Cavaliers Desperately Need to Make These Adjustments vs. Warriors in Finals
Simply heading home to Northeast Ohio isn't going to fix the Cleveland Cavaliers' multitude of problems. Down 2-0 to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, the Cavs have been a shell of their postseason selves, with glaring issues in every area of their game.
"We didn't win anything," LeBron James said after Game 2 while examining the box score, per Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal.
What once looked to be a competitive series on paper has become the most lopsided start in Finals history. The question now becomes: Will Cleveland even win a single game?
All kudos to the Warriors, the defending champs and owners of the best regular-season record ever. They've been great, even with MVP Steph Curry and Klay Thompson yet to explode. The rest is on James and the Cavs, who've reverted to some previous bad habits.
Returning to the friendly confines of Quicken Loans Arena, where the Cavs are 7-0 this postseason, will help, as will some necessary adjustments.
Want It More
Before we get into the X's and O's: Nothing in this series will change if the Cavaliers don't fix their attitude.
Cleveland sleepwalked through large portions of the regular season, totaling just 57 wins with a roster that was probably capable of 10 more. Effort and passion were often lacking, which is baffling considering this team is collecting $110 million in paychecks.
It appeared the switch had been flipped once the playoffs began. The Big Three finally felt like a cohesive trio, playing their best basketball to date as a unit. The three-point shot suddenly became an elite weapon thanks to the precision of J.R. Smith, Channing Frye and Kevin Love (just to name a few). And the Cavaliers possessed the best fourth-quarter defense of any playoff team.
Where is that team?
There's no excuse for the Warriors to be the hungrier squad. They just won a championship last year and achieved the highest level of regular-season success this year. Cleveland finally got the matchup it wanted after limping through the 2015 Finals against these same Warriors, with a 52-year title drought to erase and perhaps the best basketball player in the world leading the way.
How could Golden State possibly "want it" more than the Cavs? If Cleveland can finally come out with the passion, intensity and aggressiveness it displayed in the first three rounds, only then can it begin to fix everything else.
Trust + Passing = Points!
Golden State (25.0) and Cleveland (22.9) were ranked first and second in assists per game among all playoff teams coming into the Finals. Now they're heading in opposite directions.
The Warriors' ball movement has somehow improved, up to 27.5 dimes per contest. As for the Cavs? A free-fall down to 16.0, a mark that would have ranked dead last in the regular season.
Cleveland, led by James and Kyrie Irving, has once again degraded into hero-ball mode when things get tight. Perhaps it's the hostile environment. Perhaps it's an urge to exploit one-on-one matchups and a failure to trust teammates.
The problem with this, of course, is the Warriors are too tremendously talented with their help defense. Trying to get by Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes or Andre Iguodala is tough enough. Meeting Draymond Green or Andrew Bogut in the paint is even worse.
As good as James may be, he's not going to beat an entire Warriors squad by himself.
"It takes a great team effort," Barnes told Bleacher Report earlier this season. "You look at guys like Bogut, Draymond, Festus, big guys behind you that can help our guards, myself, Andre or whoever's guarding, get that double-team and help, that's what really limits him."
In two games, James has already registered 25 isolation possessions. The Warriors as a team have 30, per B/R Insights.
Ball movement isn't a difficult concept, and we shouldn't write off the Cavs just yet. But looking at the numbers through two games reveals that Cleveland as a collective unit needs to trust each other far more than it has.
| Warriors | 302.0 | 27.5 | 48.5 | 66.0 |
| Cavs | 271.0 | 16.0 | 33.0 | 38.0 |
When James and Irving get sticky hands, the rest of the supporting cast suffers.
J.R. Smith has gone AWOL, making just two of his seven three-point attempts in 70 minutes of action. Matthew Dellavedova is 1-of-3 from deep, while Richard Jefferson has missed his only three-point attempt. These are all players who depend on crisp ball movement.
The catch-and-shoot three was one of the Cavaliers' best weapons in the first three rounds, as they led all playoff teams with a 46.8 percent success rate on 23.2 attempts per game. A lack of passing has killed these opportunities, with Cleveland now shooting just 30.8 percent on a lowly 13.0 tries.
Quick Fixes
With just two days off between Games 2 and 3, here are some other speedy adjustments Cleveland can make:
Contest Draymond Green
The man has proved he can shoot already, yet the Cavs puzzlingly continue to dare him to hoist from distance.
Green's open looks often come following a pick-and-roll with Curry. The Cavaliers have chosen to primarily trap the two-time MVP, leaving Green to spot up behind the arc. This is fine, as Curry has no choice but to get rid of the ball in this situation, and that's Cleveland's goal in the first place.
However, whether it's James, Channing Frye and others, the Cavs have then been slow to close out on Green even when they've had the time, apparently daring him to shoot. He's responded with seven makes in 14 tries from deep, good for 50 percent. Following a career-high 38.8 percent shooting in the regular season, the Cavaliers can't keep letting Green have open looks.
Switch Iguodala Off James
I used to consider Kawhi Leonard the best one-on-one defender of James. Not anymore.
Consider Iguodala's individual work on James, per ESPN's Ethan Sherwood Strauss:
"In the last 10 regular-season and playoff meetings between the Warriors and Cavs, James has shot 32-of-91 (35 percent) with Iguodala as his primary defender. In that span, James has yet to solve Iguodala’s combination of speed, savvy and well-timed swipe downs.
"
Cleveland must be aware of this, because it did use James during occasional 1-3 and 2-3 pick-and-rolls simply to switch Iguodala off in favor of Curry or Thompson. This can no longer be a sometime thing, but rather an all-the-time thing.
More Frye, Please
Frye has been banished to the bench this series for reasons that are difficult to figure out. Although not the strongest pick-and-roll defender, he is leading all playoff scorers in effective field-goal percentage (79.4) and provides excellent floor-spacing for James and Irving.
Regardless of Love's participation in Game 3 while he goes through concussion protocol, Frye needs a big bump in minutes. He's knocking down an outstanding 56.5 percent of his three-pointers, giving Cleveland 7.6 points during just 14.3 minutes per game.
Frye typically gives outsized effort on both ends, an otherwise absent quality on these Finals Cavaliers. A couple of quick-trigger threes from the 6'11" forward can rapidly turn the tide of the game.
The first two contests in this series have been awful from the Cavs' perspective, but there's nothing they can't fix. Increasing ball movement, trusting teammates and simply playing with more aggression and focus will do wonders.
This is a team that made it to the Finals for a reason and has a roster that has vastly underperformed to this point.
While the Warriors are cruising, Cleveland hasn't played anywhere close to its best basketball yet.
Greg Swartz is the Cleveland Cavaliers Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @CavsGregBR.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless cited. Stats via Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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