The Grand NBA Finals Preview: Golden State Warriors vs. Cleveland Cavaliers

As the finals emerge on the horizon after days of waiting, there are a few issues and myths still worth researching and discussing. This is the match-up we expected when the playoffs started, but Love’s injury, Cleveland’s romp through the east, and the (outdated) critiques about how Golden State plays have made this into a bewitching series to predict. It’s also the series no one would have expected in a previous era when the Warriors were a laughingstock and the Cavaliers, pre-LeBron, were an after-thought. But now we have a historically great team versus Cleveland with the historically great LeBron James, and the games are a mere hours away.

Historical Ramifications

One highly cited, odd fact about the NBA is that over the past thirty years, there have been only eight unique champions (Celtics, Lakers, Pistons, Bulls, Rockets, Spurs, Heat, and Mavericks.) You can expand that, actually, to 1980 and include the 76ers to make it nine teams in 35 years. The NBA finals have been pretty familiar (you’ll usually see Fisher, Horry, Kerr, Haslem, or Horace Grant there) and we’ve seen the same set of teams trudge in and out of the finals even with different players, like the Bad Boys-era Pistons to the Billups-Wallace era Pistons in 2004 and 2005. In fact, in the NBA’s entire history tracking back to 1950, there’s only been one season where we haven’t seen one of these nine teams in the finals: the Heat, Spurs, Lakers, Bulls, Rockets, Pistons, Celtics, 76ers, and Wizards/Bullets. Yet the exception was in 1951 with the Royals (now the Kings) and the Knicks. So it’s been 64 years since we haven’t had one of those nine teams. If you include the BAA and add the Knicks to the list of common finals teams, you can go back to 1947 and cover the entirety of the history of the league with ten teams who comprise 75% of the finals opponents, but there’s still one exception where a finals didn’t see any of those ten teams.

That was back in the first ever finals series when the league was called the BAA where the Chicago Stags, now defunct, played the Philadelphia Warriors. It’s been 68 years, but the Warriors are back in the finals facing a team that’s never won before. It’s a burst of fresh air with a new kingdom reaching its pinnacle with Curry and the Warriors while LeBron desperately tries to win with a group of young faces. This signals the complete transition to a new era in the league where players like Harden and Anthony Davis vie for MVP votes while LeBron and his peers become the veterans.

There’s also a confirmation of the current trend of pace-and-space style basketball with a heavy emphasis on three-point shooting in the playoffs, which sprouted after the rule changes in the early part of the previous decade. These changes, by the way, shouldn’t be forgotten because they’ve led to a new game where defenses are more sophisticated but scoring is still up. You can see in the below graph that after 2004, league averages on offense rebounded to the norm we saw in the 80’s and 90’s, but pace is still pretty low. Three-pointers became a more potent weapon as the perimeter game opened up; it was also needed to punish defenses. It was far from a gimmick. In reality, the skepticism over three-point shooting in the playoffs should have died after the Spurs and Heat adopted the style, winning the three last titles, or it should have died when a team centered around a jump-shooting big man beat an all-star Miami cast in 2011.

The Warriors, aptly enough, can put a nail in the coffin for the belief that jump shooting teams don’t win titles, whatever that means. We can look back at those experimental Don Nelson teams where he used four or five perimeter players at once and realize it was all a precursor; it was all part of a long, ongoing story about the league and what teams can look like. Fittingly, Don Nelson’s last season with the team was Curry’s first. Don had often used Biedrins as the lone center, or someone like Turiaf, for defense and then surrounded him with shooters and playmakers, like the combo forward Harrington who was roughly the same size as Draymond Green. The Warriors do this now; the difference is that they’re using significantly better players, especially on defense. It’s the same basic structure the Nash-era Suns tried.

And the Warriors are every bit as good as those Suns were. They have the prolific three-point shooting and lots of passing and they push the pace as well as anyone. Yet they’re like those highly successful Suns but with large defensive upgrades virtually everywhere — so basically, they’re one of the greatest teams ever, and it’s up to LeBron, one of the greatest players ever at the tail end of his prime on a team set-back by injuries, to stop them.

It probably won’t work.

You Do Not Rank Players by Team Results — Repeat: You Do Not Rank Players by Team Results.

One of the silliest trends with NBA fans, especially the ones who obsess over the minutiae of the history of the league, is this fairly useless stat that shows the series records in the Finals for Jordan and LeBron with Kobe usually thrown in for good measure. First of all, I’m not sure why losing in the Finals is seen in such a harsh light because it denotes a conference champion. If you’re measuring players by titles, just use titles; Finals appearances without titles should actually work in the player’s favor because it’s better to advance than to lose earlier. The formal logic behind this type of thinking is frightfully backwards.

Moreover, let’s imagine a feisty competitor. He’s known for his timely shooting and his defense. He has one of the most famous shots in all of basketball history, a hail Mary in the finals from a guy who refused to quit. He’s nicknamed “Mr. Clutch” and won a finals MVP over another player who’s a Mount Rushmore candidate and known for big moments of his own. He became the image of the NBA itself, forever enshrined as the logo. That man, naturally, was Jerry West.

And he lost seven finals in a row. His total record is 1-8.

This might shock some people, but you can play extremely well and still lose a basketball game because it’s a game with nine other guys on the court excluding the bench. In fact, that happened to LeBron last season when he averaged 28 points per game, ten more than anyone on either team, in the Finals, with scintillating efficiency. We’ve gone through this and learned from history, over and over again, that the team matters first and the best players don’t always win the title, or else Jordan would have more than six titles and Kareem would have had several from the 70’s alone.

There’s a decent chance James will add another Finals loss to his legacy, but that itself shouldn’t matter; it should be about how he plays and the totality of his season. There are plenty of NBA legends with losing records on large stages, like Wilt Chamberlain at 2-5 or Dr. J at 1-3; then there are the guys who haven’t won a title like Karl Malone, Barkley, or Elgin Baylor who still had eight appearances in the Finals. There’s no shame in losing in the Finals. Getting there is tough enough.

Plus, comparing any player to Jordan is pointless. Okay, so he’s not the best player ever, as Jordan is, but so what? That’s a limited view of the NBA.

LeBron Does Not Make Cleveland Invincible

As was previously discussed, the best players don’t always win the series, and if you don’t believe that and insist Leonard was a better player last season so your method works, I’d suggest looking up the meaning of a post hoc fallacy. I don’t know how the myth that LeBron is not as good as Kobe because of his Finals record and the myth that Cleveland should be the favorites because they have LeBron in the Finals can coexist, but this is the same league where some of the most prominent NBA media figures and analysts believe that three-point shooting can’t win a title.

I shouldn’t have to remind everyone that we experienced this confusion last year, fretting about how the Spurs could deal with LeBron and Miami’s athleticism and the fact that Miami won (by a hair) the year before. The Spurs won because they were a better team; that was easy to see. Basketball-Reference’s Simple-Rating-System had the Spurs at +8.00 and the Heat at +4.15. (Essentially, that means the Spurs would bate an average team at a neutral site by 8 points per game, and the Heat a little over 4 points.) How did the Heat win in 2013? They had a slightly better rating (7.03 compared to 6.67 for the Spurs); and so they won by a small margin.

Basketball’s pretty simple sometimes, and if you want to add in some adjustments the biggest one is which players are available and Love’s injury immediately comes to mind. If you think LeBron establishes Cleveland as some playoff juggernaut who should always be favored, I’ll just point to seasons 2009 and 2010. Additionally, LeBron may not even be the best player in the series; Curry, who rightly grabbed the MVP, has a strong argument.

Match-ups

Naturally, the first question people have is how does Golden State defend LeBron? He’s the key to Cleveland’s power, of course, especially with Kyrie Irving hobbled and Kevin Love out for a few months. But the Warriors are as well-equipped as anyone — they’ll start off with Harrison Barnes, but they can also use Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, and Draymond Green. They’ll also have Andrew Bogut in the paint as one of the best rim protectors in the league. It’s tough to argue the Cavaliers have an advantage here because it’s not like most teams have a good answer for LeBron and the Warriors can play him as well as anyone with enough defenders left over to check Irving. When Irving and LeBron are in the game, I’d expect Klay to guard Irving and Barnes, or Iguodala, to guard LeBron. When Cleveland downsizes with James Jones as the other forward, the Warriors will probably alternate with Green or Barnes on LeBron. Livingston can also come into play as another defender for Kyrie. The Warriors have a wealth of options; it’s no wonder they had the best defense during the season.

On the other end of the court, the Cavaliers have an important choice. With their starting lineup, Curry is matched-up with Irving, but this is not the ideal match-up for the Cavaliers. J.R. Smith, as odd as that sounds, would be the better defender and it would reduce the confusion in transition when players are scrambling back. Iman Shumpert or Matthew Dellavedova are good options too. The problem, however, is what to do with Irving. You don’t want him chasing around Klay and guarding the type of scorer who can explode for 40 plus points. But coaches are reluctant to hide a point guard all the way on a small forward, like Barnes, and they might worry about Barnes taking advantage of the size mismatch — but they should be grateful if the Warriors stop their electric offense to dump it inside to Barnes. This also means LeBron is guarding Klay, and he could be too gassed to chase him around. Then again, Irving is still recovering from knee tendinitis. The choice here is tough.

Cleveland will probably just grin and bear it and let Irving guard Curry or Klay in the few minutes someone like Iguodala or Livingston isn’t on the court or when Cleveland isn’t going small so they have another perimeter defender to use. Curry’s shooting is just so difficult to plan against, however, because he doesn’t really operate like any player in NBA history as he has a quick trigger and the ability to hit shots off the bounce at a high rate. He’s also not a one-dimensional shooter and has a great midrange game and some skills in the paint too — and, of course, he’s one of the greatest free throw shooters ever. (But here’s a pointless weird pointless fact: James Jones has a higher playoff career FT% than Stephen Curry, and Brandon Bass is 11th all-time with a minimum of 100 attempted.)

Turning to SportVU data, using this method, there’s only one relevant game during the regular season where the Cavaliers had their full stable of current defenders. The most successful defender was — everyone expects this — Kevin Love, as none of the possessions where he was the nearest defender featured Curry scoring. However, that was only in five possessions, so I would take that with a grain of salt. Looking at their two primary defenders for Curry, Shumpert was indeed a lot more successful during that game, and actually Smith was too, in a limited opportunity. We’ll need more data to sort out the effectiveness of everyone, but it’s something to track. (LeBron and other players either had just a fraction of a possession guarding Curry or zero, so they were excluded from the table.)

Looking at LeBron’s defenders in that game, there’s another surprising name near the top: Stephen Curry. I wouldn’t expect him to remain the best perimeter defender for LeBron, but his surprisingly good defense is something to note. (But yes, a lot of that is probably luck.) Bogut also allowed zero points, and that’s a very good sign for the Warriors because they’ll need him to channel his inner Hibbert and protect the rim from LeBron. Green looked good in just a handful of possessions; they might need to use him more. The starting defender, Barnes was pretty decent, as well Iguodala. David Lee and Klay, however, were roasted. I should also point out that LeBron scored 42 points in the game because normally a point per possession scoring rate would be outlandish. Again, this was from only one game, but this is something to keep tabs on as the series progresses and the Warriors try to figure out who should guard LeBron.

Mozgod and the Volatility of Shot Defense

One highly cited statistic involves Timofey Mozgov’s rim protection. Opponents are shooting 40.7% near the rim when he’s in the vicinity, per stats.NBA.com. That’s a Rudy Gobert-esque, Defensive Player of the Year-caliber percentage. Mozgov is, apparently, one of the main reasons for Cleveland’s progression to the Finals and his defense helped turn the season around, or so the story goes. Yet I would preach extreme caution with using defender FG% in the playoffs because there are so few games and field-goal percentages are so fluky. If you really want to proclaim Mozgov king of the interior, go back and look at the rim protection leaderboard on stats.NBA.com. Noah and Marc Gasol are near the bottom. Would you really insist Millsap and Griffin are better rim protectors? And that Pau outclasses them by a mile? The year-to-year correlation between defensive rim FG% is pretty low even for an entire season, much less a handful of games in the playoffs. That’s why I don’t give perfect one-to-one weighting when I use rim protection in a metric; it’s too volatile.

For instance, Joakim Noah shot 30% near the rim during the series. Is that sustainable? I’d expect Mozgov’s rim protection FG% to rise to the mean with more playoff games. Historically, you can see his rim defense FG% was at 46.6% in Cleveland in the regular season, 48.8% in Denver, and 47.1% the season before. I don’t think Mozgov transmogrified into some defensive monster who lets no one in the paint, lest they miss wildly in his presence. The Cavaliers were lucky they played a Chicago team that wasn’t operating properly with a hobbled Noah and an imploding Atlanta squad. Mozgov’s still a good defensive player, of course, but he’s not that good.

The Rebounding Mirage

One common concern for Golden State is that they’ll fold when dealing with Tristan Thompson and Cleveland’s offensive rebounding, as the perception is that he razed villages and countrysides in their warpath through the east. Cleveland’s playoff offensive rebound rate is above average, sure, and they’re leading all playoff teams in offensive rebound percentage via Basketball-Reference, but it’s at a rate that would not have led the regular season, coming in at third behind the Jazz and Thunder, plus you’d expect some regression to the mean after some more games and they’ve been facing weak rebounding teams in the Bulls, Hawks, and Celtics. Tristan’s offensive rebound percentage is it a mere 13.3%, which is certainly above average but it’s nowhere near world-beater status. He is not Dennis Rodman, and those comparisons should be halted before the sentences are even completed.

Concurrently, the Warriors are a better rebounding team at its core than perceived. It’s been stated that they’re below average in rebounding stats even adjusted per opportunity, but one of the biggest errors in analyzing the Warriors is forgetting to splits the results for games with and without Bogut. Curry is their best player, obviously, but Bogut played in only 67 games with 24 minutes per game. They were a supremely better team with him in the lineup — my team rating system included variables for individual players, and he looked as valuable as an All-Star by that method. The reason is that they never had a capable replacement, and without him they have to resort to someone like Speights or Ezeli, who’s good defensively but was pretty dreadful on offense. That’s a large gap in quality, and having Bogut means the Warriors can hold their own on the defensive glass, protect the paint, and play an up-tempo style, using his screens and passing in the halfcourt. Without him they usually go really small, and that’s the death of rebounding.

True to form, the playoff version of the Warriors are third in offensive rebound rate and seventh (out of 16) on defense per Basketball-Reference. Given that they’ve faced the Grizzlies and Rockets, that’s commendable. If you adjust for their opponents’ offensive rebound rate compared to the league average, the Warriors look like a team you’d see in the top five in defensive rebound rate — 76.5% or 77.1% depending on which league average, regular season or post-season, you use. In the regular season, actually, when Bogut was on the court the Warriors rebounded 77.5% of all available defensive boards, which would have been third in the league for a full season. If you use game logs at Basketball-Reference, the team had a 75.6% rate in regular season games when Bogut played, which is comfortably above average and tied with the Thunder for 10th, and only 71.7% when he was out of the lineup, which is a fraction above the dead-last Timberwolves in defensive rebounding.

Putting it all together, it’s tough to argue that Thompson’s rebounding will provide the crucial blow to bring down Achilles. There’s also the cost of crashing the boards. If Tristan is matched-up with Green and goes hard to the rim after a miss and the Warriors recover the ball, Draymond Green will already be in mid-stride crossing the half-court line. Big lineups with Thompson at power forward run the risk of clogging the lane too, which is a vital concern for the slash-and-kick offense with LeBron and Irving. As an aside, there’s now talk the Cavaliers are better off with Thompson instead of Love, which is ludicrous. Let me remind everyone that their starting lineup with a Love-Mozgov frontcourt blitzed opponents with a net rating of 20.7 points per 100 possessions. With Tristan in the regular season in place of Love? It falls to a -8.0 rating. The starters with Thompson have been good in the playoffs, of course, but not as good as that and the few minutes we saw with Love were just as stellar versus Boston.

Since we’re talking about Thompson, there’s a lot of discussion on how the Warriors made the right move in keeping Klay and not getting Love, but in reality the real difference maker was Draymond Green replacing David Lee in the rotation. Green is, by reasonable measures, a better player than Klay too, unless you’re only looking at points per game. (He’ll go down in the NBA canon of super role players who can stretch the floor.) If the Warriors had traded for Love, one scenario has Golden State losing Klay and David Lee, moving Iguodala to the starting lineup. Iguodala can definitely replace Klay’s defense, and Love’s a much better shooter than Green. Plus, think of all the ridiculous outlet passes Love would have had, and the possibility of Green-Love frontcourt lineups, which would have vexed the league with two outside shooters in the frontcourt who can shoot from outside, pass, make plays, and hold their owns on the boards and defense. Remember, without Bogut, the Warriors are weak on the glass; Love would have helped that. (There’s also the problem of hindsight being 20/20 as Klay made a huge breakthrough at just the right time while Love battled injuries all year.)

Love, Tristan, and Trends in Defense

After unpacking all the information on rebounding and Mozgov’s defense, I’m not confident in believing the Cavaliers are now magically a great defensive squad. By simple correlation=causation standards, some may point to Love’s absence being the catalyst, but that’s off. First of all, Love’s not as bad a defender as most people think — the Wolves last year were a better defensive team than Cleveland in the regular season, for instance. Tristan’s not Dennis Rodman either, transforming a team into an elite defensive squad. He’s been better in the playoffs and his length is useful, but his long track record does not suggest someone who’s a significant force. Plus, Tristan was already playing a decent chunk of minutes; the effect you have to worry about is the backup’s backup, which is James Jones in this case. The Cavaliers are downsizing a lot more often without Love, and given Jones’ defensive credentials right now I really don’t see how that’s a positive. Plus, if you look at the difference between the roster’s regular season minutes and the minutes in the playoffs, Shumpert, LeBron, and a couple others are playing more frequently than Tristan. Shumpert is in a weird way Tristan’s replacement off the bench because the Cavs are playing smaller, and that should continue versus Golden State.

I can also point to the numbers here showing how the Cavaliers were probably just lucky in their three-point defense, unless you want to make the weird case that their open three-point “defense” is sustainable and remarkably different in the playoffs. Atlanta fell apart in the post-season, and injuries hit them hard, including their sharp-shooter Korver. If you look at Atlanta’s shooting splits in the conference finals versus the regular season, you’ll see they took slightly fewer shots near the rim and at the corners but more non-corner three’s. Plus, they took fewer midrange jumpers versus the Cavaliers, which isn’t a sign in Cleveland’s favor on defense. For percentages, defenses don’t have complete control, but they have more control for shots at the rim, yet the Hawks shot 70.4% there compared to 60.7% in the regular season. What derailed Atlanta was their three-point shooting — at one corner, they shot a meager 8%. Another item the defense has more control over is the turnover. In the conference finals, the Hawks had a turnover ratio of 10.1% compared to 14.7% in the regular season. The Cavs actually failed in this crucial regard on defense. They even matched their free throw rate in the regular season.

If the Cavaliers continue their game plan of hoping open three-pointers don’t go in while not forcing any turnovers and allowing a high percentage in the paint when Mozgov isn’t there, they will be decimated by the Warriors. Chances are, either Klay or Curry, or both, will be hot, and Cleveland doesn’t have the personnel to plug all the leaks. Good luck.

The Warriors and the Perception of Greatness

If this were LeBron versus a typical finals opponent, I wouldn’t be so harsh in my assessment of Cleveland’s chances. But Golden State is a special team, and I don’t see how they’re significantly different in the playoffs than the regular season, where they laid out what was likely the greatest regular season since Jordan was in Chicago. Curry has no qualms about performing under the bright lights, and guys like Bogut and Green aren’t push-overs who don’t perform well in the rougher playoffs. The Warriors nearly led the league in offensive and defensive efficiency, which only happens when you, say, do things like win 72 games. They score at a higher rate versus set defenses than they allow on scrambled live-ball plays. Curry has no issues scoring against better teams, and especially better defenses. The only thing missing now for a legendary season is a title.

As Curry completed his MVP season, a few people raised the question of if he was better than Steve Nash for a single season. Other point guards were thrown into the mix too. It seems preposterous to compare legends to Curry already, but that’s because Nash and others have a name, a famous name, that sticks out in our heads as a signifier of greatness with a long history behind it, while Curry has only recently exploded onto the scene. It’s why it takes so long for guys like LeBron and Durant to move up on all-time rankings even though their merits are already extensive. MVP award shares are a decent proxy for greatness (with an unfair penalty to older players because the voting shares only included first place votes earlier in NBA history.) Curry is already 33rd all-time ahead of Alonzo Mourning, Jason Kidd, George Gervin, Gary Payton, Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen, and others. Unlike Derrick Rose, his MVP was fully deserved and he has a few other high-quality seasons too. We already call him the greatest shooter ever. Once we realize he has many other great qualities he’ll be let into the pantheon too.

The Warriors as a team have this problem too. They’re not seen as a juggernaut even though by all indications they are. Since they have a short history of contender status, people see the name and the team and dismiss some of their accomplishments. This is an all-time great team, and we shouldn’t need another handful of games to realize that.

Don’t Take LeBron for Granted

Back in the 90’s, when Jordan was about to win yet another title there were a few complaints about how the league catered to him and it was a lot less fun with him winning everything. In fact, when he was younger he was known as a flashy scorer who didn’t have what it took to win because it was a team game and only team-first clubs like the Lakers, Celtics, and Pistons had a chance. Eventually, those criticisms were laid to rest, but there were still a few vocal critics who blasted him for playing baseball and noted how often he got to the line, seemingly aided by the refs and indirectly the league itself. Today, of course, he’s revered, but we took Jordan for granted back in the 90’s. It can happen with every superstar. Shaq, for instance, was not a beloved figured in his prime. His low-post, hulking style was not always pleasing, and his free throw woes were roundly mocked. He was roundly criticized as a physical freak who needed the refs to bail him out by letting him go to the line and by ignoring his traveling violations, or so the critics said. Now he’s another statue in the hall of nostalgia, a tale of the power that once was and never will be.

LeBron James is 30 and although he can still crank the dial to 11, time will erode his physical gifts and we’ll be left reminiscing about a player that no longer properly exists. We don’t need to quibble over his finals record or point out his worst playoff games or make fun of his decision to play with his friends or back in his hometown. That’s all shallow stuff, and what lasts in basketball are the moments when legends take flight and perform feats that are never replicated. We won’t see much more of LeBron crashing to the basket like a freight train and nailing a shot over several defenders or throwing a one-handed pass at warp speed to a corner shooter. And, frankly, we’ve probably already seen the best of LeBron by a pretty fair margin and we’ll only have a few stretches here and there that can replicate his power at his absolute peak, and those stretches will gradually become more infrequent as time goes on until they disappear forever.

This is it. Time is unyielding. In another blink, LeBron’s prime will be gone. Don’t miss it.

Prediction

Based on the numbers I’m using, which include an adjusted team net rating version with separate variables for when LeBron and Bogut are in the game and long-term RPM with projected minutes, I naturally have the Warriors winning the title due to their superior full year numbers. They won 67 games during the regular season with a historically high point differential and they’ve suffered no important injuries for the finals — why wouldn’t they be the favorites? Even invoking the “they’re too inexperienced” card is off the mark because Bogut and Iguodala are veterans, as well as bench pieces Barbosa and David Lee, and Curry is actually 27 years old now. Plus, LeBron’s riding with a fairly green cast in the main rotation led by young guys Irving and Tristan Thompson. I also don’t see how the match-ups favor Cleveland.

There’s always a chance the Cavaliers win, of course. That’s why even being a ten point favorite doesn’t mean you have 100% odds on winning due to the randomness of the games and the chance of injuries pulling the greater team closer to the league mean. But picking the Warriors in five games seems like a pretty safe bet and there’s a decent chance at a sweep. (There’s a game-by-game odds barplot below, and yes, that’s just a rounding issue; it all adds up properly.) Golden State has homecourt advantage too, which is especially useful in the playoffs and in high-leverage gamess. Fret not, however, because there’s a greater chance of a seven game series than a sweep. And at least with whatever happens, there’s a 100% chance that a beleaguered franchise wins the title.

Golden State odds on winning: 81% (most common result: five games)