Here is the deal. The cavs are supposedly better because they have tyronne lue as coach, kyrie irving as pg, and kevin love as pf now. Fine. let's say they are a bit better. Steph curry and Klay thompson are both way better now than they were last year. Golden state is BETTER. Way better. I don't see cavs beating golden state four times.
Shouldn't the Cavs be favored by this measurement? They have played way better, statistically, for the entire playoffs.
Everyone is picking GSW, but I feel that b/c this is the first time Lebron is fully healthy going into a Finals matchup, he's going to wreck this Finals. It will be tough, but this is a legacy defining series for Lebron. He wins this, and it will cement him as a top 3 player in the history of the game.
Its from Espn. Warriors will always be favored according to Espn. Surprised they didn't give them a 100% chance of winning
1) I don't think they'll switch on every pick and roll like OKC did. They don't have the length and size to duplicate what OKC did defensively. They will trap Curry and Thompson and force Dray, Barnes, Iggy, Bogut... to score. If Dray and Barnes score 20+ then that's the game plan. 2) CLE has to love how GSW defended throughout this playoff run. CLE will get its 3s, and get a ton of them. OKC got a ton of wide open shots and they just went ice cold at the wrong time. 3) A healthy and rested Lebron > any defender. Last year, Lebron shot 42% v. Carroll in the conference finals v. ATL. He then shot 40% v. the Warriors. This year he shot 63% v. Carroll in the conf finals again. It's a different story b/c LBJ has more weapons to space the floor. 4) Kyrie. If Lue can hide him defensively for stretches, he will be lethal offensively for them.
They weren't. Kyrie was still getting into his groove. He wasn't shooting well until March or so. Lebron isn't in playoff mode. Plus, they were under Blatt. Their chemistry isn't as what it is now. Plus, regular season doesn't mean anything as shown by the playoffs.
Are the Warriors better? Curry is not 100%. I don't think Bogut is as good as he was last season. They don't have David Lee(don't laugh, they needed him in last year's Finals). Some of the bench guys aren't playing as well as they did a year ago like Barbosa or Ezeli. And Draymond is only a flagrant or 2 T's away from a mandatory suspension if I'm not mistaken. The one intangible the Warriors have this year over last is that they're the defending champs. They now know they can get the job done whereas last year the lack of experience(especially vs a guy like LeBron) was a hurdle they needed to overcome. Also like I said in an earlier post, it's possible the 3-1 comeback will have taken a major toll on the Warriors. We won't know for sure til Game 1 tips off 2 1/2 days from now, but they had to expend a lot of energy coming back from that deficit whereas the Cavs had a very easy path back to the Finals. Going through customs was probably the most difficult aspect of their playoff run.
I think, and I might be reaching here, the most obvious game plan to start off with is to have Tristan Thompson guard Green with Love going down low and let him watch Bogut/Ezeli. The plus in that is that Love is a pretty good rebounder still that he can hold his own on the boards. I'd like to see JR Smith on Barnes with James on Thompson. No point in putting James on Curry.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Warriors are a league-leading 16-12 this season, including the playoffs, when trailing by double digits. The Cavs are No. 2 at 16-23.</p>— Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNSteinLine/status/737467649026707456">May 31, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Interesting wrinkle: GSW's playoff opponents finished reg season 1st (OKC), 3rd (POR), 6th (HOU), 9th (CLE) in offensive rebounding rate.</p>— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZachLowe_NBA/status/737677732809723904">May 31, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
LeBron did everything he could in the last finals with the best finals series performance I have ever seen (not sure how to rank All-Time). Now that he's not going in with a broken team (which he almost won with last year) It's hard for me not to see the Cavs getting redemption.
He was clearly less explosive than his pre-injury form. It's not completely debilitating, but losing even a step hurts a lot at this level of competition.
Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving are two biggest defensive liabilities out there. I don't think Cavs are better off with them. Offensively Cavs have enough. I can see Dela eats a lot of Irving's minutes because Irvings has no chance defending Curry. People also forget Curry, Klay and this Warriors team improved a lot from last season as well. Warriors in 6, at most.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">In the last GSW-CLE meeting, Mozgov & Varejao combined to play 32 minutes for the Cavs. Warriors seeing a much different Cavs team Thursday.</p>— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/737682718377418755">May 31, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
