WARRIORS WON’T BE SATISFIED
They have the Cavs down 2-0, but memories of last year’s comeback don’t fade easily
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 at when he and the Cavs made short work of Toronto in a forgettable fourgame series.
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. Other than one small blip, with James reportedly fighting a flu bug, the Cavs were as dominant against Boston a round later.
Now, the tables have turned. The Cavs shot themselves in the foot in Game 1, turning the ball over and 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? 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?
It’s not an enviable position to be in — not even going home for games 3 and 4, on Wednesday and Friday, 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. Each game is its own distinct competition.
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.
Watching these two quality teams go at it, you are either already or well on your way to determining that the only team that can beat the Warriors now is themselves.
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 Golden State’s recent history.
Only a year ago, Golden State and Cleveland were in this 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. Then Cleveland jumped 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. We have two more wins to go. We need to take that mentality to Cleveland.”
James was almost superhuman in bringing the Cavs back a year ago, but he’s already been superhuman in this series and it has not moved the needle nearly enough.
Durant joining an already impressive core in Golden State has been everything the Warriors could have hoped for. Curry has been either equal or just a bit behind Durant in terms of production.
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. Everything else is contested by one, two and sometimes three Warriors defenders.
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 two wins away from a title, a repeat looks very unlikely.