Cavs Can't Just 'Pray to the Basketball Gods' to Get Stops Against the Warriors
OAKLAND, Calif. — The best part about a playoff series is the extra strategy that goes into each game. During the course of an 82-game season, teams can coast—especially ones as good as the Golden State Warriors.
So when the NBA Finals come around, the mental game becomes even more important. Never was that more apparent than in Sunday's Game 2 rout of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Stephen Curry connected on an NBA Finals record nine made three-pointers. Klay Thompson, who had been questionable to play with a high ankle sprain, scored 20 points and Kevin Durant flew under the radar with 26 points on 10-of-14 shooting. What led to this incredible display, and what should encourage them more than anything, is their complete annihilation of the Cavaliers lazy defensive switches.
"You can't eliminate him," Cavs guard George Hill told reporters. "He took 17 of them things. You know he's gonna hit some shots. Just got to continue to pray to the basketball gods, do what you can to challenge shots and don't let him get the easy ones."
The Cavs can't just 'pray to the basketball gods' as Hill suggested. They need to tighten up their defensive rotations and communicate a lot better, or the Warriors' buzzsaw will roll as usual.
The first play of the game is a great example. The Warriors knew that the Cavs' game plan was to switch pick-and-rolls in an attempt to keep Curry from getting too much space. The last thing they wanted to do was let him get hot.
This is a simple tweak from the Warriors, but it opened a floodgate. JaVale McGee couldn't be sniff a second of floor time against the Houston Rockets because of his defensive deficiencies on the perimeter. Now, he started Game 2 of the finals and has now gone 8-of-9 from the field and was a perfect 6-of-6 in Game 2.
"It's a lot different," McGee said of playing with the Warriors' four All-Stars, "just because everyone isn't focused on you so much. They are focused on Draymond [Green] getting people open and assisting everybody. They are focused on Klay, KD and Steph scoring. So it makes it a lot easier on me."
Shaun Livingston got in on the fun and went 5-of-5 from the floor with a pair of easy layups on slips.
"He played great tonight," Livingston said of McGee. "His energy just kind of helps us get into our pace. That's a pace we want to play at throughout the game, which is high speed, high intensity, high energy, pushing the ball. When he runs the floor, it opens up the floor for us."
The Warriors thrive on chaos, and without an alert help defense, the switching only fed the beast rather than taming it.
"That's our game plan defensively," Tristan Thompson told reporters after the game. "We saw Houston do a good job doing that [in the Western Conference Finals] so we piggybacked that. With that said, we have to do a better job of communicating. With this team, they move a lot. They're not a conventional, NBA-style team. They have guys that are moving constantly, and if you stop for a second and relax, Klay and Steph will get open in the corner, or KD or Draymond will get a back cut. We have to have our head on a swivel for the entire 24 seconds and give maximum effort."
It takes a ton of mental fortitude to defend the Warriors for 24 seconds, let alone 48 minutes. But there were too many simple breakdowns for the Cavs to be competitive in this game.
Watch Jordan Bell get two easy slams simply as a result of miscommunication and lazy help:
Once the Cavs defense broke down, they had to repurpose their energy toward stopping McGee and Bell from getting open dunks, and that came at the expense of defending Curry. Once the Warriors had gotten enough action from their auxiliary options, Curry took over. Because the Cavs then had to worry about the roll man, Curry had the time and space to feast.
"Just miscommunication," Hill said of the Cavs defensive breakdowns. "Some of those easy layups and dunks, we need to communicate better, watch film and figure out how we can get everyone on the same page."
Curry got himself going on the same actions. On the first play below, Jeff Green is late to the switch party and Curry gets a layup with no help stepping over. In the second part, a decoy screen throws off Love and George Hill, and the miscommunication allows Curry a clean look from deep.
There were some good defensive switches throughout this game. Love did an admirable job on this one, considering what he was asked to do when defending Curry on an island.
But Curry got a few easy ones and the game snowballed out of control.
On some level, Hill actually is right about praying to the basketball gods. Curry, Durant and Thompson will have their day's regardless of how well you defend them. But the Cavs need to do a much better job of eliminating easy scoring opportunities from the rest of the Warriors' team to keep themselves alive any longer.
The Warriors stumped the Cavs in Game 2 by making them pay for poor communication on switches. But that's just one game. We know the Cavaliers will try to come back with an answer. They'll have to if they want to maintain any final grip on the series at all.
All stats via NBA.com unless otherwise noted. Follow Will on Twitter @wontgottlieb.
