Once JR Smith did what he did in Game 1 - you knew this would end in a sweep for the Worriers. Reminds me of '95 when Nick Anderson missed the multiple free throws near the end of Game 1.
The disrespect! Thanks Adam silver! You create the most arrogant championship team ever. You don't see other champions dancing. Sit down and be humble!
LOL - sorry, but this is flat out stupid. This is about individual games - not a series. If a team has a realistic chance to win a game, that game was competitive. When you are leading with a couple of minutes to go, you have a realistic chance to win the game.
but in some ways the overall competitiveness of a series influences how competitive individual games feel. this series was almost a carbon copy of the cleveland/toronto series. two teams who have faced each other several times in the recent past, where people feel the outcome is already predetermined. close first game where a crazy last second sequence (toronto's missed tip-ins/JR) sends it to overtime for a seemingly inevitable defeat for the deflated team. game 2 is a blowout. by the time you get to game 3, even if lebron hit a buzzer beater and kd hit a huge 3 in the final minute of a close game, given the history between the two teams it feels like one team is just playing with their food. they can win the game when they feel like it, and even if they somehow slack off too much and don't win, the other team already seems defeated and we know the better team can win the series whenever they want. and then of course game 4 proves it with a blowout. the close game 1 meant something. a close game 3 down 2-0 just can't mean nearly as much when the history of the teams pretty much ensures the eventual series outcome.
If the Cavs won game 3, then everyone would still have won on their homecourt. I agree that the Cavs would still have been severe underdogs, but that doesn't mean it was hopeless. Part of beating the Warriors is making sure one big loss doesn't have carryover effects - we saw that with the Rockets rebounding from some blowouts. And as we learned in the Rockets series, all it takes is one poorly timed injury to change the course of a series. KD or Curry tweaks an ankle in game 4 or 5 and the Cavs get new life. The Cavs themselves came back from 3-1 against a 73 win Warriors team just a few years ago after the Draymond Green suspension, so being down 2-1 would not have been insurmountable in that case. The series certainly wasn't competitive in the end - but some of the games were. A good comparison is the 2005 Astros losing to the White Sox. It was a 4-0 sweep, but the individual games were all extremely competitive and the Astros had realistic chances to win each one. Just because the series ended in a sweep didn't mean the games weren't compelling.
while i agree that the carryover is dangerous, i also just think carryover is more likely when the talent differential is as great as it is for cleveland. when you're the team barely clinging to hope, you can't have a game like game 1, with a controversial call plus an all-time mistake, and hope to come back from it. just like toronto, cleveland just didn't feel like they believed after that. you almost get the impression they just wanted a win to not get swept, not because they thought they could then get 3 more. and please never bring up the 2005 world series ever again
...so now that we found out Lebron's hand was broken for 3 of the 4 games, can we officially add Lebron to the list of unhealthy All Stars who the Warriors have dodged in the playoffs in the last 4 years? If you put them on a team, that team would be: pg: Chris Paul, Kyrie Irving, George Hill, Pat Beverly, Mike Conley, Jrue Holiday sg: Tony Allen sf: Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard(x2 years) pf: Demarcus Cousins, Kevin Love C: Jusuf Nurkic Let that **** soak in for a minute
LeBron finished 7-13 from the field last night. https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201806080CLE.html
