The Golden State Warriors, who are rapidly turning these NBA Finals into a wholly-own subsidiary of the No Fun League, have shredded yet one more Styrofoam narrative – The Distraction Of Steve Kerr.
By curb-stomping the Cleveland Cavaliers, 132-113, Sunday night with Kerr on the job for the first time in more than a month, the Warriors eliminated yet one more reason why they might not win this championship. All the others have been lined up and shot down, carnival style, in differing but equally comprehensive styles. They've won one game with defense and ball maintenance, one with offense and rabid pace. They've won one with Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and a whirl of supporting cast members, and one with Durant, Curry, Klay Thompson and a whirl of supporting cast members.
That leaves only one potential flogging point, and it’s a familiar if thinning one.
Game.
3.
A year ago, the Warriors lost Game 3 of the Finals by a smooth 30, thereby arresting a feeling every bit as strong as the one they felt after the first two games. The Warriors won Game 4 but unraveled from there, and for all the subsequent excuses you want to employ about Draymond Green's suspension this and Andrew Bogut's injury that and Stephen Curry's knee the other thing, the series was there to be won with a more representative showing in Game 3.
And we mention this only because, just as in 2016, we are out of alternate reasons save the old LeBron-Will-Save-This-Series-On-His-Own chestnut.
James was offensively superb again, going 29/11/14 , and this time he had help from Kevin Love (27/7) and Kyrie Irving (19/2/7). But as the game went on and the Warriors slashed at Cleveland’s resolve from too many places to count, he seemed to see the 2015 series looming before him – the one in which he thought he had to win it himself because he did, but didn’t because he couldn’t.
There was too much Durant and Curry at both ends, plus the offensive resuscitation of Thompson, plus Shaun Livingston and Ian Clark to subtly kick into the pot that in Game 1 was handled by JaVale McGee and Zaza Pachulia.
And for all that, as the Warriors clanked 15 layups in Game 1, they hurled the ball about the floor like a hot brick (20 turnovers after only four in Game 1). As Kerr said ruefully afterward, “Tonight was a game based on talent. Guys played exceptionally well individually. But heading to Cleveland, we're going to have to be much smarter.”
Hey, that’s what a coach does – he looks for reasons to stress those arteries. Yeah, like Kerr needs that.
It comes as little surprise that the Warriors seemed utterly unfazed by his return – as unfazed as they did when he absented himself midway through the Portland series. He was not symptom-free from The Back Surgery From Hell, but he isn’t going to be, not in time for the rest of this series.
Health aside, though, he seemed as though he had never left because what he has built and what the players have helped him build endures.
Put another way, Kerr thought his return was so unimportant that he told the team he was coming back after he announced it to the media, which is the diametric opposite of approved protocol. And as we saw, the players fell short of personal and emotional devastation.
But Kerr said one other thing that actually should worry Cavaliers fans, television executives and people who waited a whole year for seven more games of this.
“They made a lot of adjustments.”
And all of them put together netted them three points from the 22 they lost by in Game 1. The changes couldn’t integrate J.R.Smith or Tristan Thompson or Iman Shumpert or Kyle Korver into positions of influence. Instead, Tyronn Lue altered his rotation to get more time for Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye in hopes of altering the pace and forcing the Warriors to go big when they didn’t want to, they tried to go small and shoot their way into a rhythm, they changed defensive looks to try and impede Curry and Durant, and instead Klay Thompson reintegrated his shooting stroke.
None of it worked. The Warriors scored 40 points in the first quarter, and while the Cavs stayed close (in part because of Green’s early, middle and late foul trouble), they never took control of the game, and eventually succumbed to the Warriors’ perpetually irksome Warriorosity.
In short, the Warriors are clearly superior – as we suspected all along. But proving it is, as we have learned, a more difficult matter.
That’s why the new narrative – Golden State being 5-6 in Game 3s – is about all the Cavs have to cling to at this point. Smith said before Game 2 that if the Cavs played their game (whatever the hell that means) nobody could beat them. But as we are coming to learn, the Cavs’ game may not have anything on the Dubs’ game.
A more assertive James means less offensive impact by either Irving or Love, and the Cavs are being increasingly exposed at the other end. Thompson played fewer minutes in Game 2 than Game 1 because he did even less of note. The Warriors did not let Cleveland get to the offensive boards, or get clean looks from beyond the arc, which were two evident advantages the Cavs should have been able to exploit.
So if the Cavaliers are to save this series from becoming the remorseless throttling it has been, they are down to one straw.
Game.
3.
And even that desperate rope has never seemed further away and greasier than it does right now. I mean, if they can’t even get more than three points out of a mid-series coaching change, what real hope have they?
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