How the Cavaliers can beat the Warriors
The Warriors are the heavy favorites these NBA Finals, but here’s how Cleveland can win.
The Golden State Warriors have overcome everything this season has put in front them during their run to the NBA Finals. The Warriors are the heavy favorites to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, and deservedly so.
Don't count Cleveland out just yet, though. During the final 41 games, the Cavs had a better net rating than Golden State and coasted by a 60-win team in just four games (although admittedly, the Hawks weren't playing like one). Kevin Love is a huge loss, but the Cavaliers keep finding ways to move past that.
The Cavaliers can absolutely beat Golden State. Here’s how.
Cleveland guards play smart, reactionary defense:
The best, most recent example to explain how to slow down Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson is the Western Conference semifinals. In the first three games of the series, where Memphis went up 2-1, the Warriors' starting backcourt was limited to 44 percent shooting from the floor, 30 percent from behind the arc and 23 turnovers.
It fell apart when Tony Allen was hurt for the final two games, but the Cavaliers should look to duplicate the Grizzlies' early success. Like Memphis, Cleveland has two strong perimeter defenders in Iman Shumpert and LeBron James, which is a good start. When playing the Warriors, though, it's about much more than individual defense. Look at how fluidly the guards and bigs work together to hedge Curry, cut off his lane to the paint, switch defenders and then work through congestion to contest Thompson's shot.
In a single possession against the Warriors, a defender may have to deal with a back pick on one side of the court, a baseline screen as he follows to the opposite wing and a pick and roll as soon as his man catches the ball. Sometimes, Shumpert or James will be able to navigate all of those cleanly, but the Cleveland guards have to quickly recognize when they need to switch and the bigs need to help hedge with the same flawless decision making. Mess up against an average NBA team and they might not capitalize. Mess up against the Warriors, though, and it’s a cross-court pass to an open three-point shooter.
Against Golden State, it isn’t enough to play physical or aggressive -- you have to react quickly and you absolutely have to play smart. Everyone in Cleveland will have to do this.
LeBron has to force the Warriors to double him:
Golden State will likely go into this series determined not to double team the NBA's greatest player. They've watched the tape on the Hawks, who constantly threw double teams at LeBron James and were decimated by his passing. It was a carnage of post passing, open corner three-pointers and precise cuts to the basket. The Warriors, with Defensive Player of the Year runner-up Draymond Green, will do all they can to stifle James in one-on-one situations with limited, pinpointed help. They don't want to repeat the mistakes the Hawks did.
That’s all fine and good, but when James single-handedly breaks your strategy by scoring 10 points in two minutes, what do you do then?
To be sure, James and his jump shot have had a falling out, and thus far it doesn’t look like a quick makeup session can solve it. This slump is one of James’ worst ever, shooting just 12-of-68 (18 percent) from behind the arc for the entirety of the postseason -- and he’s still averaging 28 points through 14 games so far, of course.
But this is James, who has only lost two playoff series in his last 19 tries. He’s been one of the NBA’s best scorers since he was 18 years old and is prone to volatile periods of basket-making that is next to impossible to stop. Golden State has the NBA’s top defense and yet nobody would put it past James to score 50 points with relative ease. If he gets into one of those grooves, where a couple of bully moves to earn layups in the paint turns into a wild pull-up three-pointer that doesn’t even touch the net, can Warriors coach Steve Kerr survive with just a timeout, or will he have to break his strategy?
James will tear your defense apart if you double-team him in a pattern he can figure out. He can do the exact same thing if you play him one-on-one. James missed one of the regular season matchups against the Warriors during his two-week sabbatical (vacation), but during the second game in late February, he lit Golden State up for 42 points and the Cavaliers won 110-99. On the final possession of that game, after James had killed the Warriors all night, guess what they did?
They doubled. When he’s playing like that, what choice do you have?
Irving has a Boston-like series:
Because they anticipated at least one of the series in the Conference Finals to last longer, the NBA announced Game 1 of the Finals to start June 4. Instead, after both teams quickly wrapped up against their opponents, they now have more than a week to recuperate for one more grueling series.
The rest benefits Kyrie Irving, who missed two games against the Hawks with knee tendinitis. After starting the postseason on fire, his scoring has dipped to 19 points per game from his regular season average of 22, despite the fact that he's playing more minutes. More concerning, he looked tentative and cautious against the Bulls in the semifinals.
Irving needs to get back to where he was against Boston, a series in which he scored 23 points on 43 percent shooting while knocking down 12-of-25 behind the three-point line. That’s the Irving that has to combine with LeBron to be the best duo ever in the upcoming game. The Warriors are deeper than Cleveland, with better secondary scoring options and shutdown defenders than anyone else filling out the Cavaliers’ lineup. If Curry and Thompson outgun James and Irving, there’s no chance the rest of the team can overcome that gap.
But with the time off, Irving should be back to his normal self, something we didn’t see the last two rounds of the playoffs.
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