Cavaliers vs. Warriors: Latest Comments and Odds for 2017 NBA Finals
One might not guess it after a pair of eye-popping blowouts, but there's quite a lot to say about the 2017 NBA Finals.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are on the ropes as they head home for Wednesday's Game 3 at 9 p.m. ET inside the friendly confines of Quicken Loans Arena, much as they did one year ago against these Golden State Warriors.
Well, not these Golden State Warriors. There isn't much of anything close to these Warriors in NBA history. This group, led by new arrival Kevin Durant, waved off the pursuit of a perfect season and decided to go for 16-0 in the playoffs which, after the first two games of the Finals, seems more likely than not.
As such, it isn't a shocker to hear much of the commentary surrounding the series center on Cleveland's underdog role. Nor is it a shock to find out oddsmakers out of Las Vegas peg the Warriors as 3.5-point favorites Wednesday night in Game 3, according to OddsShark.
What's that? The home team should be the favorite? Not in this series—oddsmakers had the Warriors floating around seven-point favorites in each of the first two games and they cruised to 113-91 and 132-113 outcomes.
This isn't a simple case of oh-they'll-turn-it-around-like-they-did-last-year basketball. Durant is crushing LeBron James on the defensive end, running him ragged by the fourth frame, and the Cavaliers around him aren't easing the offensive burden. And the vaunted Cavaliers postseason defense now seems like a mirage tandem of feasting on a weak Eastern Conference and meeting an unstoppable force.
James, while trying to point out the positives after Game 2, summed up the dire situation quite well.
"I thought for the most part, with the game plan that we had, we tried to execute it as close as possible," James said, according to ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst. "We were much more physical today than we were in Game 1, and we forced them to 20 turnovers. And they still beat us pretty good."
The point isn't hard to find here—Cleveland needs perfect basketball to win and simply isn't getting it.
In Game 1, Golden State only turned the ball over four total times. The Cavaliers had 20, with a staggering 11 total between James and Kyrie Irving. So as James noted, Cleveland forced Golden State into sloppier play in Game 2, but it doesn't matter if the Warriors counteract it by shooting 51.7 percent from the floor and 41.9 percent from deep and win other key areas like rebounding (53-41) and assists (34-27).
Durant makes it all go. This isn't last year or years prior, where the Cavaliers got a free pass to ignore someone like Harrison Barnes. Stephen Curry and others are great, but they aren't the isolation players Durant is—few are. There's a reason Durant had 38 points, nine rebounds and eight assists in Game 1, then followed it up with 33, 13 and six in Game 2.
Call it a well-oiled machine. With LeBron chasing Durant around or—even worse—hoping someone else can do the job, Curry and the rest of the Warriors are, in a word, efficient. Recently returned head coach Steve Kerr had this to say about his star point guard after Game 2, according to Sporting News' Sean Deveney: "Even when he's not making shots, he's bringing defenders all the way out to the perimeter, which opens up so much. He pushes the ball relentlessly, and obviously he got going there in the third after a poor first half. But he changes the game, just by being himself and being out there and attacking."
Others, such as Draymond Green, echoed the sentiments while praising the Durant-Curry tandem.
"They're two of our leaders we follow," Green said, according to CBSSports.com's Matt Moore. "With them playing like that, it's 'everybody has to be locked in,' when you got two guys locked in like that. So they continue to do that, which I have no doubt in my mind they will, we'll continue to follow their lead."
There are many different ways to depict how potent the Warriors machine is thanks to Durant. The best, and perhaps most gashing for folks hailing from the greater Cleveland area, is simply comparing it to the chaos around LeBron.
Hoop's Josh Eberley offered up the evidence:
Can the Cavaliers turn this around? It's hard to say, though clearly oddsmakers and those in the know don't seem overly positive. From the sounds of it, the Cavaliers will bank on playing Iman Shumpert more and crossing the fingers he can slow Durant, according to ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin.
It's all the Cavaliers really have left. If Shumpert can make Durant stutter at all, it frees up LeBron to focus more of his energy toward the offensive end of the court and perhaps prevents him from getting visibly gassed by the final frame.
In turn, perhaps the Cavaliers can get back to their defensive-minded ways at home—provided they don't cough up big runs.
"We definitely have a sense of what they’re capable of, and we felt like a lot of times tonight we played better basketball," Kevin Love said, according to the Associated Press (via FoxSports.com). "But they're a team you cannot—you can’t let them go on runs."
All talk aside, Game 3 and the series beyond will come down to Cleveland's adjustments and the ability to respond to those runs by the Warriors, a team clearly deeper and almost surgically constructed simply to defeat these Cavaliers.
Oddsmakers left just enough leeway here for those hunting quality payouts to feel comfortable with the Cavaliers at home. But like predicting the teams who would partake in the Finals before the season even started, there seems to be little reason to overthink this one.
It's up to LeBron and the Cavaliers to change the narrative.
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