The Big List Of Important Things From The First Three Games Of The 2015 NBA Finals
After Game 1, everyone was calling for Golden State sweep. So what the hell happened? How is Cleveland doing this? Can it continue?
(REMEMBER TO LOG IN AND RECOMMEND THIS STORY)
Listen. You’ve watched the first three games of the NBA Finals. You don’t need me to tell you how incredible, heart-pounding, bonkers and totally off the rails they’ve been. Let’s just dig right in and get to exactly what’s been important in this series so far, and why Cleveland has been able to stake itself to a surprising 2–1 series lead.
1. Cleveland grinding the tempo
The most noticeable thing about the Warriors this season, aside from their stifling defense and their fluid, share-the-ball offensive system, was their pace. They relentlessly pushed the ball up the floor off turnovers — missed shots and made shots alike — while leading the league in possessions per game by averaging 100.69 per contest, nearly 1.5 more than the next closest team.
No team in the NBA took a greater percentage of its shot attempts within the first six seconds of the shot clock than Golden State’s 23.3 percent mark. Whether it was a layup, a pull-up or a three from the trailer, the Warriors were always, always, always gunning for early offense.
In the Finals, they just haven’t been able to make that happen. The Cavaliers have slowed the games to a crawl with a well-designed game plan. Take a quick look at the effect before we get into the cause:
How, exactly are the Cavs doing this? It’s a four-pronged strategy:
- Run the clock down
- Avoid turnovers
- Attack the offensive glass
- Keep pressure in the backcourt on inbounds passes after made baskets
Cleveland has run the clock down to the last third of the shot clock on a ridiculous 42.1 percent of their shot attempts. That alone suppresses the amount of possessions in a game, and it also makes the Warriors work a little bit more than they’re normally used to on defense. Defending for 24 seconds is crazy hard.
The Cavs actually did a much better job of avoiding turnovers and hitting the offensive glass in Games 1 and 2 (13.9 TOV% and 27.3 ORB%) than in Game 3 (17.4 TOV% and 17.6 ORB%), but the concerted effort they’re making at each of those things pays dividends by forcing the Warriors into uncomfortable positions. Running isolation after isolation for LeBron on the left wing may not be the prettiest version of basketball you’ve ever seen, but it’s a great way to neutralize all that manic switching the Warriors do on defense, and to avoid giving the ball away and letting them get out and run.
When Cleveland has managed to score, they’ve made sure to put a bit more than token pressure on the subsequent inbounds pass, hoping to either delay it for a couple seconds or force the Warriors to resort to someone other than Stephen Curry bringing the ball up the floor.
James Jones wound up with a steal out of it in Game 1:
Dellavedova (and others) continued it in Game 2:
And it reappeared on more than one occasion in Game 3:
Every second you can delay the inbounds pass is another you have to get your half-court defense set and prevent the Warriors from getting one of those early-offense opportunities they love to chase so much. A simple little tactic like this goes a long way in thwarting the opportunity to run off made baskets, which the Warriors do more often than any team in the NBA.
2. Andre Iguodala defending LeBron on the left wing
This is the single most common sight of the series so far:
LeBron. Shot clock nearing zero. Left side of the floor cleared out. Iguodala right in his grill. Surveying the action and ready go to work.
Cue up video of any random Cleveland offensive play from the first three games of the series, and you’re incredibly likely to find LeBron attempting to work past, around or through Iguodala on the left side of the floor. It’s been that common.
Because so much of Cleveland’s offense has revolved around LeBron in the post or isolation, Iggy has become arguably Golden State’s most important player in this series. And boy, has he stepped up to the plate. Even while LeBron is putting up an otherworldly 41–12–8 line, it can’t really be argued that Iguodala has done an excellent job holding him in check. After all, LeBron is shooting just 40.5 percent.
Take a look at LeBron’s series shot chart, per NBA.com:
There’s a whole lot of red on that left side of the floor, where Iguodala has spent a whole lot of time digging in and just trying to hold his ground while LeBron bull rushes his way into pull-ups, runners, step-backs and fade-aways. Of LeBron’s 107 shot attempts in the series, 39 have come from the left side of the floor and outside the paint. He’s made just 12 of those shots, a testament to just how well Iguodala is forcing him into uncomfortable positions. If you remove threes from the equation, he’s just 7-of-27 from the left wing area.
Whether it’s a face-up of a backdown, some of the most important plays of the series have featured LeBron and Iggy going mano-a-mano down on the left wing. Take, for example, LeBron’s missed game-winner from Game 1:
Iguodala slides his feet parallel with LeBron every step of the way, using his chest and his arms to keep that beast from bullying his way through to the rim. Is it skirting the hand-check rules a bit? You bet. But if the refs are going to let that kind of thing go, as they have been on both ends throughout the series for the most part, you’d be a fool not to use that to your advantage.
Then there’s this attempt at extending the lead in Game 2:
Iguodala plays this one so well that he forces LeBron into giving it up to Iman Shumpert along the baseline, and Shump misses a highly contested three.
Iguodala hasn’t been on LeBron for every single possession of the series, of course. Harrison Barnes has put in work (that’s being kind; LeBron has worked him is more like it) on James, as have Draymond Green and Shaun Livingston. But it’s been Iguodala in every fourth quarter and overtime, trying to wrangle that mountain of a man, often all by his lonesome. It’s been miraculous to watch.
3. Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert and James Jones working as screeners on and off the ball
Because of the nature of a playoff series, oftentimes the atypical becomes incredibly important for a two-week span. When there’s only one opponent to game plan for, you zero in on the specific, little areas that you can take advantage of, and pound away at them until the other team makes an adjustment that forces you out of it. That’s what’s happened here.
James has been running a fair amount of pick and roll with Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson (and the Mozgov version in particular is creating terrific looks for them), but what’s been unusual about the series is how often Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert and even James Jones have been used to screen for LeBron’s man. But when you think about it in the context of pounding away at a specific weak spot for the opponent, it begins to make a lot more sense. They’re doing this so often because Stephen Curry is guarding those players.
It’s not that the Cavs are trying to take advantage of Curry because he’s a bad defender, per se, but rather they’re putting him in defensive positions he’s not used to being in. Point guards aren’t often the screener in pick and rolls, so Curry isn’t exactly practiced at hedging to contain a ball-handler and then scrambling back to his own man to prevent a three-point shot.
That’s why Dellavedova and Shumpert have each wound up with open looks out of that action. Steph is sometimes just a half-step too slow or too late getting out there, or he’s caught in the muck and not able to challenge the shot at all.
Not only is that a threat, but because Steph is jumping out high rather than looking to contain the dribble near the elbow as LeBron comes around a screen, if he doesn’t do it well enough, James has a free run right to the basket.
For example:
Steph doesn’t hedge quite far enough on this play, and starts his recovery back to Dellavedova while the Aussie still has Harrison Barnes pinned with his screen. The result: smash.
And it’s not just Shump and Delly. James Jones has gotten in on the action, too. Whether it’s slipping a screen entirely:
Or holding it for a beat before sliding out to the wing:
Jones has been more intimately involving in the offense than one would have expected.
These are the kinds of tricks the Cavs have had to go to without their second and third-best offensive creators on the floor, and with J.R. Smith struggling for so much of the series. If LeBron is the only guy out there who can truly create good looks, you’ve got to get weird. Cleveland has certainly done that.
4. Cleveland’s pick and roll defense, Draymond Green’s (lack of) offense and Golden State’s Game 3 counter — David Lee
The Cavs are making a concerted effort to get the ball out of Stephen Curry’s hands on every pick and roll. They’re stringing out every pick and roll, having Shumpert and Dellavedova fight over the top while Mozgov and Thompson slide step for step with Curry until he gives it up.
This is their ideal situation:
Steph not only passes the ball away, but the receiver isn’t even in a position to do anything dangerous because the defense is already recovering quickly.
The Cavs are content to turn Draymond Green (and to a lesser extent, Andrew Bogut, Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli) into a play-maker, fully comfortable with him attempting to navigate four-on-three or three-on-two situations behind the play after Steph gives it up. That strategy worked well in Games 1 and 2, and often resulted in Green facing situations that looked like this:
This looks initially like the Cavs might be in a bad defensive situation, but pay closer attention and you see why it’s working for them. LeBron and Smith are hugged pretty close to the shooters dotting the arc on the wings (though in this case the fact that the “shooters” are Iguodala and Leandro Barbosa means they can take an extra half-step toward the paint), while Mozgov is planted right in front of the rim, effectively cutting off Green’s access to an easy shot while also guarding Festus Ezeli.
This is what’s called, “daring Draymond Green to pull up for a mid-range jumper,” something he rarely ever does. He pulled the trigger on just 79 of them during the entire regular season, and he’s taken only two through the first three games of the Finals, despite having countless opportunities.
Instead, Green just throws a wild lob attempt:
In Game 3, Green tried to be more aggressive, repeatedly challenging Mozgov at the rim, seemingly trying to end the series — and/or Mozgov’s life — with a highlight dunk, or draw a foul. That was… well, let’s just say it was an unsuccessful endeavor.
And then, in arguably the biggest sequence of the game, Green passed up this wide-open look from three:
Instead he elected to challenge Mozzy at the rim yet again, only to be completely annihilated … again.
Green’s offensive ineptitude has been tough to watch. He’s been bricky from outside — just 1-of-9 from three — and alternately tentative and overaggressive when driving the lane. So in Game 3, the Warriors turned to a long-forgotten player to get their offense back on track: David Lee.
Lee’s best skill as a player is probably his ability to work as a play-maker out of the pick and roll. He’s able to catch and shoot, put the ball on the floor and take it to the rim, or pick out the correct passing lane to keep the ball moving. He did all that and more (i.e. helped Steph Curry find his rhythm) in Game 3.
Check out Lee’s two assists from the game, the first a whipped pass the Andre Iguodala in the corner and the second a dump-off to Leandro Barbosa, both out of the pick and roll with Stephen Curry:
The biggest key on both of these plays is that Lee is under control, unlike Green on many similar possessions.
More important than any of his individual contributions in Game 3, though, was that Lee’s presence helped Curry get going. Steph scored four baskets on pick and rolls with Lee in the fourth quarter alone. The first, a classic Stephback (TM) three, happened because the Cavs were threatened by Lee’s play-making on the roll, which caused them to switch rather than string it out.
Here’s the second such basket. Steph orchestrates a switch to get Tristan Thompson on him out on the perimeter once again, and this time, he takes Tristan right to the rim for a layup, something we’ve rarely seen him able to do in this series.
That second score featured many positive developments for the Warriors. Steph pushed the ball up the court in transition after a made basket, decisively came around a screen and drew a switch, and took advantage of the mismatch. That’s the Warriors we watched all season.
That play also gave the Dubs a hint of something that could work well for them in future games: multi-screener pick and rolls. It’s not just Lee setting a pick for Curry in that video, but Green does too. They broke out an even more elaborate multi-screen set later on, running Curry off three consecutive picks moving right to left in order to get him “free” for a three-point attempt.
We’ll see if any of these tactics carry over, but it has to be considered a good sign for the Warriors that they found something that allowed Steph to find open shots, which he’d barely done at all in nearly two full games.
5. LeBron may or may not be human
But all in all, this is really the most important thing, and it’s why the Cavs are holding a 2–1 lead.
LeBron James is shouldering levels of responsibility that are unheard of in basketball history. He’s playing a position that can truly only be described as “point power shooting center,” alternately bringing the ball up to set up the half-court offensive set, setting and receiving on and off-ball screens, methodically working from the post and pushing the ball up the court for targeted transition opportunities.
He’s played 142 of a possible 154 minutes. His usage rate is 42.4 percent. (To put that in perspective: the all-time highest usage rate among players with at least 142 minutes played in a particular playoff run is 39.1 percent.) His assist rate — the percentage of teammate baskets he’s assisted while on the floor — is 44.6 percent. And he’s corralled 22.6 percent of available defensive rebounds, to boot — no small feat considering the glass-waxing Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov have been doing.
To give you a better idea of just how much responsibility James is shouldering, consider this: The Cavs have scored 291 points in Games 1 through 3. LeBron has scored a first-three-games-of-the-Finals record 123 of them himself, while his 25 assists have yielded another 64 points and he’s created an additional 13 with secondary and free-throw assists. All in all, he’s had a hand in 200 of the 279 points the Cavs have scored while he’s been on the floor. That’s means LeBron’s directly created an unfathomable 71.7 PERCENT of the points Cleveland has scored with him in the game.
It’s become routine and expected at this point, but the way he has elevated the play of Cleveland’s role players — Mozgov, Dellavedova and Jones, in particular — through the first three games has been simply marvelous. The man is otherworldly, and what he’s doing in this series is something that we should all marvel at until the end of time, win or lose.
