The Cleveland Cavaliers led the Golden State Warriors 2-1 in last year’s NBA Finals.
David Griffin would like to buy a time machine.
The Cavaliers are down 0-2 to the Warriors and if you were to rate how bad this 0-2 deficit is, well, it’s pretty bad. So bad that Richard Jefferson might be the second-best player for Cleveland in the Finals. And that’s no knock on Jefferson. He’s a fine player and you could have convinced me he retired in 2012. But yeah. You get it.
So, now what?
The series goes back to Cleveland for the next two games, so that’s a plus. But just being at home doesn’t mean anything. Realistically, Cleveland has to win the next two games to really make this thing a series. And lord knows fans, media members and everyone not named David Blatt want just that.
The good news for Cleveland is that the Cavaliers have played about as bad as possible, so there’s really nowhere to go from there but up. Cleveland is shooting 36.8 percent from the field, Kyrie Irving has been extremely exposed on defense, Kevin Love might be concussed and J.R. Smith has eight points in 70 minutes.
Like everything in life, there’s bad news, too. The NBA’s MVP, Steph Curry, has averaged just 14.5 points per game. If you told anyone that prior to the Finals, you would at least bet a bag of fun-size Doritos that the Warriors were down 0-2. His brother (via Splash), Klay Thompson, is averaging just 13 points. Most of the damage has come from “you either love him or really, really dislike him” Draymond Green, who is averaging 22 points, nine rebounds and six assists per game while shooting 7-for-14 from the 3-point line and doing stuff like this.
Sooner or later, the Splash Bros. are going to blow up.
You’d think that the Cavaliers will win a game because of some 40-point, 12-rebound, 8-assist game from LeBron James, but who knows if that will even be enough?
The biggest losers from the Finals, besides the literal losers in the present time (the Cavaliers) are the Oklahoma City Thunder. It must be disheartening to be up 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals to a team that is embarrassing its competition in the Finals. Ah, what could have been?
I could write what Cleveland needs to do better for the rest of the series. But that’s already pretty obvious. Irving and Love help take the load off James offensively (that's the theory, at least), but the team is much better with players like Matthew Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson on the court defensively. Unfortunately, you can’t have a hybrid of those players.
*Actually you can. It’s called Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Cleveland will probably win a game in this series. The Cavaliers are too good not to. We forget that James is still one of the top-three basketball players in the world, but the Warriors are a death machine. If it’s not Curry, Thompson or Green, it’s Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala or Leandro Barbosa. Three guys you could have convinced me retried from basketball three years ago.
It’s remarkable that James has made six straight NBA Finals. If the Cavaliers lose, it’s not his fault. The Warriors are really, really good. Historically good. The Cavaliers could win the next two games at home. After all, they swept the first two rounds of these playoffs. But it feels more and more like they will need more than just a great game to do so. The Warriors are that good and Cavaliers don’t have guys like Serge Ibaka, Enes Kanter and Steven “Funaki” Adams to wear down Green and Co.
Game 3 is set for Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Rarely do you say that a team can “steal one at home,” but that’s exactly what it feels like right now for the Cavs.