Last year there were plenty of excuses out there for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Kyrie Irving broke his knee cap, and Kevin Love was out of action. They also couldn’t have possibly seen the Warriors coming, as the San Antonio Spurs remained the Western Conference favorites for almost all of last year’s campaign. Nobody expected Golden State to turn in to some sort of juggernaut.
There’s none of that this year. Sure, the Golden State Warriors morphed in to the best team in NBA history somewhere along the way, but it’s not like Cleveland couldn’t have spent the entire season preparing for them anyways. The Cavs knew in their hearts that they were coming out of the Eastern Conference and that they’d face an immense challenge.
I don’t buy the notion that a team that emerges from the grueling gauntlet in the Western Conference playoffs has been forged by fire. Not in this situation. Cleveland only lost two games as they crushed the Pistons, Hawks and Raptors in succession but along the way there has to be some sort of idea that they were going to spend those 12 to 15 games grinding themselves in to an impossible sword.
Isn’t that the whole point of the season?
The main problem for the Cleveland Cavaliers isn’t that the Golden State Warriors are better than them. They are woefully and dreadfully unprepared for this series.
The lack of pacing has been alarming. Watch any Cavaliers possession and you don’t see them moving the ball with any type of purpose. A pass comes in, the player stands there with the ball, maybe dribbles it once or twice and when nothing emerges, they just move the ball along or take a terrible shot. It’s like they have five James Hardens on the court.
LeBron has spent the last three or four seasons chasing two teams specifically: the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors. Each of those teams has different strengths, but they play a very similar version of The Beautiful Game. You know the drill by now – lots of ball movement, intelligent lineup variations and useful depth. The discernable difference is that the Spurs prefer to attack the basketball underneath, while Golden State hits shoots from a longer range (and they’re much younger).
I’ve already addressed that Cleveland lacks any precision in their ball movement, which is fine. You can get away with a few ball hogs if they’re coming up with big shots. But the fact is that Cleveland has wasted their entire bench on players that don’t add anything. Why are they employing James Jones, Dahntay Jones and Mo Williams if they’re not going to use them? Why are you going to freak out when you lose Kevin Love in the second quarter to a concussion, when you went out and dumped a franchise favorite like Anderson Varejao for Channing Frye? Why did you bother giving Matthew Dellavedova a contract extension when it was obvious that he couldn’t hang with the Warriors last year?
You can very much make arguments that the Cleveland Cavaliers are merely outclassed, but at the top level of the sport everything comes down to preparation and coaching. Do you know how I know that? Because of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Thunder were basically an afterthought in the championships conversation, and that was fairly justified heading in to the post season. But Donavan and the team reacted to what was in front of them to perfection. They went to an extremely tight rotation, created an environment where Westbrook and Durant could be the focal point and then installed role players to counter effectively in other areas. Enes Kanter was used brilliantly against San Antonio, but then benched against Golden State in favor of Andre Roberson.
It’s like Cleveland didn’t make any of the same type of considerations. What’s their best lineup? How are they going to use those players effectively? How do we get Channing Frye, J.R. Smith and Kevin Love open to hit enough threes so we can stay in the game? Should we use Irving as a driving force who gets to the rim at will against whoever’s guarding him? How did none of this process through Tyronne Lue’s skull, or even LeBron’s?
The ball movement for Cleveland kills me. Oklahoma City did a great job of rotating the ball on to the player Curry was defending, and either Steve Kerr has figured out a way to perfectly hide his MVP on defense, or the Cavs just didn’t bother watching what Oklahoma City did.
There’s no way you that you can hope that Cleveland plays the same type of defence that Oklahoma City does because they don’t have guys like Serge Ibaka and Steven Adams who can live out on the edges. But generating offense should be second nature to these guys, especially by now.
Defending Golden State has much more to do with your offense than it does with your defence. You’re not going to hold these guys down forever. They’re too confident, with too many weapons. But you can counter their world beating offence with one of your own.
It’s not like Cleveland doesn’t have weapons. It’s like they’re holding their guns upside down or something. Tyronne Lue looks completely outmatched. He’s done a piss poor job of getting his team ready, and you can’t blame their opposition in the Eastern Conference. There’s lots of little things Cleveland should have been doing during those series to mould themselves for an eventual battle with the defending champions or someone like them.
And the reason I say this is because LeBron has always had them in mind. He’s known from Day 1 that this is the team to beat, and for whatever reason, the Cavaliers don’t have mental fortitude to survive a half on the court with the Warriors.
Golden State is instead serving up a perfect case for why Steve Kerr deserved to be Coach of the Year despite having only been around for half the season. He’s addressed every single team need, ensured that his rotation can run 10-men deep and built game plans for every single contributor. You can tell that the Warriors adjust to the way they play depending on who’s on the floor. That’s the reason they flow so seamlessly from one grouping to another.
There are times when J.R. Smith looks completely lost. Tristan Thompson doesn’t look like he knows who he is defending. Everyone’s getting swatted at the rim by Andrew Bogut because nobody’s boxing him out or pulling him away from the rim.
You can absolutely blame LeBron James for big parts of this. The fact that guys like James Jones are wasting valuable roster space when you need as many able bodies as possible is pathetic. I don’t care how much of a glue guy he is. Hire him as an assistant coach then.
Whether he admits to it or not, he played a large role in Tristan Thompson getting a max deal from the Cavaliers and he brings nothing to the table offensively. You realize that he’s never averaged double-digits in a single month during this season, right?
Putting your players in a position to succeed is Rule #1 in coaching for all sports. Those of you that read my football stuff know that I’m big on “adapt or die.” Maximize what you have instead of pretending something you aren’t. It’s how you claim an identity. You can’t just chase the shadows of your opponent and hope to become a champion. That’s not how it’s done.
Game 3 of the NBA Finals tips off on Wednesday night and it’s inexplicably a pick ‘em. That’s ridiculous. Golden State is 7-0 SU and 6-1 ATS in their last 7 games against the Cavaliers. I understand what the concern for the oddsmakers is in terms of public money versus smart money, but that’s ridiculous. It’s like they’re not seeing what everyone else is.
If Cleveland had properly prepared for Golden State instead we might be talking about a real giant killer here. Instead we’re subjugated to watching one of the most lopsided NBA Finals since Spurs-Cavaliers in 2007. If anyone is betting on Cleveland at this point, then you deserve to lose your money.
Just like LeBron James deserves to lose this series.
