Warriors guard against complacency
NBA FINALS: Despite 2-0 series edge, veteran players remember blowing 3-1 lead to Cavs last year
CLEVELAND — Scattered across North America and some as far away as Lithuania and Brazil, there are a number of Toronto Raptors shaking their heads knowingly.
The feeling the Cleveland Cavaliers are experiencing right now, the feeling of almost helplessness to turn the tide of an NBA Finals series that has started so poorly for them is likely very close to what the Raptors were themselves thinking two games into their Eastern Conference semifinal against the Cavs.
The Raptors had no answer for LeBron James and Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving the same way those same Cavs, at least for the moment, seemingly have no answer for Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors.
And that’s with James playing at the same elite level he was playing at when he and the Cavs made short work of Toronto in that forgettable series which went the minimum four games.
Durant and Curry in particular are just playing at a level the Cavs can’t reach. James and Love and Irving were on the other side of that equation against Toronto and with one small blip with James reportedly fighting a flu bug had the same dominance against Boston a round later. And now the tables have turned. The Cavs shot themselves in the foot in Game 1 turning the ball over and somehow mistakenly leaving the lane to the hoop wide open time and again for Durant before they rectified things.
In Game 2, the Cavs were able to cut off Durant’s drives to the rim. And the turnover battle was in their favour. James, who was merely good in Game 1, was very good in Game 2.
The Cavs went into Sunday’s game wanting to speed up the game and they did. The Cavs wanted to be more physical and they were.
And yet, the Warriors ran away with it, 132-113.
“What now?” the pundits ask. What do you do when you’ve already identified and overcome your shortcomings from one game to the next and still you finish 19 points behind your opponent.
It’s not an enviable position to be in, not even going home for Games 3 and 4 Wednesday and Friday respectively where the Cavs have been so strong all year long.
Ask any professional athlete about the approach to any playoff series and you’ll get the standard answer. Take each game, each play, as it comes. Whatever has happened does not determine what will happen.
And for the most part, that is true. Only this time it doesn’t feel like it.
This time it feels like the die has been cast. The Warriors are just flat out better. They have more weapons, they are more motivated, they are hungrier.
Injury could swing the balance but outside of that? Even complacency, despite the way the Warriors manhandled the Cavs through two games out west, seems unlikely given the recent history of the Warriors.
It was only a year ago that Golden State and Cleveland were in this exact position. Heading back to Cleveland with the Warriors up 2-0, the Warriors dropped Game 3 but rebounded to take a 3-1 lead heading home. But it was Cleveland jumping on the rather broad shoulders of James sweeping the next three games to an improbable Finals win.
The Warriors have not forgotten this. Hell, they were talking about it openly after their Game 2 win when Shaun Livingston was asked what the team needed to guard against.
“Complacency,” he said. “It’s easy to let your guard down. It’s human nature. Up 2-0, everybody in the world is saying, ‘It’s over. It’s over.’ No, it’s not over. We saw what happened last year. We’ve been here. The guys that were here last year understand that it’s the hardest thing to do is to close out a series.”
James was almost super-human in bringing the Cavs back a year ago. But he’s been super human in this series and it has not moved the needle in the Cavs direction near enough.
Defensively the only easy baskets — and we use easy as a relative term here — the Cavs are getting are when James bullies his way past the first line of defence to the rim.
Those are the Cavs easy baskets and they’re only easy because James makes them look that way with his freakish combination of size, strength and skill.
The three-point game which was such a staple of the Cavs’ wins earlier in these playoffs has dried up because J.R. Smith, Kyle Korver and Channing Frye can barely get a three-point shot off.
James brought his team back from the dead a year ago, but even with the Warriors still two wins away from a title, a repeat of that looks very unlikely.