I have had the Warriors for a few rounds now, and am not
changing. They were the best team all year, and nothing has substantially
changed. Dubs in 5 over the Cavs. A
sweep wouldn’t surprise me.
Honestly, I had to take a step back before making my
prediction because I wanted to remove my biases. I have never liked Lebron,
just not my style of superstar. The Cavs team is built terribly, and is going
to sink itself this offseason by extending JR, Iman, and Thompson while Love
runs away. They traded a career of Wiggins for an incomplete season of Love,
which sounds insane. They run painful offensive sets and their defense, while
much better in the playoffs to be fair, is not that good. Kyrie is a turnstile.
Meanwhile, I love these Warriors. Curry is what I made Steve
Nash be in 2K for years: a freak shooter and passer who has 30 point/10 assist
games with 7 3s. It just never happened in real life until Steph came into the
league. Klay won me a fantasy title at the end of his rookie year (the Dubs
were terrible and injured so they let a rookie SG just take as many shots as he
wanted. It was fantastic for fantasy purposes). Barnes was one of my favorite
college players. Bogut was a 2K mainstay in the early part of his career: I had
sneaky Bucks’ wins when my opponents couldn’t name half the team (Redd and Mo
Williams!). Iguodala was one of my favorite players of the last decade, still
an underrated (if now overpaid) Swiss Army knife, leader, and awesome
competitor. Barbosa can get a ring to represent all those Suns from the mid to late 00’s that deserve one. However, I
think my biases can be put aside for this prediction. Simply, the Warriors are
so much better by any metric. They are a child of the D’Antoni Suns and 14-15
Spurs.
Honestly, I don’t think the Cavs are that good. I feel
stronger about this one on paper than I did about the Spurs over the Cavs last
season. They Xs and Os are more conclusive. There is a leadership factor to
input because Lebron has been here and Golden State has not. However, Golden
State isn’t exactly a young team. Green. Barnes, and Klay are still relatively
green. However, Green and Barnes have been in the playoffs every year of their
career. Steph is in year 6, Bogut and Lee have 10 years in the NBA at this
point, and guys like Barbosa, Iguodala and Livingston have been around a long
while. The Cavs, outside of Lebron and Perkins, really don’t have much more
experience under pressure. If anything, they have less. Kyrie, Thompson, and
Shumpert have few high leverage reps in their career.
Kerr has outcoached Blatt all year. Kerr gets the rookie
coach title, but worked as a GM for so many years with a good team in Phoenix
(and now has high class assistant coaches with him in Golden State) that his
relative coaching age isn’t “rookie”. Blatt has been better in the playoffs
than the regular season, but still makes stupid mistakes.
In terms of matchups, there are two glaring issues. The first
is that there is nowhere to hide Kyrie. He can’t guard Steph, and Klay/Barnes
would be a disaster in the post or while running around screens. No matter what
you do, Kyrie is a sieve defensively. Take him out of the game because of his
defensive liabilities, and then you don’t have to worry as much on the other
end about defending the CLE PG spot.
The second issue is Lebron. No one can guard him, still.
However, in the playoffs his jumper is broken and I don’t think a week is going
to fix it. For the first time in a long time, Lebron is in part getting stats
and impact through sheer numbers of possessions, not shot efficiency. Part of
his allure was that he got 25 points on 15 shots. Now he is getting 30 on 25
shots. The 3s are not falling. So, the gameplan should be to find people who
can slow him down and force him to take jumpers. Ignore the times he makes them
and go forward. The Spurs did it with Leonard. Most teams have 1 or 0 guys who
can make an attempt. Jimmy Butler did okay, and Carroll, before the injury, was
again okay at it. The reason I love this matchup for the Warriors is that they
have 4 guys who can do an acceptable job on Lebron.
Draymond Green is a great match for Lebron among all available
defenders. Iguodala has always been a good option and is still viable. Harrison
Barnes has the length and youth to be a really good third defensive option and
one that Golden State doesn’t have to panic about when a switch happens. Klay
Thompson isn’t the greatest option on Lebron, but he plays good hard defense
using his length on opponents. He will have Kyrie I’d assume (consider how well
Klay defends CP3 and Mike Conley), but like with Barnes the Warriors won’t
panic if he gets switched on Lebron. Most teams would love to have Klay as the
4th option defensively on Lebron.
Generally, the Warriors can switch just about everything and
that is a major key to their success defensively. Bogut guarded Tony Allen as
the key adjustment in the second round for goodness’ sake. The Cavs always have
to hide Kyrie, and bench Mozgov when something just doesn’t work with him. The
Warriors may blitz with the Curry/Klay/Barnes/Iggy/Green lineup and I have no
idea how the Cavs contain that unless they try Lebron at the 5 himself. The 3
point shooters Cleveland uses in James Jones and Mike Miller would get abused
this series where they walked about unscathed in the Hawks’ series. Plus, you
know, there is the Curry problem. If Lebron covers Curry that’d be most
effective, but would have devastating impact in the rest of the matchups.
Barnes, Green, and Iggy would kill whoever they got in the cross match.
The numbers suggest a very efficient series victory for
Golden State. I think Golden State got its scare in the past series injury wise
and in the previous series with their invincibility bubble popped. Cleveland
has been overachieving for a while now, and taking advantage of a really easy
Eastern Conference. Curry completes the incredibly hard (and statistically
unlikely) task of being able to beat each of the other four All-NBA performers
in 4 consecutive rounds.
