Warriors planning to get physical
Cavs won Game 4 handily but it won’t be so easy to push Golden State around back in Oakland
ICLEVELAND t sounds more like a prize fight than a basketball game, but the first punch is going to be huge in Game 5.
The team that sets the tone physically has won every game in this year’s NBA Finals, with perhaps the exception of Game 3.
That was the most evenly contested of the games and neither the Golden State Warriors or the Cleveland Cavaliers seemed able to physically distance themselves from the other. The Warriors win resulted from the fourth quarter heroics of Kevin Durant.
But in Friday’s Game 4, which the Cavaliers won handily 137-116 at home, it wasn’t even close. Cleveland, now trailing 3-1 in the Finals, outmuscled and outplayed the Warriors on just about every possession in avoiding the humiliation of a series sweep.
The team that’s the aggressor normally gets the benefit of the whistle, and that was apparent in Game 4, when the Cavs extended the series.
Cleveland shot 22 free throws in the first quarter compared to just 14 for the Warriors.
The Cavs weren’t particularly good from the line but the 14 they did make was a big part of their record-breaking 49 points in that opening quarter.
“We just didn’t play well at all,” Warriors’ guard Steph Curry said when asked about losing the physical battle in Game 4. “We didn’t give any kind of resistance in that first — I’ll call it the first three minutes, where they just got real comfortable on our miscommunication — and we got separated from bodies a little too much and let them toe up on the three-point line.
“And in that building especially, if you allow them to get that threepoint game going early, they feed off of that energy,’’ Curry said. “So that wasn’t a good recipe for us to try to get a win and we know they’re going to try that same game plan in (Monday’s) Game 5. We just got to play with more force, energy, and just lock in defensively. We scored enough points to win, just didn’t get many stops.”
Heading home to Oakland, the Warriors sounded supremely confident that they can shake off the Game 4 lapse and end the series in front of their home fans.
The question for the Warriors is, can they make the proper adjustments?
“You can tweak some things, but are we going to play hard,’’ said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr. “Are we going to get after it and compete? Or are we going to do what we did the other night, which is allow threepoint shooters to get open, get broken down at the point of attack, and give up offensive boards. That’s up to us. That’s nothing strategic, that’s more competitive wise.”
Draymond Green, one of the tone setters in the Warriors lineup in terms of physicality, said he got exactly what he was expecting from the Cavs in Game 4 and doesn’t see that changing in Game 5.
Back home, Green expects the Warriors to surpass the compete level that he’s expecting of the Cavs for Game 5.
“Definitely,” Green said. “We’re competitors.”
If there’s going to be a telltale sign early on, it might be who wins the battles under the basket and in the paint, where Cleveland’s Tristan Thompson squares up against Warriors’ big man Zaza Pachulia.
The Warriors aren’t accustomed to being pushed around anywhere, and certainly not in their home arena. How much they push back on Monday figures to go a long way to determining whether this series ends or heads back to Cleveland for a Game 6 on Thursday night.