Cleveland Responds With A Complete Blowout In Game 3
Home court advantage. Last night’s win made CLE 8-0 at home this postseason and probably furthered their frustration that they aren’t facing OKC (they’d have home court in that series). The Warriors obviously won their games at home, and as cliche as the saying is, the series doesn’t start till someone loses at home. Game 3 was some weird basketball version of Freaky Friday. As bad as the Cavs looked up in the Bay, the Warriors looked worse in CLE, and as good as the Warriors were in GS, CLE was even better last night. Playing for their basketball lives, the Cavs needed a great performance from each of their starters and shockingly enough, that’s exactly what they got. It all obviously starts with Lebron, who’s Game 3 performance was eerily similar to what he did in the 2015 Finals, but when I say everyone, I mean everyone had an ideal performance
After the first two games, when you thought about what CLE had to do to get back into the series, they needed strong games from Irving, they needed to force GS to turn the ball over, Tristan Thompson needed to wake up and be a force on the offensive glass, and JR had to do some JR things and hit threes. All things that are more likely to happen at home. Well, look at that graphic above, that’s exactly what happened.
Golden State turned the ball over 18 times. They shot 9-33 from deep. Where have we seen that before? Oh yeah, the losses to OKC. When GS turns it over and can’t make threes, they get in a funk. The Warriors were out rebounded 52-32. CLE won the points in the paint battle 54-32. They won the fast break battle 15-8. Any way you want to slice it, this was a complete and utter beatdown.
You could tell there was a different level of intensity right from the start of the game. That first quarter was painful for GS. Their defensive effort was nonexistent (CLE shot 71%), they allowed Irving to basically do whatever he wanted, and with that came big momentum shots. The Warriors had five turnovers, and if going 1-10 from deep wasn’t painful enough, both Klay and Curry went 0-fer. Kerr summed it up perfectly
It’s hard to imagine we could be three games into these Finals and both Steph and Klay haven’t broken the 20 point mark yet. I don’t think ANY of us saw that coming. I mean, Curry had as many turnovers (6) as baskets, and Klay was a game worst -27! Not to mention their role players didn’t show up on the road, and the Warriors never had a shot.
Obviously, the big elephant in the room is what the hell does CLE do with Kevin Love now? I don’t think you can ignore how poorly they played with him, and how well they played last night. I do think you have to try and take a step back and realize that obviously you were going to play better at home anyways, so it’s not a situation where I think you can’t play Love, but it wouldn’t shock me if A) He mysteriously keeps not getting medically cleared B) If he does come back, Lue probably limits his minutes. That’s not exactly what you want to hear for a guy you pay that much money to, but in the playoffs, it’s all about matchups. Just like GS got back in the game early by going to their small lineup, Lue needs to have the balls to adjust his lineup based on the matchups of GS. Now this Cavs lineup only works if Richard Jefferson is able to pull his weight, and after 33 minutes which is something he did only 5 other times all year, most recently on April 13th, I don’t know if you can bank of that for an entire series.
While it would have been nice to see the Cavs get swept, I certainly won’t complain about the little spike in drama. GS can still easily split this and close out in Game 5, so in my opinion this was more delaying the inevitable than anything else.
Fuck Lebron.