Logical enough, but against Golden State, the NBA’s best ever regular season team with 73 wins, it is a tall order.
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Cavs coach Tyronn Lue, despite the way the Warriors have dominated the Cavs going back to Game 4 of last year’s Finals, doesn’t think the champs have gotten into his team’s heads. Thus, counting the Cavaliers out of the series before they have even played a home game is a painfully shortsighted mistake being made by many.
For the first time in his career, James was kept scoreless in the first quarter of an NBA Finals game. Cleveland still won two games sans Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving.
“I don’t think there’s a hurdle for them at all“, Golden State’s Draymond Green said. If they win, and the Cavs very well could, and frankly should, the series is 2-1 with the next game also in Cleveland.
Getty Images The Warriors haven’t needed Stephen Curry do to a plethora of scoring thus far to win, but they can’t expect that trend to continue on the road.
The Cavaliers’ leader, appearing in his sixth NBA Finals in a row, placed a lot of the blame on himself.
The 110-77 Game 2 victory by thew Warriors averaged almost 17.4 million viewers on ABC. In Game 1, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson played poorly, but Cleveland still lost by 15. “Once you start to squeeze, the pressure starts to be on them”. That they are a team that wouldn’t hold up in the tougher eras of yesteryear against Jordan’s Bulls or Bird’s Celtics or Magic’s Lakers. James has been uncharacteristically inefficient, and his supporting cast hasn’t looked much better than the Cleveland teammates he carried to the finals almost a decade ago. But his demeanor at the podium after the victory was much more businesslike. That makes the June 5 game the third highest rated NBA Finals Game 2 since ABC started showing the series in 2003.
“That’s a big key – where the help is going to be, how we communicate, where we send different guys”, Iguodala said. “If he doesn’t play, then we have to tweak it”.
“I’m not that surprised because we’ve been such a great home team all year”, said Thompson, who scored 17 points Sunday.
The biggest contrast between the 2016 Finals participants is their style of play. He is in the league’s concussion protocol.
The Golden State Warriors took game 1 with a 15 point win and Curry delivered an incredible fake that is gaining a lot of attention.
But the Thunder could live with that kind of shooting, because OKC could score in other ways and because OKC could on occasion make life miserable for the Golden State offense.
The obvious answer is….defense; you can’t win a championship without it. Also, the armor included a message referencing protection and unity, I’m told.James’ friendly gesture elicited a thought-provoking conversation about the importance of unity and safekeeping while on the path to the Larry O’Brien trophy.His present hit home.”For me, I appreciated it”, forward Channing Frye said.
“Obviously not much is working”. It resulted in them getting some easy baskets. They point out to whoever will listen that they haven’t done anything yet and that this is no time to celebrate.
Thompson was a little bit more charitable.
In reality, Barbosa’s 33-year-old legs have looked anything but exhausted in this series.
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Curry said he had spoken with his family, the Warriors and his representatives, and recently informed USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo that he would not go to Brazil.
