Warriors can’t just skate to title
OAKLAND >> The Warriors aren’t merely favorites to win another NBA title in the coming weeks, they’re prohibitive favorites, possibly historic favorites.
The Warriors are such favorites that if you were to fly to Las Vegas, head into the Westgate SuperBook and place a $1,000 bet on Golden State to win the 2018 NBA Finals, you’d only stand to make $100 on your investment.
Per Sportsoddshistory.com, this is the most lopsided NBA Finals in 16 years.
Those odds — set by people whose livelihoods depend on being correct — make a clear statement: the Warriors shouldn’t just win the title, they should coast to a championship. These Cavs don’t match up. I’m not here to disagree with that assessment. I think the Warriors win the Finals — just like last year — in five games.
But allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment, because while — when you boil it down — the Warriors are a far superior team, there are some factors in this series that could make these Finals interesting.
1. ANDRE IGUODALA’S HEALTH >> The forward’s leg injury — sustained when he collided knees with James Harden the fourth quarter of Game 3 of the Western Conference finals — kept him out of the final four games of the series, doesn’t seem to be improving.
The Warriors have not made an official comment since the end of the Western Conference finals, but it seems unlikely, given Iguodala’s comments after Game 7, that he plays in Game 1.
Right now, there’s no evidence that Iguodala can play, so the presumption — at this juncture — should be that Iguodala doesn’t play in the Finals. Not having the 2015 NBA Finals MVP — the guy who won the award because he stopped James — is a problem for the Warriors.
That said, the Warriors’ strategy against James, in the past, has been to mix things up —
give him a bunch of different defenders and looks and make him think. Golden State’s preponderance of talent means that they have multiple players who can put in solid shifts against The King, and that fact, paired with the team’s switch-heavy defense, lends itself to the strategy.
Still, the Warriors are in good shape. Klay Thompson is going to get run against James, as will Kevin Durant. Those are two solid options. Draymond Green rolled his ankle in the second half of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, but he’ll put in shifts against James as well.
But you want to have your best defender to take on the best player on the planet. The Cavs might follow the Rockets’ plan and try to slow things down to a crawl against Golden State and not having Iguodala could swing a few possessions towards the Cavs. As we saw in the Western Conference finals that a few possessions could turn a series from a five-game gentleman’s sweep to a seven-game, drag-it-out affair.
2. THIS IS A DIFFERENT — AND BETTER — TEAM THAN THE WARRIORS FACED EARLIER THIS YEAR >> Outside of James, these Cavs are drastically different than the team the Warriors played in last year’s NBA Finals.
They’re also drastically different than the team the Warriors played midseason. Cleveland turned over half of its roster — literally — at the trade deadlines, and while the current iteration of the team doesn’t match up with that 2017 squad, it is significantly better — in my opinion — than the team they had earlier this season, particularly on the defensive end.
Starting point guard George Hill was a massive upgrade over Isaiah Thomas, who was a sieve on the defensive end. Hill is excellent off the ball (a must for any point guard that plays with James, who should be running point on every play) and a competent defender.
Stephen Curry would have scored 40-plus points a night against a Thomas, J.R. Smith, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose and Jose Calderon. But Hill stands a chance of actually getting a stop against the Warriors’ star, so that’s an upgrade.
These Cavs can also switch on defense now that they’ve made their wholesale roster changes. They’re not the Rockets — not by a long shot — but as Houston proved in the Western Conference finals, there’s a benefit to switching everything and being super physical on defense when going up against the Warriors.
Particularly if the Cavs play LeBron James at “center” — as we saw in last year’s Finals — or even if they play deadline acquisition Larry Nance Jr. (or Kevin Love, to a certain degree) — the Cavs’ roster has better length and versatility on the defensive end now. The Warriors have to take that seriously
3. THE WARRIORS MIGHT NOT HAVE THE “APPROPRIATE FEAR” >> This is the big one. The Warriors are absolutely, 100 percent, the better team in this series, even if the Cavs have the best player on the court. Durant — whom I expect to have a big series — can keep up with James and the rest of the Warriors hold a massive advantage over the rest of the Cavs (particularly if Kevin Love cannot play at the start of the Finals.)
But the Warriors are always the better team — and perhaps because of that, this Golden State squad has the nasty habit of playing disengaged, entitled basketball, trusting that they can play a quarter (or half of a quarter) of good basketball and win.
Perhaps they can get away with that — again — in these NBA Finals. Perhaps that disengagement manifests into offensive stagnation on one end of the court and opportunities for the Cavs on the other end. Perhaps the Warriors let the Cavs into a series by not establishing themselves in Game 1.
If we’ve learned one thing about a LeBron James-led Cavs team, it’s that you can’t give them a window and that you should never prolong that which you think is inevitable. Ultimately this is just a big hypothetical — it takes a serious suspension of disbelief to imagine a universe where the Cavs beat the Warriors in this series.
But give Cleveland a game early, and they could take two. And if they win two — well, then we have a series where anything can happen.