Live Thread: Cavs @ Warriors, NBA Finals Game 2
2016-06-05Flash poll: Is the big NBA game tonight bigger than the game you considered the biggest game prior to this big game?
— Cavs Win Title Now (@IGOHARDNOW) June 5, 2016
That’s right, True Believers. The biggest Cavs game of the season is here, and it’s even bigger than the last biggest game. Many consider tonight’s win a “must” if the Cavs have a shot at winning the whole shebang. According to Oddshark, NBA teams are 16-257 all-time after trailing 0-2 in a best-of-seven series. Only two of 56 squads have prevailed since 2009. So unless the Cavs want to climb out of a really big hole , they need to play much better tonight (though I’m wearing my “Rise Up!” 2007 Playoffs T-Shirt to prove it is possible). There has been a mountain of content dedicated to what the Cavs did wrong, and what Warriors did right in Game 1, but to me, Game 1 was all about the Cavs’ playing poorly, more than it was about the Warriors playing fantastically.
Here are things Cleveland must do better.
- The Cavs need to roll! Someone must consistently put LeBron as the roll man, and he must roll, and not just pivot into a high post. Below, LeBron ignores the wide open space by the basket in order to settle for a mismatch. He must slip the pick! He or TT has a layup or JR has a three if he does. This is a part of an overall trend of moving on offense. Or as Ben Werth said to me in an email, “Why can’t LeBron just roll? For the love of my departing sanity. What a frickin waste of talent. Always settling for some dumb mismatch. This team has the talent but is stupid. Someone has to go to the rim on every play. Please..”
2. Channing Frye must play and the Cavs must shoot open shots. Here, Delly passes up a wide open triple to repost LeBron. If Delly doesn’t have confidence in his shot, I don’t know if I want to see him playing. The Cavs best playoff lineup has been:LeBron, Frye, JR, Shump, and Delly. That lineup barely played Thursday. It must play tonight, and the boys must let fly. LeBron gets doubled, pitches to Delly, who instead of being a ready shooter, reposts to LeBron despite there being at least 10 feet between he and Iguodala. Result? 14-foot clanker.
3. Consider staying big (and I don’t mean LeBron at the four).
https://twitter.com/Jon_Roser/status/738855153260847104
4. Play Channing Frye!
5. Everone must close out shooters, and must get to Livingston’s body more quickly.
If they do these they’ll be just fine.
We have been totally taken out of our offensive game. Assuming we have some kind of plan.
At this point it doesn’t even matter if Curry has 3 fouls
These games are what happes when a three happy team goes up against a team that gives up very few good looks from three….
BS. The Cavs are running a 1997 Knicks playbook.
They are not runnign great offense…but much of their offense is predicated on kicking it out on drives for open threes. The Warriors just switch, and don’t give up many open threes. It’s exactly what I expected going into this series.
Right which is why they cannot just stand on the perimeter during drives, they have to make an extra pass, put the ball on the floor, or drift from their original spot on drives. The defender knows exactly where the shooter is when they help off them so they can run right back to the spot on the pass.
True that Nate. James had a quote that he is the offensive coordinator. If so he is having this team play stupid offense.
Tony Brothers needs to follow suit with Joey Crawford retire. Immediately. Like, right now.
The refs are horrid tonight.
Tony Brothers.
OMG!@?! % How is that a foul on JR? Curry traveled before he got hit. And Kyrie needs to play under control
Love and Curry got a little feisty… love it.
These replays crack me up. We are getting hacked every drive.
JR with a good Kyrie dribble-to-nowhere impression eventually finds Love for a 3
https://vine.co/v/iY9tL67JmL1
If JVG is talking about how the Cavs ought to use the pick and roll…you know we are in trouble…
Cavs do the exact same thing every time down the court… Incredibly frustrating.
Seriously, how hard is it to run a pick and roll? What is this offense? This isn’t 1996.
Can we put our death lineup back in?
Cavs still looking for the mismatch post ups. And then Draymond grins and attacks. Cavs trying to go big against “smaller” warriors and can’t bully them once they get down low.
It’s so dumb, just really dumb basketball. Move off of the ball set some godda&” backscreens to free up cutters and shooters, anything but trying to go 1 on 5 against the best defense in the league.
Thanks Ty Lue
We don’t look anything like the team we were in the first three series. Where did we go?
Going against much stronger competition…
The Warriors defense… Plain and simple.
They don’t over help and they play great individual defense.
And we play right into their hands by trying to look for mismatches, and going iso. Makes us so easy for them to defend. Stupid, just plain dumb offense.
Sigh. This is already not looking great. Hope Love is ok.
Warriors in 5
I’m afraid…..
Nope. Cavs in 6. Just wait.
Well I’m afraid the Cavs can’t hang scoring wise with them. And the refs are not helping a bit.
I hated everything about the last 30 seconds of basketball.
Lebron not trusting teammates at all and no one wants to shoot outside shot
Freaking ridiculous that no one took a foul to protect Love.
only Draymond Green drives with a player under the basket
Ya that was shocking.
and thats a damn loose ball foul on Barnes, we dont get ANY CALLS.. leave TT do that
Lousy offense but how are these not fouls
TAKE A FREAKING FOUL THERE TRISTAN!>@?$1
I don’t understand. I think they’re inside of our head right now
That may be true….but it’s also true that they are just better…
Which is doubly impressive with the Cavs’ heads so far up their a**es.
You can use that line for the recap….:D
Too much Lebron trying to take Iggy on isos….just not going to be very effecient…
17-2 run for warriors i believe since we were up 6
I’m up at 155a watching this on a grainy crappy illegal feed. Why did I stay up for them to run this crap offense? We had a recipe from the first three rounds and we’re not doing any of it.
The length of the individual defenders is disrupting the offense. The only weak defender on the Warriors is Curry and they can’t isolate him. This is just tough to watch. Cavs are outmatched
I’d rather have Livingston light it up than Green…
They’re just picking apart the Cavs now.
Effing Tony Brothers.
On the Draymond 3 they were hanging with Iggy for some reason beyond me. He’s not the threat we need to worry about. Cavs playing ugly right now.
So tired of James just losing it out of bounds….seems like he has a dozen of those this series…
Think we should close out on Green?
I don’t get this offese. PICK AND ROLL! It’s an NBA staple.
LeBron got fouled on a drive?! What?!
Scores come so easily for the Warriors. It’s annoying
It could come easy for us too, if the cavs started moving off ball all the time.
It’s like we have our first action and it doesn’t work and that’s it.
Yep these plays have absolutely no movement after the initial action. Ridiculously easy to defend.
Shumps’ hair flappin in the wind is the best.
Another layup off warrior off ball movement. Why can’t we do this?
Warriors only scoring on Cavs mistakes…
TOO MANY LAYUPS.
Danger time…
9-0 run for GS…
Why cant we defend a fastbreak ? like damn… how much dunks does the Warriors have so far ?
7 of their 11 field goals so far are DUNKSSS… this is unacceptable like for real
Make or miss league…./s
8 dunks now…sigh
I’d love to take 10 minutes of our Death Lineup against theirs.
Lebron defense >>>> Lebron offense this game (blown box out excepted)
LeBron turns over what should’ve been a layup and then just lets Livingston dunk over him? LeBron is all over the place this game.
So why not fouling Livingston there? Shumpert has fouls that he can use, don’t give the easy layup.
I’ve been saying that on most of their dunks…foul the hell out of them, send them to the line…
Warriors showed cracks when OKC got very physical… Why not is the magic question.
Cavs are so bad at defending screens…how was Klay so wide open….thats what he does all the time on offense….Warriors don’t run anything efficient or complex….its jus screens all the time..Cavs had it figured out and then lazy next two possessions
They have a ton of off ball movement. It’s why they got a ton of uncontested layups and dunks in the first game and why they got some in the first quarter.
well that was short lived
Leave it to Delly to establish better offense… someone got lost on that Klay 3.
DELLY-JAMES!!!!! THROWS THE HAMMA DOWN!
https://vine.co/v/iY9paMMpLxh
Cavalier playoff death lineup.
Jefferson might be one of the most under-appreciated Cavs heroes in the playoffs.
He really has been good…I think he may have been in chill mode most of the season….at his age, it’s a good idea…
Someone has to vine Timo’s reaction to LeBron’s dunk
our death lineup defense has been on point so far besides that open 3 for Green
Oracle unusually quiet so far and Shump’s hair unusually floppy
Wow. LeBron with a big time travel on that spin move. I’ll take it.
Yaaaa, I’m going to accept those since he gets absolutely hammered any time he drives. He deserves to get away with the travels.
https://vine.co/v/iY9ddq1PJIh
I LOVE this lineup
I love it when Shumpert makes 3’s.
https://vine.co/v/iY9dqXUp0TO
What happened to Shump’s hair? Looks like he should be in the background of a Run DMC video from the late 80s
Shumpurple Rain.
Screw you, Bray….how did that taste?
Found money from Shump…
Just remember guys, Tony Brothers doesn’t even see it when people out of bounds hack the in-bounding player.
For a normal game, we could win a legitimate game if we win by +1 or +2 points. But depending on how it’s called by the refs, we might need to beat the Warriors by +5 or +7 to even stand a chance.
I don’t complain about refs much, but Brothers really is incompetent…must be nice to be terrible at your job, make great money, and have it for life…
Maybe we chose the wrong profession…we could be ref’ing in the NBA…
If we could rebound we would have held the Warriors to like 12 points that quarter…
Well we are up. The cavs don’t do themselves any favors on offense by trying to make the game easy for themselves, but it seems like they played better d even though curry missed like 3 open threes.
The 3’s aren’t as open as they look. One it looked like KI got stuck on some picks, other than that he’s having to work really hard to get open on the perimeter. Not much more you can do about that.
Oh they definitely contested most well.
The layups and dunks are still a bit disconcerting since it seems like they always get a number of completely uncontested dunks.
Good things so far: Close game
Things to work on: Getting foul calls & boxing out to prevent putback dunks
ugly start for both teams..but Cavs defense getting little better….need to clean up rebounds and make an outside shot….all drives…very easy to defend for GS…doubt Thompson and Curry will be in much with fouls so Cavs have to take advantage
Decent quarter, But Cavs really need to score more….not going to beat this team many times scoring less than 100…
I absolutely love the energy from the Cavs so far, I believe that to beat the Warriors you need to rough them up like the Cavs are doing.
At the other hand the missed calls are hurting the Cavs.