Recap: Golden State 99, Cleveland 92 (or, whistles, who needs em?)

Cleveland lost a tough one in California on Christmas afternoon. In a relatively low scoring game that saw a putrid shooting second quarter from the Cavs. The Cavs tied the game late when LeBron James hit a fallaway runner from the left side of the lane to tie the game at with two minutes remaining. A Klay Thompson  three put the Warriors up 95-92, and the Cavs resorted to their standby offense this game, a LeBron James isolation. On two straight possessions, it appeared that Kevin Durant fouled James blatantly on drives, but no whistle resulted. The first “foul resulted in a turnover, and the second was ruled out of bounds off James with 24 seconds left, effectively ending things.

Elijah Kim and I teamed up for this recap, with Eli taking the the odd quarters, and me taking the evens.

First Quarter:

The Cavs/Warriors Christmas classic got off to entertaining start. With a lot of physical play the Warriors lost a bit of composure with Durant and Draymond drawing technical fouls. The second tech should’ve gone to Durant, but oddly, Dray got whistled, when he “asked the referees how Calderon could yell at them and not get a technical,” according to Connor Letourneau of SFGate.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH8g7d00ETA

Cleveland leaned on the three point shot with four of their starters knocking down the long ball and played pesky enough defense to force the Warriors to earn their points. Durant continued his MVP bid as he and Thompson scored nine points a piece.

LeBron played the whole first quarter with Durant, as the Cavs held on to a 28-24 lead to end the first quarter.

Second Quarter:

The second was a slogfest, as Cleveland shot 3-24 from the field and scored zero baskets inside the arc while notching just 16 points. Golden state had a lid on the bucket, and the Cavs gator armed many shots around the rim. The Warriors got away with a lot of contact though, including a play where LeBron got smacked on the head with no call. Jeff Green missed three bunnies, as did Tristan Thompson (while hounded by Warrior defense). LeBron was surprisingly passive with only one point one 0-3 shooting to go along with just one turnover (that led to a Casspi runout) in six minutes.

Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, and David West patrolled the paint for Warriors, and the only offense for the Cavs seem to come from Dwyane Wade drawing fouls on pump fakes. J.R. Smith pitched an 0-fer in the quarter, with a single foul as his only contribution in five minutes. It was just one of those quarters where the Cavs missed shots they might normally make and the Warrior Length might have stymied a layup or two that would’ve been good against lesser teams. Of course, the prevailing theory is that Tristan Thompson might’ve jammed things up for the Cavs’ offense. But he wasn’t the one making everyone miss layups (other than his own). Despite all this, the Cavs defended well, and held the Warriors to 43% shooting. The Warriors didn’t seem to have much offense when it wasn’t running through Kevin Durant, and despite Klay Thompson getting loose a couple times, the Cavs dodged the bullets. Cleveland went to halftime down 44-46.

Third Quarter:

The Cavs looked to get Kevin Love more involved with mixed success. Although Love recorded plenty of rebounds and got a decent amount of looks (even scoring the first 5 points of the quarter), Love struggled to score in close with Draymond and Durant dominating the defensive paint.

From the outside however, Love kept scoring just enough to keep the Cavs close knocking down three long balls in the quarter. The Cavs offense continued to languish in the third quarter but managed to stay within striking defense with sporadic scoring and questionable shots by the Warriors. Cleveland trapped Durant a lot and forced other people to beat them. Patrick McCaw had seven in the quarter and Durant had six, all from the free throw line.

After the bench mob came in, things didn’t get prettier as Iguodala made clutch plays to give the Warriors their biggest lead in the game (six).

Love hustled, chasing down seven rebounds (four offensive)  in the period, and scored just enough down the stretch to keep the Cavs in striking distance, 71-67 Warriors entering the fourth. James was oddly passive again, and had just three points in the period.

Fourth Quarter:

The fourth saw some of the worst play all season from LeBron James as his three turnovers (not caused by uncalled Durant fouls), and 3-8 shooting weren’t as bad as his defense, where he routinely just lost his defensive assignment, ball-watching. Draymond Green used is inattentiveness to walk into a couple of threes and Jordan Bell cut back door for an easy alley oop – all on LeBron.

Dwyane Wade provided some spark early, hitting a couple tough jumpers and then an unexpected three. But it proved to be pyrite as the Cavs forced too many quick shots to get a rhythm going offensively. LeBron picked up his offense, driving to the rim late, but he forced some threes, where he went just 1-4. On a key late heave, Wade gathered a LeAirball and contorted to put it back right before the shot clock expired to cut the Warriors’ to just 92-90 with 3:17 to go.

The Cavs’ inability to get key defensive rebounds kept possession after possession alive for the Dubs. The key example of this came with the score tied at 92, and the Warriors running an out of bounds play to get Durant a three on the left wing. Again, LeBron missed his box-out, and Jordan Bell picked up the offensive rebound, kicked to Klay, and it was money in the bank. It’s cued up below.

https://youtu.be/mMny0ezLZzQ?t=82

As for the two plays that doomed any chance the Cavs had at a comeback, I’ll let you be the judge.

To be fair, even if LeBron had made free throws, it still would’ve been a tall order for the Cavs to get another stop and another bucket. The Cavs weren’t executing their three point plays well, and probably need to get some new ones. Hard to do that when, as we all know, the Cavs don’t practice.

Notables:

Kevin Love finished with a game high 31 on 25 shots to go with 18 rebounds. Not the world’s greatest efficiency, but he gave Cleveland a boost when he was in. LeBron James (20-6-6 with seven turnovers) also struggled (7-18 from the floor), but while Love was a perfect 6-6 from charity, LeBron was 4-7. Like I said, he just seemed off. Jae Crowder had a seemingly nice game with 15 and six boards, including 3-5 from downtown. He had a few defensive lapses, but was mostly good late. Dwyane added 13 but had a previously reported -9 in plus minus.

Aftermath

Bitter tastes in our mouth Eli and I traded a couple emails on the game.

Nate Smith:

Any thoughts, Eli? Bron got outplayed by KD, but it was because KD is inherently better. James just had a really bad game where a lot of the early season problems reared their head: not caring on D, bad body language and not getting back after uncalled fouls, turnovers, and not rebounding or boxing out. I was baffled why Kevin Love wasn’t in the game in key defensive crunch time lineups because the Cavs absolutely could not get a defensive rebound.

In addition, the stopgap veteran solutions that had been working from the Cavs’ reserves didn’t tonight.  Jose Calderon is just too overmatched against good teams and Dwyane Wade cannot rely on jump-shooting miracles to beat good teams.

And yes, The officiating on the last two possessions was ridiculous. Refs almost never call a foul in a game tying or game winning situations late unless they’re egregious. But since even if LeBron would’ve made both free throws on those fouls in the last two minutes, the Cavs still would’ve been down by one. It was game mismanagement by the refs to basically sit there and swallow the whistles on two blatant fouls by Kevin Durant. I don’t know what I’m watching when that happens. It is beyond dumb that KD probably should’ve been ejected in the first quarter for mouthing off to the ref and then trying to start crap with Calderon. And then the fact that Draymond took his tech for him? Why even have refs?

How would this game have looked with Steph and IT? I don’t know. Cavs aren’t beating anyone with LeBron playing like this and not running a coherent offense. Maybe IT helps with the offense, but the Cavs will live and die by how LeBron plays more than if Thomas can match Steph’s scoring and ability to run an offense. And we all know about Isaiah’s defensive deficiencies.

As for Lue, the commentariat was up in arms over playing TT over Frye, in the debacle that led to Cleveland’s 3-24 second quarter. I don’t know how much TT had to do with Jeff Green blowing layups.

Elijah Kim:

LeBron played a really poor game for his standards and it doesn’t mean the torch is officially KD’s. 

Lue’s lineups were puzzling today for sure. He had a super quick leash on Osman and Calderón in the second half but kept on giving and giving for guys like TT and JR (-5, 0-5). 

Calderón is too outmatched to play nearly 20 minutes in such a game. The bench unit, which was much improved this season coming into the game, still was no match for the bench lineups with Livingston and Iguodala. 

There was a weird vibe to the first quarter when all the Warriors players wanted to try and verbally assault the Cavs players. Like Mark Jackson and Van Gundy said, the NBA has double standards like things in life and it’s true, any other player and KD’s actions would have warranted ejection. 

How does this matchup change with Steph and IT?  Honestly, I don’t think it does much except more scoring. It just means fewer missed shots on both sides. 

Lue probably should have given Frye some time, especially when they couldn’t score at all. Love not playing more was odd. He single handedly kept the Cavs in the game with his timely three pointers, including 3 in the third quarter. 

The Cavs need more quality over quantity. It’s great when the team is healthy that there are about six wings on this team that are NBA caliber but only about three of them are good enough to play right now.  Also, it didn’t help that the bench had an untimely terrible game. Green (-6), Korver (-5), all Wade (-9) all disappointed to some degree. 

Nate Smith

Yeah, the Cavs just seemed tight and not themselves. This was probably a good calibration game for getting up for playing real competition. Cleveland has been feasting on weaker teams for the better part of a month, and stuff that’s gonna fly versus Chicago ain’t gonna work against teams like the Dubs.

Tristan Thompson is such a conundrum. As was brought up on the live thread, the Cavs have around $80 million in payroll tied up in TT, Shumpert, and J.R. Smith over this year and next. That’s roster killing when Thompson is so limited, J.R. is so consistent, and Shumpert is just plain bad. Moving one of those contracts would be hard. Moving three would be impossible. But you never say never.

Isaiah Thomas will definitely help. He’ll do things offensively that Calderon just can’t at his age, and Dwyane Wade will stop trying to do everything when he’s on the floor. Wade’s much better when he focuses on defense, transition, and making open shotsike he did against the Bulls, than when he’s trying to be alpha. I’d be lying to you if I thought the Cavs were better than the Dubs when Steph and Thomas return. The Warriors still have the edge. Especially when they’re playing eight on five. Let’s hope LeBron screws his head on right for the next one.