After Two Review

As the series heads to Cleveland, the Warriors must take care of the things they can control.

It truly is rare to find a series in which both teams can legitimately feel like they should be leading 2-0. The Cavs were merely one LeBron James shot or Iman Shumpert follow-up in the final seconds of Game 1 from stealing both of the first two games of the series on the road. The Warriors, despite all their trouble in Game 2, held a one-point lead with fewer than 30 seconds remaining in overtime, and had a shot to retake the lead in the final 10 seconds. Instead, here we stand with the series tied at one game apiece, setting up for what essentially amounts to an old-fashioned best-of-five series from here on out, only now Cleveland possesses the home court advantage.

While the Cavs rightfully deserve credit for their ability to hand the Warriors only their fourth defeat at Oracle Arena this season, particularly after finding out that Kyrie Irving was lost for the entire series, the Warriors didn’t exactly do themselves any favors. The Dubs struggled in the three fundamental facets of the game of basketball – rebounding, passing, and shooting – and it wasn’t entirely due to the efforts of the feisty, grinding Cavs. All in all, the Warriors actually played very good defense in Game 2, holding Cleveland to the fifth-worst offensive rating in a Finals victory since 1985. Unfortunately, there are two sides of the court, and the Dubs didn’t fare nearly as well on the offensive end. Cleveland held the Warriors to their lowest offensive rating (94.1 points per 100 possessions) of the postseason and third lowest all year.

So how might the Warriors learn from Game 2 as they attempt to regain control of the series? Again, Cleveland deserves plenty of credit for forcing Golden State into this situation, but there are things the Warriors can control that will aid them in their quest to take back home court advantage, and they just so happen to fall within those same three fundamental tenets of the game they’ve played their whole lives.

During the regular season, the Warriors led the league in pace (100.69) while finishing with the second-best offensive rating (109.7) in the NBA. In other words, they had the ball in their hands often, and when they did, they did tremendous things with it. However, the end product of that sequence is entirely dependent on the step that initiates it – that is, the actual acquirement of the ball. The Dubs were an average team on the defensive boards in the regular season, hauling in 74.5 percent of available defensive rebounds. In the first three rounds of the playoffs combined, the Warriors bumped that number up to 76.3 percent, despite the fact that the game slowed down and their pace dropped to 96.63 possessions per 48 minutes. Now, in the Finals, the pace has slowed down even further (93.65), but the Dubs are only grabbing 72.7 percent of available defensive boards.

In Game 2, Tristan Thompson alone secured 17.5 percent of available offensive rebounds while he was on the court. That’s almost the same rate that placed the entire Atlanta Hawks team as the worst offensive rebounding team in the league during the regular season (21.4 percent). As a team, the Cavs hauled in 28.6 percent of available offensive boards. When you combine that rate with the rebounds that bounced out of bounds, as well as the five loose-ball fouls on the Warriors, Cleveland recovered 23 of its 62 available misses (missed field goals and missed second free throws), an astounding 37.1 percent clip. Luckily for the Dubs, the Cavs once again didn’t capitalize on their second chances (3-of-17) to the degree that you’d expect, much like Game 1 in which they only converted 1-of-11 second chance opportunities. However, thanks to free throws, the Cavs still scored 15 points on those opportunities in Game 2. Considering this is the first time in NBA Finals history that the first two games of the series have both gone to overtime, those second chance opportunities loom large for both teams. It’s highly unlikely that the Cavs will continue to convert at such a low rate on those chances, so the Warriors’ best option is to not allow the chances in the first place. That means grabbing more defensive rebounds when available, which in turn will jumpstart their offense.

Once the Warriors get the ball on the defensive glass, then they can start to do something with it. The Warriors became only the tenth team in NBA history to accumulate at least 67 wins in the regular season, and it didn’t happen by accident. Rather than rely on methods that are inconsistent in nature to win games, they followed a system, a recipe for winning that adeptly utilized the weapons throughout the roster by accentuating their individual skill sets. However, through the first two games of the NBA Finals, and in Game 2 in particular, the Dubs have drifted from the recipe that has made them so successful up to this point. For instance, in the regular season, the Warriors led the NBA with an average of 24.5 assists per game and ranked second in the league with an assist percentage (percentage of field goals generated off an assist) of 63.5 percent. In the Finals, those numbers have dropped to 20.0 assists and 55.6 percent, respectively.

Inherently, in order to get an assist, one must make a pass, and when the Warriors aren’t passing, they aren’t following the recipe. For instance, prior to Game 2, the Warriors led all playoff teams with an average of 303 passes per game. In Game 2, that number plummeted to 217 passes, a 28.4 percent drop-off. It’s no coincidence then that the Dubs only accumulated 16 assists on 33 made baskets, an uncharacteristic 48.5 assist percentage. The offense was far too stagnant in Game 2, and it provided just enough time for the Cavs to continuously get back in defensive position and thwart the Warriors’ attack. Simply put, in order to win, the Warriors need to pass more, and they need to pass better. While it’s the shots that didn’t fall in Game 2 that have received all the attention, it’s the passes that didn’t generate them that truly did the Dubs in.

Gathering more defensive rebounds will generate an increase in both quality and quantity of pass attempts, which in turn will create more efficient shot opportunities. Case in point, the fast break. The Warriors were far and away the best team in the NBA on the break during the regular season, averaging 20.9 fast break points per game. In the first three rounds of the playoffs, the Dubs bumped that number up to 21.6 fast break points per game. However, in the Finals, that number has plunged to 15.5 per game. Much of that can be attributed to the slower pace of the series, but there are other areas of offense unaffected by the pace of the game in which the Warriors have uncharacteristically struggled as well.

Game 2 was only the second time in 99 total games this season (regular season and playoffs) in which the Warriors shot under 40 percent, and this is primarily where the Dubs’ struggles can be more attributed to themselves rather than the efforts of the Cavs. Not only did the Warriors suffer their fourth-worst percentage (22.9) from behind the three-point line this season, but because they attempted so many 3-pointers (35), their 27 misses matched a season-high. Aided by the Warriors’ aforementioned passing difficulties, the Cavs were constantly in good defensive position to make the Dubs work; still, Golden State missed plenty of shots they’ve proven they will normally make. The Warriors shot 12-of-38 (31.6 percent) on uncontested shots, which is defined by no defender being closer than 3.5 feet of the shot. As a rough comparison, the Warriors had been shooting 48.0 percent in the playoffs on shots with no defender closer than 4 feet. Obviously, the largest and most unexpected discrepancy belonged to the reigning MVP in Stephen Curry, who shot 1-of-9 on uncontested attempts in Game 2, a paltry and flabbergasting 11.1 percent clip. To put that in context, he had shot 48.8 percent with no defender closer than four feet in the playoffs, and 46.1 percent during the regular season.

The Warriors, particularly Curry, simply are not going to shoot that poorly very often. Yes, the Cavs played great defense at times, but plenty of good shots were there for the taking; they just didn’t go in. One would expect Curry and his teammates to better capitalize on those uncontested shots moving forward, and if the Dubs gather more rebounds to generate more passes to create more of those high-efficiency shot opportunities, chances are we’ll be seeing an offense that far more resembles the beautiful, dynamic Warriors’ attack of the regular season, rather than the dud that was their Game 2. With the series moving to Cleveland for the next two games, the road environment won’t make things any easier on the Dubs, but if they take care of the things that they can control, they stand a great chance at regaining control of this series.