From those courtside seats at Oracle Arena all the way up to the nosebleeds, the yellow T-shirts that made this place look like the surface of the sun on Thursday night carried the same Golden State Warriors message.
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Cleveland have undoubtedly enjoyed the easiest passage to the finals, losing just two of 14 games on their way to the Eastern Conference title, including a clean sweep of Drummond’s own Pistons in the first round.
As the dust settled after three rounds of the National Basketball Association playoffs, which featured four seven-game series as well as a multitude of blowouts, the two teams left standing are the top seeds from their respective conferences, the reigning champion Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Unfamiliar territory: The Cavs trail in a series for the first time in this postseason. “This has been our team the last couple of years”.
Golden State kept Cleveland to only 35.7 percent shooting in the first half on the way to a 52-43 halftime lead.
“But we’ve said all year that if we defend and take care of the ball we’re going to have somebody score enough points, whether it’s the starters or the bench”.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says the league’s Last Two-Minute Reports, created to be transparent on calls down the stretch of close games, are a good thing. It’s been very effective playing the way we’ve played in terms of the lineup and the rotation.
Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com passed along comments from James, who downplayed being installed as the underdogs for both Game 1 and the series.
Jones may have only averaged 3.7 points, 0.3 assists and 1.0 rebounds per game this season, but it’s still pretty impressive that the NBA veteran has managed to reach six straight NBA Finals-even if he did it by attaching himself to LeBron James.
Andre Iguodala made a successful defense on Cleveland star LeBron James and scored 12 points while Brazil’s Leandro Barbosa added 11 off the bench.
Curry missed a wide-open 3 in transition later in the third quarter and Golden State left the door wide open for James and the Cavaliers. “Didn’t make it happen in the fourth quarter”. He dropped in 20 points off the bench, feasting on whoever was on him. But like I’ve always said, Kevin is one of the top ten players in this league. The Cavs jumped in front and Kerr shattered his whiteboard with his marker like a judo champion breaking a stack of bricks.
The ref who worked last year’s Finals and isn’t back this year is Joey Crawford, who retired this season after an injury.
“Destruction tends to ease some of the anger”, Kerr quipped. “So I try to take it out on a clipboard instead of a player”. So it’s better that way.
Coaches trim their usable parts and basically ride their best players to the promised land or to the depths of defeat.
Having James’s Cavs and Curry’s Warriors meet in the Finals for the second straight year, this time with James bolstered by a deep and healthy supporting cast and with the Warriors trying to complete what might go down as the greatest single 12-month cycle in sports history-consecutive championships bookending a record-setting regular season, garnished with some historical playoff performances-boasts the kind of circumstances that come along every other generation, if that. The Warriors forward is still one misstep from facing a suspension, which means, at least in theory, he could be baited into missing a game for Golden State. But Cleveland shot just 38 percent and its 17 turnovers led to 25 points for the Warriors. “Their bench did a good job for them”.
For the Cavaliers, winning a ring won’t be a simple matter of beating a team they took two games against a year ago while playing severely short-handed. And just like the 2015 Finals, Cleveland employs a rookie head coach who has begun his postseason career 12-2; but this one seems to connect with his players and presses the right buttons at just the right time.
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“Their bench played well”, Lue said.
