What felt like an inevitable formality all playoffs is now official, as the Cleveland Cavaliers rolled through the Boston Celtics in Game 5 to set up a third straight meeting with the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen the same two teams meet in three straight Finals, and the third meeting between the Cavs and Warriors will be to split a 1-1 tie in the NBA’s championship series since 2015.
The rematch does not necessarily mean more of the same, as there are plenty of differences coming into this year’s Finals. For one, it’s the first time that the Cavs and Warriors will face each other with both teams at full strength. In 2015, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love’s injuries set the Cavs back, while Steph Curry’s ankle injury in 2016 kept the MVP from being at full strength.
While neither team will publicly use those injuries as an excuse, this year’s matchup will be devoid of any questions about the legitimacy of a series win for either team as being against a less than full strength opponent.
The teams, while maintaining most of the same core from the past two Finals, also look different. The Warriors have the biggest difference, with the addition of Kevin Durant to their already star-studded lineup this season. The Durant-Curry combination — along with Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — took some time to find a rhythm, which was interrupted by Durant’s late season injury. But in the Western Conference Finals, the duo found a seemingly perfect balance that makes them look as terrifying as everyone anticipated the combination could be going into the Finals.
In their four-game sweep of the Spurs, Curry averaged 31.5 points per game on a 56.4/46.7/89.5 shooting split while Durant averaged 28 points per game on a 60.3/40.9/87.1 split. The offensive juggernaut became fully operational against the Spurs as their comfort level together on the floor looked better than it had at any point in the season.
That’s a scary proposition for the Cavs, but Cleveland has its own offensive improvements they can point to as reasons they’ll be able to keep up a potentially torrid offensive pace with the Warriors.
To start, LeBron James is — with the exception of one game — playing some of the best offensive basketball of his incredible career. James is averaging 32.5 points per game in 13 games these playoffs, which includes an 11-point performance in Game 3 of the ECF, on a 56.6/42.1/71.2 split. He’s also averaging eight rebounds and seven assists along with that scoring output, and his Game 5 performance was a virtuoso showing of 35 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists to close out Boston.
What may be more important to the Cavs ability to hang with the Warriors is that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love both seemed to find their best offensive rhythm of the playoffs late in the Boston series as well. Irving’s 44 points in Game 4 carried the Cavs to a win, and for the series he averaged 25.8 points per game.
Even most importantly, Uncle Drew found his perimeter shot, shooting 50 percent from three-point range after not eclipsing 36 percent in either of the first two rounds. Love likewise found his stroke in the conference finals, averaging 22.6 points against Boston while shooting 53.5 percent from three on a ridiculous 8.6 attempts per game.
The Warriors are the clear and deserved favorites against the Cavs, and for Cleveland to pull off another shocking Finals upset against Golden State, it will take the hot streak for Love and Irving to continue in order to keep up with the Curry-Thompson-Durant trio. Also of importance to Cleveland in the Finals is an improved bench unit, led by the mid-season additions of Kyle Korver and Deron Williams to give the bench an added scoring punch that was otherwise missing.
The biggest question for Cleveland is whether their defense, which was a below average unit for much of the regular season, will hold up to the test that the Warriors will provide. The Warriors, while the opposition was sub-par at times, were the best defensive team in the playoffs by a good margin with a 99.1 defensive rating. The Cavaliers’ 104.6 DRtg was a vast improvement on their regular season effort and good for third in the playoffs — second for teams that went beyond the first round — but that 5.5 point differential per 100 possessions is still significant.
After the Game 5 loss to Cleveland, Marcus Smart said you have to almost be perfect to take down the Cavaliers. That has been the problem for every Eastern Conference team that has faced the LeBron led Cavs or Heat over the past seven years. However, the role is reversed against the Warriors. To win four games off of this Golden State team, Cleveland will need to be almost perfect for at least five games — there will be one game that Golden State shoots the ball so well that it is simply unbeatable, no matter how great the opposition (even the Cavs) plays. So, that will be the question asked of Cleveland in this Finals.
It will require LeBron to be LeBron, Irving and Love to be as phenomenal as they were against the Celtics, and for the rest of the supporting cast to play up to the best of their abilities.
The margin for error against the Warriors is razor thin, but if there were ever a team that you believed could make it happen it’s this Cavs team as it stands entering the Finals. After three rounds of sub-par series in these NBA playoffs that have been defined by blowouts, the NBA Finals figures to wipe it all away with the two best teams playing for not just a title but bragging rights and pride.
The Warriors have had one thing on their minds all season, and that’s revenge. The Cavs are the only team in the league with the knowledge that they can indeed take down Golden State. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy what figures to be a tremendous show.
