A preview of the 2015 NBA Finals
By: Leon Sultan
History Matters
This Thursday night at Oracle the Warriors will play the Cavaliers for the NBA title. Let that sink in for a moment. The Warriors, the NBA title. I keep waiting for my alarm clock to ring and wake me up.
Growing up as a fan of the Dubs, the idea of a championship has always been spurious. When the Joe Lacob group bought this team and began the rebuilding process talk of building a “championship culture” was bandied about. Steph Curry was drafted, Mark Jackson was brought in. But any mention of a championship still sounded like the aspirational babble of a deluded motivational speaker. I remember Mark Jackson guaranteeing a playoff birth during his first year. “Yeah right, good luck with that” said my inner Warrior fan.
Then again, my inner Warrior fan carries many scars. The scars from when my favorite player had to be suspended and then released for choking the coach. The scars from watching the number one over-all pick, the future of the franchise, be traded for Tom Gugliota after only one season. The scars of drafting Anthony Randolph two spots ahead of Roy Hibbert, and Brandan Wright one spot ahead of Joakim Noah. The unforgivable scars of trading a hall-of-famer to Sacramento for Billy Owens, then missing the playoffs every year but one since 1994.
And then we traded away Monta and it was Mitch Richmond and Chris Webber and Latrell Sprewell all over again. But then it wasn’t. Mark Jackson followed up his first season disappointment with 47 wins, the 6th seed and a first round upset of the Nuggets. Our drafts were no longer filling our rosters with the likes of Patrick O’Bryant, and Ike Diogu. Instead we were outfoxing the rest of the league drafting future stars; Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, and Draymond Green.* The tides of change were beginning to shift the balance of power in the league. The scars were starting to heal.
And finally as this season began with 5-time NBA champion Steve Kerr at the helm all that championship talk seemed less and less abstract. Maybe, just maybe in 2, 3 or perhaps 4 years we could sniff the promised land of that elusive Larry O’Brien trophy. After racing out to the best record in the NBA and a 16 game winning streak, the Warriors looked as if their championship plans were not only real, but being fast-tracked.
And now here we are; on the eve of the first NBA finals game to be played in the Bay Area in 39 years. While the rational side of me knows that the Warriors are favored in many circles, the scars of my inner fan still sting and prevent me from being over-confident.
The Match Up
There are three main reasons that this match up is especially hard to preview this year. First of all the two regular season meetings between the teams were not accurate representations of who these teams are now and are therefore not a reliable source of predictions. Secondly, the Cavs hardly look like the team they were in the regular season due to injuries and personnel changes. Finally the Cavs and the Warriors have both more or less steam-rolled their way through the playoffs, with a combined record of 24-5. Both have looked like they are head and shoulders above the competition. Yet the quality of the competition they have faced is drastically different. Like the age-old problem of comparing apples and oranges; how can we compare these two teams’ recent success against each other when they are playing in different leagues (in more ways than one).
Losing Kevin Love, and having a hobbled Kyrie Irving has changed the Cavs starting line up and rotation tremendously. The loss of two of the Cavs “big three” has altered their play in both expected and unexpected ways. With Love on the bench and Irving in limited minutes the Cavs have gone from a league average to an elite defense. Playing solid (not flashy) defense is an often over-looked aspect of the NBA game- as it is very hard to quantify and doesn’t show up on fantasy stat lines. Irving and Love both are below average defenders, and their rotational replacements Tristan Thompson, Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova are all plus defenders and high-energy players. The Cavs offense has also grown much more predictable. In the Hawks series they essentially ran Lebron James isolation after isolation until the Hawks eventually sent double teams at which point they whipped the ball around the perimeter until they found the open 3-point shooter. Surprisingly, without Love and a limited Irving the Cavs’ 3-point shooting against the Hawks went up from the regular season (from 37% to 40%). Heading into the finals, the Cavs look energized.
During the playoffs the Warriors, on the other hand, have played pretty much as they have all year. Their defense remains the centerpiece of the team with the offense coming in irregular, and unstoppable torrents. From the 39-point 4th quarter to force overtime against the Pelicans in the first round to a 35-point 2nd quarter in the close-out game against the Rockets, the Warriors are like a cloud during monsoon season. It’s only a matter of time before they open up and make it rain.
What is different about this Warriors team this post season is that it has demonstrated its true depth and versatility against three different opponents- beating all three convincingly and using many different styles to do so. Against the Pelicans the Dubs played closest to their default regular season style. They didn’t do anything exotic defensively relying on a mix of Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green to shut down Anthony Davis. They effectively used small lineups with Draymond at center to rip off huge runs and build up insurmountable leads. Then against Memphis they changed gears- playing big lineups more frequently and matching the Grizzlies large post presence with more usage of bench bigs David Lee and Festus Ezeli. They also showed their ability to game plan on the fly with the famous “Tony Allen adjustment” (borrowed from the Spurs) that effectively changed the entire make up of the series. Against the Rockets they experimented again; starting with their traditional rotations (going small frequently) then ended the series with a Game 5, which saw them play a traditional center (either Bogut or Ezeli) for the entire 48 minutes.
While this series is a lot more than just Lebron against Steph, these two will dictate for the most part how the series plays out. The Cavs will blitz Steph- throwing traps and double-teams his way in order to minimize his threat and dare the rest of the Dubs to step up and score. For the Warriors the focus will be to slow down Lebron without allowing shooters to get open on the perimeter or the Thompson-Timofey Mozgov two-headed offensive rebounding monster to exploit them.
As both teams present match up problems for each other, coaching adjustments will be frequent in this series. I give a massive edge here to the Warriors, as the brain trust of Steve Kerr, Ron Adams and Alvin Gentry are going to be able to out-scheme the Cavs rookie head coach Lebron James.
So Who Wins?
Nate Silver correctly predicted 50 out of 50 states in the last presidential election. He has created a statistical model to compare NBA teams over history. I won’t get into his methods, but the short of it is that the Warriors are currently ranked significantly higher than the Cavs. The Warriors are actually ranked up there with some of the 90s Bulls teams.
Every time I turn on ESPN they are running a statistic about how the Warriors are “only one of 7 teams to ever ______(fill in the blank)__________ and each of the other 6 has won a title”. Point differential, strength of schedule, and efficiency ratings are on our side. So why don’t I feel confident?
Probably because the best basketball player on the planet is on the other side, and it’s impossible to stop the human freight train that is Lebron James. And then there are always those scars. Those years of futility haunting us. Our collective insecurity when people like Charles Barkely dismiss us as a “jump shooting team” and laugh off our chances at a title.
And then I think of Steph. And I think of Dray. And of Klay and Harrison and Andrew. And Iggy, and D.Lee and Livingston, and Blurbosa and Festus. And then I remember that basketball is a team game. And while the Cavs have the best player on the planet, we have the best team on the planet. By a long shot. And I feel better.
Thanks to our 67 regular season wins and this post season run, the scars have almost healed. Four more wins and it will be like they were never there.
Prediction: Warriors in 6
Da Warr Thread 