James drew a personal and then technical foul on the imploding Stephen Curry.
Unless James throws up a John Starks-like game for the dreaded ages in Game 7, or Stephen Curry threatens Elgin Baylor’s 61-point Finals game record in a close win, LeBron has the Finals MVP award wrapped up win or lose. James’ 2015 Finals performance, however, will forever act as proof of just how pointless the award is. The 2015 MVP voters didn’t give their checkmarks to Andre Iguodala because they thought the Warriors swingman outplayed LeBron, far from it, that voting was just a reaction to decades of hearing Jerry West understandably lament the embarrassment of being handed the Finals MVP in a losing cause. The voters just didn’t want to be jerks, basically.
That won’t happen this time around should Cleveland fall, as you’d get the feeling that Curry being given an MVP trophy in a sub-standard-yet-winning effort would be just as embarrassing as James taking the hardware should his team fall just short.
The key to LeBron’s Game 7, as is always the case, will be his reaction to the space before him. Though Andre Iguodala remains a fantastic defender, perhaps the league’s best suited to handle LeBron at his best, his relative health genuinely will not matter if James is allowed to see the court as he sees fit. It’s true that James has to match those sightlines with the ability to act within the moment, but he’s proven time and again in the years since his 2011 NBA Finals loss that he is to be trusted in games of this magnitude.
It’s not about his jumper, or about the Warriors going over or under screens. It’s not about Draymond Green’s verticality nor Dre’s aching back nor an October surprise in the form of Brandon Rush taking a pair of charges. This series and this Game 7 were always going to be about LeBron James, and what he decides to do with things.
So far? That’s some “thing.” That’s for certain. This guy is unreal.
The Legacy of the Losers
If the 73-9 Golden State Warriors lose a basketball game on Sunday night, they will rocket past the 1973 Boston Celtics to count themselves as the team with the most regular season victories to fail to achieve a championship. If LeBron’s Cavaliers lose, James will have run his all-time Finals record to 2-5, on a seven-series stage that saw Michael Jordan sweep the floor.
The issue here is that caveats abound, and the better thing here is that we’re all getting smarter about these sorts of hallmarks. Us sportswriters, even.
If Golden State falls, it will have the clear disruption of the Draymond Green suspension for Game 5 and his job in tugging on SuperLeBron’s cape to partially blame. It will have the slow and bratty starts of Games 3 and 6 to rue, with the latter acting as a title-clinching miss, and the former acting as all but short of that. Warrior coach Steve Kerr does have some rotation missteps worth revisiting.
The team also has Stephen Curry’s lingering knee injury – not an excuse, an issue – and the removal of Andrew Bogut’s two-way influence to shake its fists at. It can point to potential future ex-Warrior Harrison Barnes’ cadre of good looks, and how his shot has just about deserted him and his teammates at the absolute worst time. It can bark at Curry’s iffy (for an MVP and NBA steals leader) sixth foul and certainly his phantom fifth foul in Game 5, both committed when the Warriors were in with a chance.
It can also point to being beaten by a formidable opponent that traipsed through the East two seasons running, and looked every bit Golden State’s equal down the stretch of 2014-15 prior to a pair of significant injuries. It can point to LeBron James. It can point, without pointing fingers; even in the wake of what would be a (technical) historical collapse.
Cleveland, in defeat, would have the same option. The Warriors, heading into Game 7, have yet to lose three straight games under coach Kerr. Upon taking that 3-1 series lead the team had won 91 of its last 106 basketball games. NBA games, even. If the Cavaliers take the 2016 title, it would be the first time in 34 years (Pat Riley, Los Angeles) that a rookie head coach led a team to a championship, and the first time in a decade that a midseason replacement coach (Pat Riley, Miami) captained the vessel to gold.
You can roll your eyes at being given a tired “we’re all winners, here!” speech, but it’s the damned truth. This series hasn’t been a classic in terms of nail-biting finishes, and the Warriors were once up by a heretofore insurmountable 3-1 Finals mark, but these two teams have played each other to the hilt in terms of both overall games and (somewhat famously, by this point) 610 total points apiece.
They’ve turned each other into their worst stereotypes. Golden State is now the band that can’t play defense, attempting to come back from deficits by firing wild three-pointer after three-pointer, as Stephen Curry barely drives and certainly doesn’t trust his touch in the paint. The Cavaliers, meanwhile, are the LeBron-only unit that lets Kyrie Irving lead the first half in scoring prior to James taking over on simple screen and roll plays down the stretch. All while Kevin Love gives a thousand-yard stare from a million miles from nowhere.
That, in the absence of a one-possession game with 35 seconds to go, is achievement enough. Someone’s gonna lose, because someone has to. The pain will be worth it, but the penalty for failing just short shouldn’t be shame.
Matchups
The NBA, in its attempts to provide the best nationally-televised product available, created a Finals schedule that stretched the proceedings to 18 full days. The last time the league saw a seven-game series in 2-2-1-1-1 format was in 1984, when the victorious Boston Celtics topped the Los Angeles Lakers in a Finals that spread out over 16 days.
This isn’t unprecedented, and you’ll get no complaints from this side regarding NBA basketball being featured on June 19, but it is fair to wonder just how the schedule has helped and/or harmed either side. Warriors coach Steve Kerr has already complained about losing rhythm – that same rhythm that helped GSW spring back from a frenzied seven-game Western Conference final to take the first two games of this series by a combined 48 points – with his team playing every third day instead of every two.
Then there is the possible aid to Big LeBron, the guy that has famously played more minutes than Bird and Magic by age 31, the guy that is two years removed from cramping up during the league’s championship stage, the guy that plays deep into June every damn year. The man’s had two full days off between the games that saw him average 41 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists, 3.5 steals and three blocks a contest. He’ll have had two nights off prior to Game 7 as well.
Same with Steph, and his boys; though it’s obvious that they prefer riddum’ to rest lest their rhythm rust in this postseason. Now they’ll spark up a Game 7 at home, which is always fun, but a 5 PM local start isn’t the ideal setting for these creatures of habit – these reasons you stayed up watching League Pass well past your bedtime for all those chilly months.
These aren’t excuses nor favors, just quirks along the way as these two franchises line up for their 13th playoff meeting in 12 months. Even with Cleveland working and eventually losing with a skinflint roster last season, is it fair to say either side has the other sussed out?
Kevin Love will likely start for Cleveland, as he probably should, but his inability to contribute meaningful minutes shouldn’t be viewed as an absence of character – his game is just outmoded against a team like Golden State. The fact that the Warriors had the best record in the NBA isn’t the reason Love has been left behind, it’s not as if he can’t contribute against great teams, it’s the spacing and lineup issues that make him a bit of an afterthought. It would be the same way against a 37-win team trying to ape Golden State’s style. Such is life as a big forward in a swingman’s game.
Stephen Curry, meanwhile, just cannot seem to (literally) turn the corner against these Cavaliers. As is the case with his own (likely) starting center in Draymond Green, Cleveland’s Tristan Thompson is only a few inches taller and about as lithe as most shooting guards, so it’s understandable that Curry (again, working on a recovering sprained ligament), can’t wheel around Thompson in the same way he could against Nikola Vucevic or Nene or even Anthony Davis during the regular season.
The Cavaliers are begging Draymond Green to line up from behind the arc, and his irrational confidence tends to abandon him for stretches. Golden State has made sure Channing Frye, an Eastern killer for long stretches in April and May, has rolled his way to oblivion. Nobody is calling for three-pointers out of a timeout for Mo Speights, and nobody would dare (as some did) to ask that Cleveland start defensive-minded point guard Matthew Dellavedova on Curry – as Delly has lost his damn offensive mind.
There is a very real chance that an entire season, something that basically began 50 weeks ago, will come down to what we always assumed.
To Kyrie Irving’s footwork in the pick and roll defense. To Steve Kerr’s ability to offer counters away from the ball when Cleveland’s lone rim technical “big man” is chasing a whippet-thin MVP 25 feet from the hoop. To J.R. Smith’s ability to bring that brave, feel no pain-confidence from Cleveland into California. To Harrison Barnes’ ability to prove that he is more “max contract” than “Derrick McKey.” To Klay Thompson’s hope to remain stout on either end while sipping from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of whatever.
To LeBron James surveying things, in his 199th career playoff game, dominating as he sees fit. To Stephen Curry trusting the legs and knees and ankles that got him here, and protecting the home court that the league knew Golden State had earned even before Christmas.
Nothing, in this league, has ever been bigger than this.
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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
