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The Finals | Game 1 | Cavs @ Warriors | June 2nd, 2016 | 9:00pm EST

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Now how do we guard their stars without letting the roleplayers go off. Some of their roleplayers are physical mismatches. Would have been nice to have a Mozgov in the paint as a defensive pillar. I allowed this place to blindly convince me that we could run over them despite a shortage of facts and objective or historical match up analysis as to how we would do so. Nuff brave talk. Let's talk facts not emotions

I think you have to extend your bench with quicker substitutions. Even if you only give Moz two minutes a half (ala what GSW does with Varajao) it presents a different look. And for the life of me, I do not know why Frye did not play meaningful minutes and there were no 3 point plays run for our hot 3 point shooting team. Also, does anybody work with Love on his low post moves? He is so awkward in the post. Many post players are not all that athletic (like current Draymond Green) but for the life of me, I can't understand his post game. Is it his lack of upper body strength, is it a lack of patience? I know he tries to draw a foul but can he also look to realistically score too?
 
We played the "Stop Curry and Klay and let the other dudes beat you" and they did.. I'm glad we held down Curry and Klay and we were so close the whole game, but how the eff do you let washed-up-4-years-ago Barbosa torch you?? That pissed me off.

I still think we can do it though, we played pretty poorly and were close the whole game. If we made even half of our lay ups (seriously did we make anything within 3 feet of the basket??), it would be a different game IMO
 
Man really disappointed Lue tried to go with the same defense as we did vs. Lowry and Derozan. GS's role players are too good to give them wide open 3 after wide open 3, plus back cut after back cut.

Even more disappointing was TT and Love not properly being in position to guard the paint. You're making 200 mil between the two of you, figure out how to play defense.

I disagree with this completely. Cavs Got beat last night by the bench and role players. I'm Okay with that because its not going to happen most games even against a team with a good bench. You make small adjustments but just make sure that Curry, Thompson, and Green are not going off.

My biggest adjustment if I was Lue would be getting back to his normal rotation. Frye played 5 minutes of meaningful basketball. Thats not nearly enough. And one of our best lineups which include Love and Frye playing together. Did not even play last night.
 
but how the eff do you let washed-up-4-years-ago Barbosa torch you?? That pissed me off.

When it comes to the NBA finals you can't look over anybody. Guys who are washed up all the sudden see glory right there for the taking and its common for a little guy to step up big when given the chance. The problem with GSW is they are full of little guys who are actually quite good to boot.
 
LeBron has to obliterate Iggy on the floor.

We have to make GS double team so we can get those wide open 3's.
 
Need to get other players going. Lebron didn't shoot that well and needs to score 30+ but his drives and inside scoring only going to do so much. You need scoring from the role players not just isolation scoring.
 
We played the "Stop Curry and Klay and let the other dudes beat you" and they did.. I'm glad we held down Curry and Klay and we were so close the whole game, but how the eff do you let washed-up-4-years-ago Barbosa torch you?? That pissed me off.

I still think we can do it though, we played pretty poorly and were close the whole game. If we made even half of our lay ups (seriously did we make anything within 3 feet of the basket??), it would be a different game IMO

They made them in the first quarter. Then the average shot distance started to rise. Lebron average shot in the first quarter was a little over 2 feet. Then the rest of the game average was over ten. Thats not what the cavs need from James.

Posting James and Love was working well. They were scoring efficiently and getting good looks and getting other good looks when the warriors double teamed.
 
They made them in the first quarter. Then the average shot distance started to rise. Lebron average shot in the first quarter was a little over 2 feet. Then the rest of the game average was over ten. Thats not what the cavs need from James.

Posting James and Love was working well. They were scoring efficiently and getting good looks and getting other good looks when the warriors double teamed.

The thing is Lebron didn't really score when he posted up. Seems like the double comes and he passes out. Think Lebron needs more off the ball movement to get easy buckets going to the basket.
 
LeBron has to obliterate Iggy on the floor.

We have to make GS double team so we can get those wide open 3's.

The problem is that GS will just live with it. Iggy doesn't stop LeBron but he makes him just inefficient enough that trading 2's for 3's isn't really going to get us anywhere consistently.

If Golden State makes even 33% of their 3's (like last night), LeBron has to shoot north of 50% to get them to start helping. Last night he was 7/17 from 2 and he made a lot of really tough shots inside.

Kyrie has the ability to collapse the defense, because he has better defensive match ups but he's just not the passer LeBron is (both in skill and willingness).

Ultimately the Cavs are going to have to create open shots with ball movement, not with dribble penetration alone. There will be times when penetration will open up a shot (if someone falls asleep) but you don't beat this team by going one on one.....you beat them by moving the ball side to side, getting them late on their rotations and then having the swing man attack. Trying to attack them with simply a high ball screen and no other action is not going to be successful through the course of an entire game.
 
The thing is Lebron didn't really score when he posted up. Seems like the double comes and he passes out. Think Lebron needs more off the ball movement to get easy buckets going to the basket.

We've gotta have LeBron move and seal Iggy in the paint. However, KYRIE has to feed him the ball quickly so he can go up with it quickly. Love is the only one I trust to make the proper pass in the post to LeBron.
 
I think that the Cleveland Cavaliers can learn a lot from this game, coach Tyronn Lue has decided that he is doing whatever it takes to shut down the splash brothers, and he certainly did, they weren't as efficient as they usually are, Kyrie defended Curry very well.
But allocating all of our defensive resources on these two superstars caused us a big price against Golden State's fantastic bench, Leandro Barbosa and Livingston torched and tore us apart defensively, our guys couldn't handle them.

I think that we need to give the Warriors bench more credit, we shall not underestimate them in the next game, we should play strict defense on Curry and Thompson as we did in this game but we should be aware that no one on this team is suddenly catches fire from nowhere.

As for our big three, I was pretty satisfied with their abilities, Kyrie was great, LeBron was one assist shy from a triple-double and Kevin Love handled his first finals appearance really well with a nice double-double.
Although we were missing the last piece of the puzzle in this one I think we will win in the next game, but the Cavs will need a much better output from guys like Smith, Frye, Dellavedova, Jefferson and Shumpert.
 
This will sound weird but I'm pleased with this loss.

Not that I like losing, but because at the end of the day I'd rather have Barbosa-Livingston shooting than Klay and Steph. Their shots just happened to go in tonight. At one point it almost seemed comical.

9 games out of 10 we are beating them with Klay and Steph shooting this poorly.

Stay the course, don't waver and continue to shackle Klay-Steph because I will bet my bottom dollar Barbosa-Livingston isn't going to make their next 13 out of 15 shots.

Sounds like you're pleased with the way the cavs defended the warriors, not the loss. In the playoffs all that matters are wins and losses. There is absolutely nothing good about a loss. All though I agree if klay and steph shoot this poorly again, the cavs will probably win.... Just like you'd argue barbosa and livingston aren't making their next 13 out of 15 shots, Id argue the chances of steph and klay shooting this poorly again in the same game together are low.
 

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