So far the Finals have gone pretty much as well as the Warriors could have hoped for. They are two wins away from winning their second championship in three years and if they sweep the Cavs, they will become the first team in NBA history to go 16-0 in the playoffs.
However, they haven’t faced much resistance from the Cavs so far, winning their first two games by a combined margin of 41 points. This is partially due to almost all of the Cavaliers’ players, outside of LeBron James, playing quite poorly.
Bay Area News Group Warriors beat writer Anthony Slater told Murph & Mac Tuesday that he thinks the Cavs can step it up in their upcoming home games.
“This Cav’s team can play a lot better, there’s room for improvement,” Slater said. “Kyle Korver hits a few threes, J.R. Smith finally has a decent game, Deron Williams…some of those fringe guys, they get boosts from their home crow. They just play better and hit some shots. LeBron remains LeBron [but] Kyrie needs to play a lot better. Tristan Thompson has been pretty low energy so he has maybe one of those high energy games, gets five or six offensive rebounds in the first few quarters and has some put-backs. Zaza fumbles a few out of bounds and you flip it on the Warriors’ side and some of their role players have down games. that tends to happen at times on the road.”
The few times that the Warriors have struggle during the playoffs has been during Game 3s and Slater said that could be an issue again going into Cleveland on Wednesday night.
“This is the danger game of the series and it has been [for the Warriors],” Slater said. “I remember back to the Blazers series and the Warriors went down 17 or 19 in that game three. Go back to the Utah game [three], that was the only game in the Utah series where they trailed at all. I remember in Portland talking to Draymond Green before game three, and he was saying that the coaches pointed out to them that they were 2-6 the previous two years in game threes, including last season where they were 0-4. They lost in Houston, lost in Portland, lost in Oklahoma City and lost last year in Cleveland in game three. They get up 2-0 and sometimes they get lax. [I] think what helps them this time around is not only the revenge from last year but that 16-0 carrot is kinda sitting there to maybe motivate them a little bit .”
Listen to the full interview below. To listen to Slater’s comments on how the Cavs could challenge the Warriors in Game 3 skip to the 5:35 mark.
