The NBA playoffs are here. The games are tighter, the lights are brighter, and the narratives are getting thick. It can be a lot to keep up with but don’t worry we’re here to help. Throughout the NBA postseason, FanSided will be gathering together some of the most talented writers from our network for a daily recap of our favorite stories from the night before.
Welcome to The Rotation.
A crisis of identity
Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided
The Cleveland Cavaliers missed a Golden opportunity (I don’t care if you don’t like puns, that one was perfect). Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson both struggled mightily but the Cavs were carved to pieces by Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa, roughed up by Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green. For the Cavaliers to lose a game where both Curry and Thompson shot poorly is a crushing blow.
In last year’s Finals, the Cavaliers adapted out of necessity. With both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love injured, they ground the pace to a halt, played physical defense, and let LeBron and his individual scoring talents try to carry the offense to enough points for a win. That is not at all how the Cavs played this season, or during this strong run to the Finals. Their offense has been moving, slinging the ball around the perimeter to find open shooters, playing with pace and sharing offensive responsibility.
In Game 1, it looked like Cleveland couldn’t quite decide what strategy they wanted to implement. Channing Frye, who has been extremely important to Cleveland’s spread attack, played only seven minutes. In the first quarter, the offense repeatedly gummed up as LeBron tried to leverage his strength advantage in the post against Harrison Barnes and Andre Iguodala. Even when he looked to kick the ball out to open shooters, the lack of movement around him allowed the Warriors to take advantage, picking off passes and turning them into fastbreak points.
It wasn’t just LeBron either, Love and Irving both had plenty of opportunities to attack individual matchups as their teammates stood and watched. The Cavaliers have these offensive advantages and exploiting them is crucial to their chances against Golden State. But where the offense was flowing to those advantages naturally in the first three rounds, in Game 1 it looked like Cleveland was intentionally fumbling around for a pressure point, slamming down hard on anything that looked like it might be.
The Warriors did not play their best game, and they won. Cleveland can perhaps take solace in the fact that they did not play their best game either. While losing because of lights out shooting to Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa is demoralizing, it’s probably a lot better than executing near your own ceiling and still coming up short.
Cavalier with possessions
Cody Williams | @TheSizzle20 | Lake Show Life, FanSided
Squaring off against a team like the Golden State Warriors, there are so many challenges that present themselves. Quite simply, it’s the reason why the Warriors were able to win at a historic rate in the regular season this year, win a title last year, and so on — whenever an opponent tries to combat one strength of Golden State, they have another way or avenue that they can use to bury you. That doesn’t mean that opponents can’t overcome that, but it certainly makes the task more difficult.
The one thing that unequivocally can’t be overcome when playing against the Warriors is to give them extra possessions by turning the ball over. With the pace that Golden State plays at and the speed that they can put points on the board, coming up with empty possessions on offense that likely lead to buckets for the Warriors is the quickest way to notching a loss.
The importance of limiting turnovers seemed to be in the forefront of the minds of the Cavaliers on Thursday in Game 1 considering how they changed the style of play that got them to the Finals by slowing down the pace and trying to be a bit more methodical. However, that strategy isn’t going to work when the three players touching the ball the most in the Cavs offense in LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love are combining for 11 turnovers on the night, more than the entire Warriors team committed on the evening.
When you look at a 15-point loss for the Cavaliers, there are several things that contributed to the losing effort. They missed shots, they didn’t move the ball particularly well, and so on. However, the turnovers loom the largest when you consider the effort that Golden State put forth as well.
Even with the Warriors shooting a cool 49.4 percent from the floor on the night, their offense still wasn’t at its normal levels of potency in Game 1. They hit on only 33.3 percent of their threes while Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson struggled. If the Cavaliers capitalize on their possessions rather than giving the ball up to create extra opportunities for the Warriors, that Cleveland team is more likely to be able to capitalize on the Warriors’ shortcomings.
Could this be just a Game 1 where things have been a bit off-kilter in the majority of series throughout these playoffs? It’s possible. However, things didn’t look particularly great for the Cavaliers on Thursday night and, if they hope to have a fighting chance, they’re going to need to make serious adjustments. Adjusting to either limit turnovers or speed up the pace to devalue turnovers should be at the top of that list.
Kerr to bench Curry for Livingston in Game 2
Todd Whitehead | @CrumpledJumper | Nylon Calculus
Sources close to the Golden State Warriors’ organization have confirmed that two-time MVP point guard Stephen Curry will start Game 2 of the NBA Finals on the bench. Coach Steve Kerr has decided to replace Curry in his starting lineup with Warriors’ reserve guard, 6-7 Shaun Livingston.
LOL. JK. JK.
Kerr’s not benching Curry. No chance. But, wow! Did Livingston have a heck of a game on Thursday night or what? He led the Warriors with 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the field and 4-of-4 from the free throw line. Livingston wasn’t just incredibly efficient though, he was also incredibly clutch. Livingston was front-and-center during the Warriors’ critical second-half run. He entered the game with 4:26 left in the third quarter and the Warriors clinging to a one-point lead. Over the next ten minutes and change, Livingston dropped in twelve points (without missing a shot), nabbed three rebounds, and pitched in three assists. Livingston’s timely buckets included two shots to take the lead back from the Cavaliers at the end of the third. Overall, during Livingston’s stretch on the floor, the Warriors went on a 30-14 run to push their advantage to an insurmountable 17-point lead.
Livingston’s performance in Game 1 was all-the-more impressive in the context of his recent form. There was a lot of talk during the Western Conference Finals about how the Oklahoma City Thunder’s length bothered Golden State and no Warrior was more thrown off his game than Livingston. The lanky guard usually excels in the post with his turnaround jump shot, torturing his smaller opponents with an untouchably high release. But the Thunder guards — Andre Roberson, Russell Westbrook, and even Dion Waiters — with their long arms and strong legs, gave Livingston fits and he struggled to knock down his go-to shots throughout the series. Livingston shot 54 percent from the field during the regular season, but he only shot 36 percent against the Thunder.
In Game 1 of the Finals though, it was obvious that S-Dot is back!
Golden State Warrior Shaun Livingston scores a team-high 20-points in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers; each face represents a point scored.
Mama, there goes that clipboard
Daniel Rowell | @DanielJRowell | Hardwood Paroxysm
With a little over eight minutes remaining in the third quarter, Kyrie Irving stole the ball off a bad pass from Stephen Curry across the top of the key. On the ensuing possession, Irving fed Kevin Love in the post, but he missed the fadeaway jumper. Tristan Thompson, surrounded by four Warriors players, pulled down the rebound and threw up a hook shot, 56-52, timeout Golden State. The Cavaliers had come back in the third quarter from a nine-point first half deficit, cut the Warriors’ lead to four, and eventually (for a moment) took the lead.
In Kerr’s timeout, he sat everyone on the bench while he talked the game over with his coaching staff. It was the beginnings of a breakdown that was letting Cleveland back into the game: sloppy passes, standing around in the paint giving away second chances at the rim. As he broke from the huddle, his frustration boiled over and well, as Mike Green might say, “BANG!”
Mama, there goes that clipboard. Kerr, in a single swift slam of his fist, shattered his clipboard so hard that it had dry erase markers dry heaving. The five-point-palm exploding heart technique was in full display. In a single jab, he broke every offensive play in the book. The Triangle? Gone. High screen and roll? Gone. Flare screens? Gone. That inbounds play you used to run in CYO (“Ohio!”)? Gone. It was as if he took Bill Simmons’s ‘Book of Basketball’ and the paperback version, slipped in a few Phil Jackson self-actualized volumes, and the phone books for all of Northeast Ohio and the Bay Area, and tore them in half with one pull.
Rachel Nichol’s asked Kerr about the moment after the game:
“Destructions tends to ease some of the anger, so I try to take it out on a clipboard instead of a player, so it’s better that way… I mean we just, we came out after halftime and we completely lost focus and we were throwing careless passes and got lost defensively a couple times and we had to kind of regain our focus and our edge and the bench did that for us. So, they did a great job.”
Regain they did. Although the Cavaliers would come out of the timeout to close the four-point gap and take the lead, it was only a matter of time before the five-point palm took it’s hold on the Warriors’ hearts, the bench exploded after that timeout on a 40-24 run to close out Game 1.
And the best part? According to Draymond Green, this isn’t the first time Kerr’s abused a clipboard. He pulled the same maneuver in a game in New York during the regular season. And apparently, his technique has improved. Adding clipboard destruction to the long list of things the Warriors do well almost seems unfair. The Splash Brothers were a combined 8-of-27 from the field, 20 points, and yet they got 20 points from Sean Livingston and 23 more from Andre Iguodala and Leandro Barbosa. How? Well I’d try and draw it out for you, but I’m a bit afraid to get anywhere near Kerr’s Xs and Os right now.
For more NBA Finals coverage, check out our NBA Finals hub page.