Return of the King
Or

A Championship 40 Years in the Making

In case I wasn’t direct enough in the title, let me spell it out for you. The Warriors are going to win this series and be crowned NBA champions for the first time in 40 years. This is Lebron James’ fifth straight finals, and without him this is a team that would probably have lost in the second round to a Bulls team that did not play up to its potential. He is to be commended for an absolutely incredible performance, even though it was for him, kind of mediocre. *See footnote*

If you think that kind of superlative forecasting is an affront to the Basketball Gods, well, good, you’ve been paying attention.

They do punish hubris, as was demonstrated once more when my dreams of jumping a lottery pick from 2 to 1 to snag Karl Anthony Towns resulted in a sad weekend long binge on Chinese Basketball Association film trying to talk myself into a 19 year old guard that can’t hit free throws when the Lakers jumped the Knicks to snag the two spot. The Basketball Gods have a long memory, and the Knicks franchise has committed as many sins in their eyes as anyone.

But my hubris in this case matters not in the eyes of the Basketball Gods because I’m not a Warriors fan, so my super confidence about their chances does nothing to throw a Spike Lee style NBA hex on them. (Note: a Knicks team could go 82-0 regular season and 4,4,4 to reach the finals and I would still find a way to hedge). This is the reality then, the Warriors are the better team, by a significant margin, and this will be a quick (and I hope highly entertaining) Finals.

Just some brief notes on why the Warriors will win this series.

They will do so because their team was the number one offense in the league all season long. They have a mismatch on offense at basically every position, and are a quick pick away from dragging Tristan Thompson to the top of the key against the reigning MVP. Curry’s release is clocked at .4 seconds .4! A jab step or a pump fake and Curry has enough time to get up 2 shots and eat a sandwich against the overmatched (but much improved) Thompson. Throw away your whiteboard as soon as Curry catches the ball Blatt, it will shave years off your life

None of this is to take away from what the Cavaliers have accomplished here. This is a team that lost Kevin Love and came back from 2-1 against the Bulls to follow that up with a sweep of a 60 win team. That is impressive. This is Lebron James fifth straight finals. That is insane.

But…The Cav’s have serious issues. Kyrie Irving cannot guard Klay or Steph, and JR Smith is going to get beat in transition multiple times per game. That is a lot of points they are just not going to get back. This Warriors team is undefeated when it gets up by 15 points this year. They close games. Hard.

Lebron has struggled mightily from everywhere outside the paint, and looked about ready to die after winning the Hawks series. That was 4 games, against a very beat up team and he did not have particularly strenuous defensive assignments. You better believe going at Barnes, Green, Iggy and chasing Cury off switches above the break is going to be a whole lot more taxing.

The Warriors team will have watched the Hawks series, when Coach Bud (former Spurs Assistant coach) employed a tactic that has worked against Lebron at certain times in his career – let him shoot jumpers but deny the post and the rim at any cost – and they had a lot of success. The Warriors will do the same if they need to, and will happily shut down the 3 point line so JR can’t be JR and Dellavedova and Irving sit parked in 3 point land going nowhere. There is nobody on the Warriors that could consistently stop James from posting up if he decides to attack the rim frequently and hard, but Barnes is very strong for his size and Lebron is going to get tired out chasing around this pick and roll heavy, always cutting, track and field enthusiast Warriors team.

Further, Lebron’s jumper has looked shaky during the playoffs, and his 3 point shooting (with notable exception) has dropped off a cliff. For Lebron to be shooting at a sub 30% rate from downtown should be earth shattering stuff and it would be if he still didn’t find a way to win. The Warriors won’t be so brave (or stupid) as to give him open looks but they won’t need to front him or ball deny him beyond 25 feet, and that will buy them crucial steps on switches into the paint and will kill the Cav’s efforts to run high pick and roll plays. And the Cav’s are not very efficient on these sorts of plays to begin with.

Cleveland has looked very good in the playoffs, but this is fool’s gold in a weaker than ever Eastern Conference. The Cav’s offensive system since the Celtics series has devolved into “my turn, your turn” iso-ball of borderline Knicksian proportions, they finish nearly 12 percent of their possessions with an isolation play. And even though they have Irving and James who are some of the best at creating their own shot, this is not going to trouble the Warriors one bit, and it is going to wear on Lebron 40+ minutes a game trying to carry the offense. Paradoxically, the longer this series goes, the better the Warriors chances are of winning any individual game.

All that said, the Warriors are by no means perfect. Klay Thompson has shot poorly for most of the playoffs, and they turn the ball over more than any other playoff team (15.7 times per 100 possessions).  Counter intuitively there is not much here to exploit for the Cav’s. It might be tempting to gamble on passing lanes a lot to exploit sloppy play, but the best way to beat teams with a high turnover rate is to let them do it to themselves. The Cav’s will need discipline on defence, particularly from their wings, and I don’t think Shumpert (given to ball watching) or JR (born to gamble) are in position to take advantage. Kyrie is their best bet to get a bucket on offense if (and this is a very, very big if) he is healthy. If he is healthy the Cav’s will punish Klay or Curry on offense just enough to make up for Irvings sieve-like perimeter defense, and expect whoever spends the lion’s share of time on Kyrie to see their numbers suffer on offense.

Draymond Green, Bogut and Klay are still given to silly fouls that can take them out of the action for crucial stretches, the Cav’s (by which I mean Lebron) will need to pressure these defenders into these kinds of fouls early and often every game to have any hope of shaking the Warriors defence.

It’s been very interesting to watch and read all the various sportscasters analysis of this series the last few days, as it has largely amounted to this:

“Without Lebron on this Cav’s team, I’d pick a sweep. As is, this could be a seven game nail-biter.”

And as much as I respect Lebron as a player and particularly as a playmaker that improves every roster he anchors, this is not going to be pretty. This Warriors team is going to exploit every mismatch and every blown rotation to rain death on the Cav’s.

Think about it. In some ways this Warriors team plays just like last year’s Spurs, except they are younger, faster, and somehow have even more shooting.

This year’s Cav’s team on the other hand would have been crushed by last year’s Heat team. Is this a confusing way of looking at things? Maybe! But stay with me here.

Last year the Heat had comparable shooting on the perimeter (if anything it was a bit better), a legit stretch 4 in Chris Bosh to create space for Wade and James to drive and kick, and a motion offense that was honed to perfection over 4 years of playing together. This is the third incarnation of this Cavaliers team this season.

That being said the current incarnation of the Cavaliers is the best defensively by a mile. But the secret to that defence is also a big weakness on offense as the Cav’s have very little space to work with when Thompson and Mosgov share the floor and you want Lebron driving into the paint. They’ve played together for about 15 minutes a game during these playoffs, and the Warriors should be able to shut down Cav’s sets during these stretches. The Cav’s better hope they break the all-time record for offensive rebounds or risk being run out of the gym.

Familiarity and chemistry counts for a lot and this Cav’s team is short on both. A lot of the “hot takes” I’ve seen on the Warriors since the playoffs started have focused on their “lack of championship experience”, but a lot of the key pieces on this team have made multiple playoff runs together, which is not something you can say about any of the key Cav’s players beyond Lebron.
When it’s all said and done, The Warriors will host the Larry “Least-Compelling-Sports-Trophy-Name” O’Brien in 5 games.

Warriors in 5.

Other Things

JR Smith and Shumpert, Knicks hand-me-downs, are about to be crucial members of a Finals team. The Knicks reward is the 4^th pick, a franchise worst season, and a seemingly inevitable Brook Lopez Max Contract. Christ.

People who are looking at Lebron legacy re: ratio of finals wins, just stop it. 5 straight finals is an incredible feat. You know Larry Bird went 2-3 right? Jerry Freaking West was 1-8. And besides beating the Spurs the first time should basically be like, triple point score

These playoffs feel like they were robbed by denying both Warriors Clippers and Warriors Spurs, and so for that I’m hoping very much to be wrong about my 5 game prediction. Fans deserve a 7 game marathon for putting up with so much hacking and disappointment this injury riddled season.

The case against hacking will probably be hurt by the sound shooting fundamentals of these Finals, I don’t think the league will ever do anything major to the rules around intentional fouling until it ruins a Finals game. But maybe they’ll hack Thompson and Iggy just to prove a point.

This article goes in-depth on Curry’s shooting. Kind of makes me wish I’d called a sweep.

***Note above *** Only Lebron James can have a night with 37 points, 18 rebounds, and 13 assists and you stop and think “He really didn’t play all that well”. But Lebron is a standard of excellence all to himself.