LUE SURE CAVALIERS CAN RUN WITH WARRIORS
Coach says better defense, threes key to Game 3 win
Cleveland Cavaliers CLEVELAND coach Tyronn Lue isn’t making a change to his starting lineup.
“I’m not doing it,” Lue said when asked about Iman Shumpert potentially replacing J.R. Smith in the starting lineup for Game 3 on Wednesday.
And what about the idea of slowing down the pace of the game?
“We’re not going to change our game because of who we’re playing,” Lue said. “And I’m confident that we can play that way, and we did it last year. A lot of people said we couldn’t. But that’s our game. That’s who we are. And we’re not going to change just because we’re playing Golden State.”
There you have it from the defiant Cavs, down 2-0 to the Warriors in the NBA Finals.
The Cavs will not make significant changes to their rotation or playing style. They are going to dance with what brought them.
Cleveland’s pace and aversion to lineup changes were major topics Tuesday. But the Cavs have made clear that if they’re going down, they’re going down their way. That’s fair. Lue has earned that no matter what anyone outside the Cavs organization believes.
But there is more than that to Cleveland’s success. While basketball can be a complicated game of well-designed moving parts, it also is a simple game based on making shots and preventing the opponent from making shots.
The Cavs need to be a much better offensive and defensive team.
“It starts with (Game 3),” LeBron James said. “One game at a time, one possession at a time and cleaning up on some of the miscues that we have had in the first couple games and not have as many.”
The Warriors have multiple offensive weapons and are the most difficult team in the league to defend. Immense focus, energy and communication are required to perform well defensively against Golden State, which is shooting 46.7% from the field and 39.5% on threepointers and has a 2.71-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in the Finals. Too often, the Warriors are getting wide-open shots from long range and inside the paint.
“A lot of it is just being aware, staying alert,” Lue said. “With this team, you can’t relax at all. If you relax, they make you pay. They made some tough shots, but that’s what they do. They make shots 3 or 4 feet behind the three-point line, and they’re capable of doing that.
“But we’ve got to do a better job of just staying locked into these guys, being physical, staying on their bodies.”
Offensively, Cleveland is shooting 40.3% from the field and only 31.7% on three-pointers; in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Cavs were at 50.7% and 43.5% — both playoff highs through three rounds.
James, Kyle Korver and Smith must deliver better shooting on threes. Kyrie Irving needs to convert more shots inside the three-point line, and Tristan Thompson can’t have another game with fewer rebounds than Stephen Curry.
Turnovers, poor shot selection and substandard ball movement also have plagued the Cavaliers against the Warriors.
“We have to make some shots,” Lue said. “But also they’re closing out hard, so we’ve got to be able to read when we have a shot or when we have a chance to attack the basket. … We’ve got to do a better job of shooting the three, but if it’s not open, driving and then making the extra pass and finishing at the rim.”
Offense and defense are interconnected. Better offense leads to better defense, and better defense creates better offense.
Not all of Cleveland’s wounds are self-inflicted. Golden State — perhaps headed toward a dynasty and already one of the greatest NBA teams — is causing a lot of the damage.
But with improvements and fewer mistakes, the Cavs can at least make Game 3 closer and give themselves a chance to win, which didn’t happen in the first two games.
If the Cavs are going to do it their way, they need to do it much better.