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.
LeBron. James.
Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided
I wasn’t convinced that LeBron James still had this in him. I was very wrong.
Last night, in Game 6, LeBron scored 41 points for the second consecutive game. In the last two games, he’s totaled 82 points, 24 rebounds, 18 assists, 7 steals and 6 blocks, with just three turnovers. He’s shooting 56.1 percent from the field and 50.0 percent from behind the three-point line. As weird as this is to say, those numbers don’t even do justice to how incredible he’s been — playing full tilt at both ends, draining three-pointers with confidence, dunking, driving, swatting.
Hulk. Smash.
At the end of Game 4, as things were unraveling, there was the now infamous hootenanny with Draymond Green. LeBron was emotional in a way that you don’t normally see — not frustrated, annoyed, exasperated. He was angry. There were still a few minutes left on the clock and the game was still in reach, just barely. Watching him seethe at Green, I expected an explosion, a flipping of the switch if you will. LeBron had been great to that point, but not peak. On the next possession he took the ball right at Green and was swallowed. And that was it, fizzling impotence.
After that, I didn’t think he still had this gear. The ability to transcend circumstance and defense, laws of physics and human endurance. Apparently, he was saving it up for Games 5 and 6.
Considering the situation and the results, this may be the best two-game stretch of LeBron’s career. It is certainly the most visceral reminder of his abilities that I can recall, flashing not just his skills and physical gifts but his will. This is the place — force of will — that legacy nit-pickers like to poke at LeBron. Hopefully these two games will put to rest any questions about whether he can rise to a challenge.
His reward is one more chance to finish this all off. It is his legacy against that of the 73-wins, his strength against Curry’s savvy, his versatility against Green’s, his will against the Warriors.
LeBron. James.
Not so polished Golden State
Cody Williams | @TheSizzle20 | FanSided, Lake Show Life
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be for this Warriors team.
From the moment they won the title last season, the Warriors put a target on their own backs as all champions do. However, the way that they were able to respond and weather the storm with a record-breaking 73-win season was truly remarkable. Now that they are even in danger of blowing a 3-1 lead in the Finals after having struggled at various points throughout the playoffs as a whole, you have to wonder if their historical year is compromised, if this season is tarnished.
After 73 wins, fans of Golden State and of the NBA had to expect that the same dominance would continue into the postseason. Even with the adversity that the Warriors have come up against in these playoffs, there’s now an unavoidable feeling that this team might’ve been prematurely anointed, that they were false idols.
The difficult question to answer, though, is whether that’s actually the truth or not. Is this Warriors team simply Anakin Skywalker deemed the “chosen one” only to fail and become reviled or are they something different?
If nothing else, the perception of this Golden State team has undoubtedly been tarnished by these playoffs and these trials in the Finals. During the regular season watching the Warriors, it was a party for everyone involved — the players, fans, and even simply onlookers with no vested interest in the team were enjoying what was happening whenever the defending champs were on the floor.
Now it’s a different feeling entirely after how the Warriors have handled these tribulations of the postseason. Whether it be their war of words with LeBron and Cleveland, Stephen Curry chucking a mouthguard, or whatever else from the postseason, NBA fans are viewing this team completely different.
Even still, whether or not the Warriors are as likable as they once were doesn’t answer if their legacy as an all-time great team coming off of 73 regular season wins is diminished by how things have shaken out in the playoffs before the outcome of Game 7 has ever been decided.
Perhaps tarnish is too harsh of a word in this regard, but the Warriors’ legacy is irreversibly changed by this series with Cleveland and the playoffs as a whole, no matter what happens on Sunday.
Looking back over the 73-win season, one of the striking factors over the year (and even throughout last season as well) was the lack of substantial hardship that they faced. Even with minor injuries here and there to key roster components, they never had to deal with things like Curry injuring his knee in Round 1 and not looking the same since or deal with things like the Draymond Green suspension. And Golden State’s reaction both on the floor and off has only further proven their inexperience.
There’s a viable chance that the Warriors could be about to blow the Cavaliers out by 40 points in Game 7 at Oracle — no one would truly be that shocked if that was the outcome. It still wouldn’t matter for this team’s legacy. And until they prove down the line that they can stand tall (or taller than they have) through adversity, I don’t think that’s going to change.
Kevin Love, it’s not your fault
Josh Hill | @jdavhill | FanSided
In an NBA Finals that features not one or two but a handful of likely future Hall of Famers, we all seem to continue to talk about one constant: Kevin Love’s struggles.
It’s not even like we’re taking time out of our day to really breakdown what he’s doing wrong, it’s simply mentioned in passing. It’s not the first thing we mention about the NBA Finals and it’s not the last — it’s simply lost among the stacked deck of hot takes we have.
Calling any Kevin Love commentary either hot or a take is also deceptive. Just take a moment to think about that. We’re heading to Game 7 of the NBA Finals and Kevin Love is an afterthought at best.
There’s literally no winning if you’re Kevin Love. If the Cavaliers had lost Game 6, we would have talked about how the third member of the Big 3 didn’t pull his weight and followed by Twitter finding six or seven ways to trade him to Chicago, New York or Boston.
Even with the Cavaliers winning Game 6, Love is the butt of jokes about how the referees are rigging the game so that he fouls out.
How many times have we heard fans talk about games being rigged in favor of a player being taken out of action so their team can win? Serious or not, the very fact that we are having that discussion goes to show how much love has been lost.
But Kevin…
While he’s talked himself into the corner he now occupies, it’s not entirely his fault.
You could sort of tell something like this might happen when he was traded to the Cavaliers two summers ago. Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor infamously said that Love would be a good third option on a team and be the scapegoat.
“I question Kevin if this is going to be the best deal for him. I think he’ll be the third player on a team. I don’t think he’ll get a lot of credit if they do really well. I think he’ll get the blame if they don’t do well. He’ll have to learn to handle that. He’s around a couple guys who are awful good.”
Turns out, he wasn’t wrong at all. But it’s not Kevin’s fault.
It’s hard to get looks when LeBron James and Kyrie Irving are scoring 80-points combined, meanwhile J.R. Smith never passes the ball or open up defenses. Love was brought in to spread the floor and gobble up rebounds, but we all glossed over the issue of consistency that is always a random wrench in any plan to be a linchpin on a championship team.
Love is an All-Star caliber forward, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means. Anyone can be an All-Star. Dale Davis, Tyrone Hill and Kevin Duckworth were All-Stars, so let’s not go nuts making that some sort of measure of greatness.
It’s not Kevin Love’s fault that he was oversold in Minnesota on bad teams that made him look like a Dale Davis All-Star. He didn’t earn his stripes with those terrible Timberwolves teams, he simply showed potential.
Lest we forget that a popular comparison to Love at the time of his original trade rumors was to Ryan Anderson. It’s not like we’re watching Wilt Chamberlain dissolve into the basketball ether as Kevin Love slides deeper and deeper onto the bench during games.
The biggest thing that no one wanted to realize could be a problem with Love is his lack of consistency. He was bailed out by injury last season and we didn’t get to see him on a major stage in Minnesota. But he was inconsistent then and he remains inconsistent now — it’s simply showing more because he’s under brighter lights.
Love was accused of padding his stats in the seemingly endless supply of garbage minutes the Timberwolves provide players each year, and those doubters aren’t entirely wrong. Love is one of the best players in the NBA when he’s firing on all cylinders, but that’s the eternal struggle with him.
It’s our fault for building Love up into this invincible missing piece to the Cavaliers puzzle. The inconsistency bug can bite anyone at anytime. Just take a look at how awful LeBron James was at hitting his jumper early on in this series, and how changing that has impacted the Cavaliers chances of actually winning this series.
All Love has to do is put together one good game — the one he has left — and all will be forgiven. But this all circles back to the question of whether or not he can, which isn’t something we ask of many elite players in the NBA.
Kevin Love is human, and the only reason we’re harping on him so bad is because we refused to believe that prior to actually watching him on a real team.
That’s not his fault, it’s ours.
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