Bully Ball: Or Cavs Add by Subtracting
While there were about 17 different narratives coming into Game 3, pretty much all of them surrounded LeBron James. Even if we were talking about Kyrie’s inefficient offense and non-existent defense. Or J.R. Smith’s sudden disability to take ill-advised jumpers at a moments notice. Or the fact that losing Kevin Love may not be such a bad thing for these Cavs. It all comes back to LeBron. Whether or not he will ever officially admit it, he’s the one who assembled this rag-tag group of misfits and degenerates around himself to ride or die in the finals. The one to bring in Kevin Love. The one to convince everyone that 80$+ mil for Tristan Thompson was a prudent financial investment. The one behind Shump’s contract extension (and I wouldn’t be surprise if he’s the one behind the Miguel haircut either). The one to bring in Frye. He even had a coach replaced mid-season on a whim. Last night, it looked like he at least too some ownership for that.
James has never been the most heuristic teammate. Instead of openly criticizing or pushing his teammates to improve, the focus has always been on being the shadow operative. The hand behind the scenes. The Petyr Baelish of the Cavaliers of Castelry Rock. His favourite past times included making playlists on Spotify, sub-tweeting his teammates and making Kevin Love act natural in social situations instead of like a cardboard cut-out he is. Not today. Today LeBron James was Tywin himself, barking at his teammates, directing traffic and flow across the floor and pulling up for transition threes. In a game with so much on the line, he was right there, on the front lines putting up what we would refer to as “the usual LeBron stat line, maybe even a little underwhelming for the personified version of the Ford F150”: 32–11–6 on 53.8% shooting.
Both Kyrie and J.R. seemed to wake up as well, and as far as they go, this team goes. While we will all inevitably hang the result on LeBron, win or lose, this team needs those two to play well, especially on offense. Doing so will limit The Warriors ability to hide Steph Curry on who ever is slumping more in the Cavaliers Infamous Den of Statistical Inefficiency and Ill-Advised Jumpshootery. LeBron recognized that and audibly (for once) called for them to attack Curry mid-game, not via Twitter. Every time that happened, the Cavs scored, or at least had efficient possessions. Kyrie and J.R. finished with 30 and 20 respectively on combined 50% shooting and 8/17 from the three. J.R. even had one of those “you kind of want to kill him if it doesn’t go in, but it actually goes in so that makes it kind of okay” fall-aways he’s known for.
More importantly, they did a great job on chasing both Curry and Klay off the line. As someone who played with and got bailed out by one of the greatest shooters of all time, LeBron has to realize how scary it is to go up against two of those at the same time. This Cavs team attacked them on D, forcing foul trouble, but also didn’t let them get into offensive rhythm. Curry and Klay both looked sluggish at best and weren’t given a moment’s notice to get going beyond the arc. The defense had 0 margin for error and they made none on the night where they could scarcely afford to. You will never be able to bottle up the lightning that is the Golden State offense, but if you can make it into more of a spark and less of a full blown thunderstorm you will have a better chance of winning.
Of course, we must address that they did all of this without Kevin Love who was supposed to be the third member of the All-Star triumvirate that is the Cavs. The narrative here will always be the same and whether you like it or not it has merit. Cavs are just better defensively without Love. While they can swallow Irving’s defensive inefficiency for what he brings on offense, with two of them on the floor the trade-off gets too big. Cavs are able to play pick and rolls better as well as rotate defensively. It lands more to their pace and ensures they run the best possible offense. Love just gets lost in the shuffle and doesn’t fit the blueprint that LeBron has built for this team even stand a chance of winning. This is tough because he still has the potential to be a very good player, but just not on this Cavaliers team. Do the doctor’s even call him before Monday? Does he travel to Golden State? Or does LeBron tweet about health being important and how some people need to take care of their body first and foremost? We’ll see.
