Kyrie's Big Night a Testament to What He Is and What He Has Yet to Become
CLEVELAND — Put the re-evaluation on hold.
The history of 3-0 leads in the NBA playoffs suggests that the Cleveland Cavaliers still eventually must contemplate an overhaul if they want to keep up with the Golden State Warriors in the future. But Game 4 of the 2017 NBA Finals at least nudged the introspection to the backburner Friday night.
In so doing, Kyrie Irving was able to submit further evidence to the jury of his unique worth to Cleveland...and to LeBron James as his co-star.
These playoffs have re-established how high James' ceiling remains. As a result, the only place to start the eventual scrutiny of the Cavaliers is with the literal No. 2: Irving.
And the relevant questions also are two:
Is there someone who fundamentally makes for a better fit than Irving as James' co-star in Cleveland?
Is Irving going to use this NBA Finals defeat, assuming it comes, to motivate him as meaningfully as the other did two years ago?
The answer to both questions is tied to the same issue: how much Irving is prepared for, even hellbent on, evolving his game.
Irving scored only a combined 43 points in the first two games of this series, both won easily by Golden State. The Cavaliers nearly won Game 3 in large part because of Irving's 38 points, only to eventually lose in part because of his ill-advised step-back three-point miss over Klay Thompson.
Irving dwelled on that bad late-game possession for 48 hours, James told reporters, and in Game 4, he aggressively bounced back.
With his first shot Friday night, Irving hit a step-back three over Stephen Curry. On his second, he drilled a step-back over Thompson. The Cavaliers rolled from there to their first victory in the series, 137-116; Irving finished with 40 points.
He also shot well—55.6 percent in Game 4 after shooting 55.2 percent in Game 3—with the dramatic difference of going 7-of-12 on three-point shots Friday after going 0-of-7 on them Wednesday. Irving was only one shy of the NBA Finals record of eight three-pointers in a game (Ray Allen, 2010).
Quite a way to forget about the step-back three-point shot that Irving second-guessed as a play in which he "didn't necessarily make the right decision."
Irving is a deep (albeit unconventional) thinker whose willingness to wallow in failure fuels his motivation to redeem it. His uncommon determination has quickly become something everyone, including James, simply expects from him—in addition to his fearlessness when it comes to center stage.
"I've said that over and over again that he's always been built for the biggest moments, and tonight he showed that once again," James said late Friday night. "It's not surprising. He's just that special."
Whether the passing of the title back to Golden State is inevitable as soon as Monday in Game 5, Irving at least got to make his case that he's not the personnel problem for James.
It's an argument he also made a year ago when sinking that critical three-point shot over Curry in the final minute of Game 7. That success made it impossible to assert too loudly that Irving's ball-handling and scoring skills were redundant considering James' greatest strengths.
But if Cleveland loses this series in only five games, it will be hard to ignore the fact that Irving's ongoing defensive deficiencies mattered more this time. He has been consistently late and irresponsible on defense. He's never been a two-way standout, and it's unclear if he really wants to be.
As fun as it is to watch Irving drop high-degree-of-difficulty shots from all over the court, the Warriors' style and success make isolation offense look outdated in today's NBA.
The Cavaliers' win last year certified that Irving was still state of the art. Things change fast, though.
This year's iPhone becomes next year's paperweight. (That must make Deron Williams a flip phone, right?)
Game 4 was Irving's statement that his individual excellence on offense still takes a huge load off James and will as long as they're together.
"We got [down] to [13]," Golden State's Draymond Green said, "and Kyrie hit like the toughest three I've seen all year."
Yes, there is a deflating power in Irving's shot-making, but is it enough? If the Cavs can get only one game from the Warriors, how do you make up so much ground in the future?
Even with the avalanche of points and threes—and Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue finally adjusting his rotation to rest James and Irving more separately to hide Cleveland's depth issues—Irving didn't exactly hold the fort without James to start the fourth quarter Friday.
Irving got a couple of minutes of rest to end the third frame, which Cleveland ended with a 19-point lead after James sank a buzzer-beating three before he went for his rest.
But the Cavs looked frazzled to start the fourth. Irving missed Cleveland's first two shots, and James had to be rushed back in with 10:23 to play, the lead down to 13 points.
With James back, Irving didn't cede control, however, and it was Irving—not James—who hit the gut-punch three-pointer Green cited, plus another basket against a Warriors defense overloading to Irving.
It was an apt summation of this whole issue: Irving's scoring does feel like it can save the day next to James, but there are a lot of days of the week.
As potent as Irving was in Game 4, the Cavs outscored the Warriors only by seven points with him on the court…compared to 32 points with James on the court.
Ultimately, the answer for the Cavaliers lies in how Irving implements his unwavering drive to improve.
After missing most of the 2015 NBA Finals with injury, Irving worked hard to make himself more durable. And he has become an even more relentless scorer.
Are upgrades in defense and passing and leadership still to come for someone who is only 25? Lue hasn't exactly forced those vegetables onto Irving's plate, mainly encouraging him to tap into his natural strength as a multidimensional scorer. But if Irving wants to make the most of James' championship window, the Cavs must find more ways to win.
It's unrealistic to think Irving can pull all that together right now to save this series and this season. For the next campaign, though, James had better be insistent that Irving broadens his mind.
After watching Irving's pivotal Game 3 miss, James said, "We live with that. We live with our star point guard taking a shot that he's capable of making."
Yet James also must know that his Cavs had to live with the poor judgment that led to that miss. On the play, James had motioned for JR Smith to set a screen—which would've opened up the possibility of Irving getting to go one-on-one at Curry instead of Thompson—only for Irving to wave off Smith, leaving Smith throwing up his hands in helplessness and Irving to take a poor shot.
As unstoppable an offensive force as he can be, his future with James must feature far more growth than stubbornness—even if Game 4 showed that stubbornness is pretty powerful.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
