Live Thread: Cavs @ Warriors

Greetings, Cavs fans. Big game tonight… Cleveland completes its road trip tonight in Oakland where they look to sweep the Warriors in the regular season after wining their Christmas day battle, 109-108. The Roaracle will be roaring, and the Dubs will be looking for payback after their loss. Meanwhile, the Cavs look to keep up their integration of Kyle Korver into the offense, and to solve some of their recent defensive woes.

Most of the oddsmakers have the Warriors at +8.5, but it sounds like LeBron isn’t trying to amp this game too much, or maybe he’s trolling them softly with these comments to Dave McMenamin,

I don’t think we have a rival in our game today… we’ve had two great Finals appearances the last two years, but I had the same with San Antonio when I was in Miami. We weren’t rivals. And I think I played those guys more, so I wouldn’t look at it as rivals.

It’s brilliant passive-aggressiveness by the King, and I’m sure he’s trying to throw the Dubs off their game by amping themselves up again.

As far as Cleveland goes, they appear healthy, and it appears Iman Shumpert will continue to start for the Cavs until Kyle Korver is ready to take his place. I’m all for anything that minimizes Shump’s ballhandling.

Meanwhile, the Dubs are a league best 34-6 and winners of 12 of 14. They’ve a new big three this year with Draymond Green’s scoring falling to 10.7 points and KD, Steph, and Klay Thompson combining for 72 points and 12.7 assists. Kevin Durant is even averaging 8.6 rebounds and 1.7 blocks. But with Dray kicking in 8.6 rebounds and 7.7 assists, the Dubs certainly have a formidable big four.

Iman Shumpert gave away the secret sauce that the Cavs are using to guard Iman Shumpert: physicality.

Throughout the game if you consistently guard somebody that way at the end of the game, if they’re last five minutes isn’t as up to par, you feel like you did your job because you wore on him the whole game.

You just gotta stay consistent with guys like that because they have the ball so much that no matter what you do they’re going to get in a rhythm. You just gotta survive their runs they go on and hopefully you’ve done your job as far as getting in to him and applying pressure the whole game. You see the effects of that pressure in the last few minutes of the game.

I’m hoping the Cavs extend the same physicality to Kevin Durant. If they do, then they should win. My prediction: 112-110, Cavs.