OAKLAND — The story from Game 1 of the 2016 NBA Finals isn’t Golden State’s bench outscoring Cleveland’s 45-10.
The resounding narrative is that Cleveland took a demoralizing loss directly on the chin and the ramifications could be damning. With Steph Curry and Klay Thompson floundering and a third quarter lead, the Cavaliers should’ve boarded their charter buses with a 1-0 series advantage, shifting all the pressure back on Golden State.
Instead, the Warriors could find themselves spraying champagne as early as Game 4.
What became abundantly clear on Thursday is that the Warriors still match up extremely well with the Cavaliers — Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, or not. The evidence played itself out. Steve Kerr knew exactly what buttons to push, altering rotations to befuddle Tyronn Lue and blow up his gameplan. Draymond Green stole Mo Speights’ minutes to start the second and fourth quarters, chunks of the game where the Warriors tore the Cavs apart. Kerr also employed an excessive amount of switches on defense that curbed Cleveland’s hot streak behind the arc (7/21 in Game 1).
The Cavs’ counterpunch was to fall back on bad isolation habits, something it looked like they had finally solved. But then again, that was during the Eastern Conference playoffs. This is the real thing. This is big boy basketball.
LeBron, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love were not the reason the Cavs lost, but they combined to shoot 23/60 from the floor, an inefficient 38.8 percent. When your role players don’t show up, what else are you supposed to do besides press?
“It doesn’t feel good,” a salty LeBron said moments after the 104-89 loss.
Each game in this series will be different, and you can never count out LeBron. But if you don’t beat the Warriors when Curry and Thompson throw bricks at the hoop for a combined 20 points, when will you beat them?
“I’ll be able to find some adjustments for Game 2,” Curry assured reporters. “Not worried about that.”
Lue said before the game that his team needed to shut down the Splash Brothers in order to win.
“Very key for this series is just being aware of where Steph and Klay are at all times,” Lue said.
It legitimately might take a season or two before we see both Curry and Thompson look this lost at sea as they were an unfathomable 8/27 from the field together. The Cavs smothered the sharpshooters, but paid little attention to anyone else. Cleveland’s going to have to go back to the drawing board to try and fix a litany of issues. The Cavs stood around on offense for far too long and got lost in transition defense. Even LeBron was a culprit.
The last thing Lue and LeBron expected was Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa to slice them up for 31 points on 13/15 combined shooting. And that’s the problem with this matchup: Kerr has a stable of horses to choose from when deciding how to exploit Cleveland. Both aging guards were mostly non-factors against the Thunder; Barbosa barely saw the court. Gone are those long Thunder rim protectors, and it opened up everything for Livingston, who scored a team-high 20 points. Livingston was attacking Irving, Love and Matthew Dellavedova. He went to town on Cleveland and very well may keep doing so.
“Obviously, the game ball goes to Shaun Livingston,” LeBron said. “Gave them a huge boost.”
The Warriors feel like they’re still the same systematic killer, having beaten the Cavaliers now six straight times — regardless of injury circumstances. They’re going to use Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes and Green all over the court and the Cavs are going to have to somehow figure it out.
“This is going to be a small series,” Andrew Bogut said after scoring 10 points in 16 minutes.
Golden State may benefit from the experience of losing a lead in Game 1, but still prevailing. By no means did the Warriors coast to a victory. A 14-point second quarter lead evaporated in the third quarter, but then the bench ripped off a 15-0 run, capped by “MVP!” chants from the crowd directed toward Livingston.
The Warriors say they are done slacking off, like they did in a Game 1 loss last round to Oklahoma City. That’s a scary thought.
“You can’t come out saying, oh, we beat them six in a row, we’re good. Absolutely not,” said Green, who added 16 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists. “As soon as you do that and let your guard down, it’s a wrap. We know that.”
The Cavaliers should be up 1-0. They don’t have an excuse other than they were outplayed by Golden State’s backups.
Just wait until Curry and Thompson re-enter the picture. Things could get ugly.
