Cavs' Game Plan Out of Sync and Out of Style Against Modern-Age Warriors
OAKLAND, Calif. — Do you know what would make this a fairer fight?
Russell Westbrook joins the Cleveland Cavaliers for Game 2.
Everyone got a refresher slap in the face about how ridiculous it was for a 73-9 Golden State Warriors team to add one of the best players in the world during the Kevin Durant-driven 113-91 Game 1 rout Thursday.
Not only is Westbrook available—according to his social-media sharing, he spent Thursday watching Whoopi Goldberg's 1993 movie Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit—but his one-man-show style would fit a Cleveland team largely out of step with the way most of the NBA has gone, toward the zip-passing, floor-spacing, ball-sharing Warriors.
"Playing iso ball has helped us get to this point, and it gave us success in the last three years," LeBron James said after Game 1. "So we don't want to have a high, steady diet of it, because the defense becomes stagnant and our players become stagnant, but that's part of our package."
That means the Cavs can't remodel themselves overnight the way Durant spent the whole season deprogramming himself of those ball-stopping tendencies he developed alongside Westbrook with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
All credit to Durant for being flexible enough to change (with plenty of prodding from Draymond Green during the season) without diluting his effectiveness. In Game 1 he threw passes before he even needed to, yet he still scored 38 points. That didn't happen all too often when he shared the same court with Westbrook, and that my-turn-your-turn style didn't work Thursday night for the Cavaliers.
For the high individual usage type of offense Cleveland runs with James and Kyrie Irving to work against a defense as good at overloading against the ball-handler as Golden State's, there has to be tremendous execution. In shooting 34.9 percent as a team with 20 turnovers, there clearly wasn't in Game 1. For as much as Golden State's defense deserves credit for that, so too Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue deserves blame for failing to prepare his team in the long layoff before Game 1.
You could even hear it insinuated in Kyle Korver's voice as he quietly mentioned in the postgame locker room how the weak-side players could be put in "better position" via "more movement or actions."
He wasn't alone.
"As a group, we want to move the ball a little bit better," Richard Jefferson added.
Offense has been easy for Cleveland this season because of James and Irving, both brilliant at taking whoever is in front of them. Irving's 28.8 percent isolation frequency leads all players in the playoffs, even higher than Westbrook's 26.8. Offense was overall way too easy in the Eastern Conference playoffs—43.5 percent on three-pointers—when mediocre defenses gave Lue and the Cavs a false sense of security entering the NBA Finals.
Lue said Wednesday he thought one-on-one play would be fine as long as the Cavs limited turnovers.
Against the Warriors defense, that's like saying you can eat as many desserts as you want but limit the calories.
It's unrealistic.
Chalk it up as one element of complacency from being the champs. Lue is, after all, a relatively inexperienced head coach. And maybe Irving's iconic, Game 7-turning, contested jumper was in a small way fool's gold.
It's already obvious the Cavaliers will have to execute at a considerably higher level with Durant on the floor, an addition that not only provides the Warriors with one of the game's most dynamic scorers but also another legit primary defender against James.
Much of Cleveland's over-dribbling and inefficiency in Game 1 was on James for his eight turnovers and Irving for his four; the Warriors had four turnovers in total. But Golden State also baited James and Irving into driving toward help defenders while at other times relying on their excellent individual defenders to push them off their preferred shooting spots.
The scary thing is Game 1 wasn't close to Golden State's best execution of defensive rotations, meaning that even if Lue shores up his schemes and his team gets the ball moving side to side, the Warriors might still have the answers.
"We definitely want to be more in the 20s in assists," James said after the Cavaliers had all of 15 assists in Game 1.
In contrast, the Warriors had 31 assists on 45 field goals, recording their sixth 30-assist game this postseason. Durant had eight on his own. The Warriors have perfected the modern game, which is easier to do when you have almost perfect personnel.
Coming into this series, the Cavaliers thought they had better personnel than last year too.
Before Game 1, Jefferson tried to sell the idea that Cleveland had improved with the additions of Deron Williams and Korver in place of Matthew Dellavedova and Mo Williams.
"You're adding guys in the prime of their careers to a team that won a championship," Jefferson said of Williams, 32, and Korver, 36. "So, yes, they added Kevin Durant; I think we added some depth. I think both teams are better."
They added Kevin Durant.
Any chance no one would notice if Westbrook tried to slip into Deron Williams' Cleveland uniform for Game 2 on Sunday?
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