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NBA Finals: TRILOGY Edition!!!


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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The most worrying thing for the Cavs is that they got destroyed even though the Warriors shot pretty poorly by their standards. Klay kept bricking and didn't make a single shot from outside the paint even though he had a lot of excellent looks, Draymond shot poorly too. The Warriors as a team shot only 42.5% and that's with all the dunks in transition they got. Yet they still won handily. And their bad shooting wasn't because the Cavs played good D, it was mostly missing easy looks. the Cavs also did a horrendous job of ball pressure and forcing turnovers.

Warriors are just a way better defensive team and that's why I don't see Cleveland having much of a shot.

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8 minutes ago, David Selig said:

The most worrying thing for the Cavs is that they got destroyed even though the Warriors shot pretty poorly by their standards. Klay kept bricking and didn't make a single shot from outside the paint even though he had a lot of excellent looks, Draymond shot poorly too. The Warriors as a team shot only 42.5% and that's with all the dunks in transition they got. Yet they still won handily. And their bad shooting wasn't because the Cavs played good D, it was mostly missing easy looks. the Cavs also did a horrendous job of ball pressure and forcing turnovers.

Warriors are just a way better defensive team and that's why I don't see Cleveland having much of a shot.

True. Same can be said for the Cavs. Kyrie and Bron are only two that showed up in some form offensively. And that, by far, was not even close to how well they can play defensively. Adjustments will be made. Just hope Love and some role players decide to show up. 

ETA: everyone is getting ahead of themselves just like last year. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Dubs might win, but not without it going 6 or 7. And, my money and faith is still on the Cavs. 

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Last year was last year. This year the Dubs are much stronger while the Cavs are pretty much the same. Not only the Warriors have Durant now, but Curry is fully healthy and in great form. Forget the regular season record, they were coasting a lot of times unlike in 2015/16.

Sure, the Cavs are usually better defensively, but they are still not a great defensive team by any means. I expected this series to be over in 5 games max.

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1 hour ago, David Selig said:

Last year was last year. This year the Dubs are much stronger while the Cavs are pretty much the same. Not only the Warriors have Durant now, but Curry is fully healthy and in great form. Forget the regular season record, they were coasting a lot of times unlike in 2015/16.

Sure, the Cavs are usually better defensively, but they are still not a great defensive team by any means. I expected this series to be over in 5 games max.

Yup. All of this. Cvs really don;t have a prayer this year. Maybe they should have added Kawhi Leonard in the off-season. 

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The problem for the Cavs is they just can't cover this Warriors team.  The only guy who can cover Durant is Lebron, which means your best player has to work really hard and can't help anybody else.  JR can cover Klay, but Green is a mismatch on Love and Irving is a disaster on Curry. 

On the opposite end of the floor?  Not so much.  Lebron is always a problem, but a mix of Durant and Iguodala covering with Green/Zaza/McGee backing him up is a better defensive rotation than any other team in the league.  Klay can give Irving trouble, and if he needs a spell, they have capable backups.  Love couldn't get the better of Thompson, let alone Green.  T. Thompson doesn't have any moves aside from dunk.  The Warriors have the #2 defense in the league, and they looked well prepared.  Of course Lebron and Irving will get theirs, but it's not enough. 

Lebron is being asked to be the leader of both the offense and the defense.  In contrast, Durant is being asked to be the #2 guy on offense (because Curry initiates) and the #2 (or even #3) guy on defense, because Green sets the tone.  Thus, Durant's job is just dramatically easier than what Lebron is asked to do.  It's no surprise that Durant looked like the best player out there.

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9 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

That's what J.R. Smith does against good defensive teams. If you're looking for him (or the Cavs bench for that matter) to make this a series, you're going to be waiting awhile. About 4 games, to be exact. The key here for me was Warrior's turnovers. They had 2 before we got to garbage time. That's huge. I think the Cavs had 12-13 in the same span. Also, Bron-Bron looked very average on defense. If he's not giving the Cavs a spark on defense, they have no shot.

 

That's just not remotely accurate about J.R. Smith. J.R. scored double figures in all 4 games the Cavs won in the finals last year. While the Warriors defiinitely protected the ball well, the 4 turnovers were not in garbage time. Curry threw the ball away twice in a row on stupid plays in the fourth quarter. And the 4 turnovers was not indicative of the way the game was played, either. There were several plays that should have been turnovers and ended up instead in backbreaking Warriors buckets. The three that stand out to me were:

 

1. The play where Curry inbounded the ball to nobody, it bounced through like 3 Cavs and ended up with Iguodala in the corner, who hit a shot, and then Curry swaggered down the court pretending that's what he meant to do.

2. The play where Durant got an offensive rebound, went baseline and stepped out of bounds and hit a layup.

3. The play where Draymond blatantly hooked LeBron adn threw it in and got an and 1 instead of an offensive foul.

 

A number of the Cavs turnovers should have been fouls on the Warriors. Those are going to normalize as the series goes on, and that turnover margin isn't going to be so glaring.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, sperry said:

 

That's just not remotely accurate about J.R. Smith. J.R. scored double figures in all 4 games the Cavs won in the finals last year. While the Warriors defiinitely protected the ball well, the 4 turnovers were not in garbage time. Curry threw the ball away twice in a row on stupid plays in the fourth quarter. And the 4 turnovers was not indicative of the way the game was played, either. There were several plays that should have been turnovers and ended up instead in backbreaking Warriors buckets. The three that stand out to me were:

 

1. The play where Curry inbounded the ball to nobody, it bounced through like 3 Cavs and ended up with Iguodala in the corner, who hit a shot, and then Curry swaggered down the court pretending that's what he meant to do.

2. The play where Durant got an offensive rebound, went baseline and stepped out of bounds and hit a layup.

3. The play where Draymond blatantly hooked LeBron adn threw it in and got an and 1 instead of an offensive foul.

 

A number of the Cavs turnovers should have been fouls on the Warriors. Those are going to normalize as the series goes on, and that turnover margin isn't going to be so glaring.

 

 

I didn't see #1 so I can't comment on it. #2 Durant did have his foot on the baseline, the replay clearly showed it, so I'll give you that one. #3 is staright up Bron-Bron fart huffing. How does a guy driving hard to the basket with the ball hook a defender? LeBron got his arm entangled with Green's when he was making a hard move to the basket.

 

/Oh yeah, I suppose J.R. Smith doesn't suck as hard as I think he sucks, but he still sucks. If he's the guy who needs to show up for the Cavs to pull this off, then they're done.

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26 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I didn't see #1 so I can't comment on it. #2 Durant did have his foot on the baseline, the replay clearly showed it, so I'll give you that one. #3 is staright up Bron-Bron fart huffing. How does a guy driving hard to the basket with the ball hook a defender? LeBron got his arm entangled with Green's when he was making a hard move to the basket.

 

/Oh yeah, I suppose J.R. Smith doesn't suck as hard as I think he sucks, but he still sucks. If he's the guy who needs to show up for the Cavs to pull this off, then they're done.

 

They probably need 10 points out of him. Same with Tristan Thompson, who was a force in last year's playoffs. They need Kyle Korver to not brick wide open 3s. They just need reasonable contributions from those guys.

 

 

As for the Draymond play, give me a fucking break: http://www.nba.com/video/2017/06/01/0041600401-cle-gsw-play17  His arm is "tangled up" with LeBron's because he is holding on to it.

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6 minutes ago, sperry said:

As for the Draymond play, give me a fucking break: http://www.nba.com/video/2017/06/01/0041600401-cle-gsw-play17  His arm is "tangled up" with LeBron's because he is holding on to it.

I've watched that play several times and it looks like a foul on Lebron to me.  At one point you can clearly see Lebron holding Green's arm.  At the very least, it is a messy play that gets called on the defense more often than not. 

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1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

I've watched that play several times and it looks like a foul on Lebron to me.  At one point you can clearly see Lebron holding Green's arm.  At the very least, it is a messy play that gets called on the defense more often than not. 

 

If you wanted to call a touch foul before the shot went up in the post on LeBron, that's a little silly for playoff basketball, but is technically a foul. But the hook around the body and then pulling yourself up while simultaneously holding down the defenders arm is as blatant as it gets. That's how he was able to get a low roping hook shot in the basket without LeBron just palming it.

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18 minutes ago, sperry said:

If you wanted to call a touch foul before the shot went up in the post on LeBron, that's a little silly for playoff basketball, but is technically a foul. But the hook around the body and then pulling yourself up while simultaneously holding down the defenders arm is as blatant as it gets. That's how he was able to get a low roping hook shot in the basket without LeBron just palming it.

Looks to me like both players are arm fighting for leverage and contact escalates.  In that situation the ref would prefer to just swallow his whistle, but here the contact is too egregious to ignore.  If a call is getting made, it goes against the defender 80-90% of the time.  It all seems pretty standard to me. 

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2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

The problem for the Cavs is they just can't cover this Warriors team.  The only guy who can cover Durant is Lebron, which means your best player has to work really hard and can't help anybody else.  JR can cover Klay, but Green is a mismatch on Love and Irving is a disaster on Curry. 

On the opposite end of the floor?  Not so much.  Lebron is always a problem, but a mix of Durant and Iguodala covering with Green/Zaza/McGee backing him up is a better defensive rotation than any other team in the league.  Klay can give Irving trouble, and if he needs a spell, they have capable backups.  Love couldn't get the better of Thompson, let alone Green.  T. Thompson doesn't have any moves aside from dunk.  The Warriors have the #2 defense in the league, and they looked well prepared.  Of course Lebron and Irving will get theirs, but it's not enough. 

Lebron is being asked to be the leader of both the offense and the defense.  In contrast, Durant is being asked to be the #2 guy on offense (because Curry initiates) and the #2 (or even #3) guy on defense, because Green sets the tone.  Thus, Durant's job is just dramatically easier than what Lebron is asked to do.  It's no surprise that Durant looked like the best player out there.

Amen. This is 100% what I was going to say.

1 hour ago, sperry said:

 

3. The play where Draymond blatantly hooked LeBron adn threw it in and got an and 1 instead of an offensive foul.

 

 

The Cavs were getting away with a lot if the first half. It all balances itself out, more or less. 

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43 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

But Bron-Bron indicated it was a foul! That's the one aspect of his game I cannot stand. I get the gamesmanship, but it never ends with that guy. In his opinion, he's fouled on every play.

Isn't that just par for the course for the league? I think it's more notable for players to admit fault. It seems to me that most players automatically profess their innocence/fault the other team no matter how obvious or blatant. Some players protest longer than others, but the dishonesty applies to all.

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The NBA has fucked up so badly dragging these playoffs out. It's just a failure in every way imaginable. I'm the biggest NBA fan out there, and these long breaks between everything are seriously kiling my buzz. My girlfriend didn't believe me on Thursday when I told her I was watching basketball (she was like there is no way the playoffs are still going on), and I then had to explain to her that that was just the first game of the series.

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22 minutes ago, sperry said:

The NBA has fucked up so badly dragging these playoffs out. It's just a failure in every way imaginable. I'm the biggest NBA fan out there, and these long breaks between everything are seriously kiling my buzz. My girlfriend didn't believe me on Thursday when I told her I was watching basketball (she was like there is no way the playoffs are still going on), and I then had to explain to her that that was just the first game of the series.

Yeah, there's no excuse for this first gap. It doesn't make any sense. 

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Just because you don't like it does not mean it does not make sense.  The network wants finals games in prime time, Thus the finals are scheduled before the playoffs even begin to fit the network schedule and because of that they need to allot enough time for every series to go 7 games..  This year there wasn't a lot of long series hence the break between the conference finals and Thursday.

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