Golden State Warriors (GSW) needed a big lift from its bench to down Cleveland Cavaliers 104-89 in the NBA Finals opener in Oakland on Thursday.
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Here is the dilemma for the Cleveland Cavaliers: Do they feel good or bad about holding Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to 20 points in Game 1 of the NBA Finals while still losing by 15 points?
The Warriors’ reserves outscored the Cavaliers’ bench 45-10, with Leandro Barbosa contributing 11 on 5-for-5 shooting.
Even with Curry (11 points, six assists, five rebounds) and Thompson – looking more like the Property Brothers than the Splash Brothers – shooting a combined 8-for-27 for a mere 20 points – the Warriors won comfortably.
Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving, center, shoots against Golden State Warriors forward Anderson Varejao, bottom, and guard Shaun Livingston (34) during the second half of Game 1 of basketball’s NBA Finals in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, June 2, 2016. And if the Cavs can’t pull off a win in Game 2 and fall into a 2-0 hole, the Warriors will likely take at least one in Cleveland, leaving the Warriors’ in a great position to repeat. “You don’t win championships without the entire squad making an impact”, Curry said.
During a subsequent timeout, Warriors coach Steve Kerr shattered a clipboard with an angry punch. “For me, it’s just keeping my composure and continue to try to do things for my team to help us win”.
“He was Finals MVP for a reason a year ago”, Thompson said. Just the resiliency we played on the defensive end.
The Cavs were always going to have a problem stopping the Warriors when they rolled out Irving and Kevin Love, but man, if Livingston and Barbosa are going to eat like this while Steph spend most of his time acting as a decoy, I don’t know what the Cavs do. In direct opposition to Golden State, Cleveland had very little contribution from their bench in Game 1. Ultimately, 15 consecutive points for the Warriors scored by mostly bench players gave them an 82-68 lead.
Cleveland would again focus on the Warriors’ more potent scorers and leave Iguodala and Andrew Bogut out near the top of the arc. And yet everything still went so wrong as this highly anticipated NBA Finals rematch kicked off. “So we’ll be better next game”.
“This was a odd game for us”, Kerr said. Had the violations not wiped out a pair of three-pointers from Irving, the Cavaliers would have held a lead at the end of the first quarter.
“Don’t matter what you do with Steph and Klay, don’t matter what you do with Draymond [Green]”, James said.
I’m not going to jump to conclusions and call the Cavs out of this, especially after what we saw the Spurs do to the Thunder in Game 1 of their series. Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were a combined 12 points through about 30 minutes of regulation.
The Warriors stretched the lead to as much as 96-76 before Cleveland rallied to trim the final margin.
The Cavs surely have to go on a search for answers before Game 2 on Sunday.
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Then Andre Iguodala was struck below the belt by Matthew Dellavedova.
