The Rotation: LeBron did as much as one man could, and it wasn’t enough

Welcome to The Rotation, our daily playoff wrap-up of our favorite stories, large and small, from last night’s NBA action.

“As Much As One Man Can”

By Matthew Miranda (@MMiranda613)

In the 1991 Eastern conference finals, Chicago swept Detroit. In a game at the Palace, Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars — both All-Stars that year — got out on a two-on-one against Michael Jordan. The Piston guards each went on to earn enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, but against Jordan that day and ever after they looked like two pigeons trying to take down a golden eagle. They weren’t going to score. They knew it. He knew it. You could see it. The metaphor was unavoidable: one was greater than two; Detroit, an established dynasty, was shattered; an ascendant power in Chicago assumed the throne. It smelled like history. It was.

Midway through the first quarter Sunday night, Kyrie Irving, off a pick, threw a behind-the-back pass to the idea of Tristan Thompson. The reality of Thompson was rolling toward the paint while the ball sailed toward the top of the arc, nowhere near him, into Kevin Durant’s hands. This happened.

Like Thomas and Dumars, Durant and Curry are bound for the Hall; like Jordan, James is the apex player of his era; like in that long-gone series, here a 2-on-1 is as a metaphor for an unfolding truth: while LeBron may be limitless as a basketball player, there are limits even the best player in the world can’t transcend. Limits of space and time and matter. LeBron can only be LeBron; he can’t be the rest of his teammates, even if sometimes he makes it seem possible.

The moment the ball is past Thompson, he’s kvetching at Irving. Is Kyrie resigned after his mistake? Distracted by his teammate’s reprimand? Either way, he shows zero interest in getting back on defense (it’s not like getting back on D ever paid off in the Finals). Is Thompson doubtful he can catch up to Durant and Curry, so rebuking Irving rather than continuing to compete seems a (nearly) victimless crime? Either way, James ends up alone, and even though the Warriors scored, he did as much as one man can. He always does.

First he had to stop the dribble, that dribble belonging to a creature seemingly designed for the singular purpose of getting buckets. Durant dribbles three times over about 35 feet before James closes him out, forcing a pass to Curry. LeBron now has to shift toward Steph, so as not to give up an open 3-pointer; as soon as he sees Durant’s pass lead Curry past the arc, toward the hoop, the possible outcomes narrow. The worst is a Curry-Durant alley-oop, a danger if he wanders too close to Steph. The next-worst is an uncontested Curry lay-in, a risk if James doesn’t contest because he’s guarding against the alley-oop. A better outcome — not “good,” but “better” — is a Curry midrange one-footed pull-up floater off-glass.

All the while, James is calculating his ideal outcome: luring Curry into thinking he’s contesting, then timing his drop-back perfectly and stealing the lob. LeBron races from the 3-point line on one side of the floor to having a foot in the restricted area on the other side, forcing Curry to make a shot a lot of NBA players would miss. And literally no one else on his team is in the picture.

A good question popping up on Twitter postgame: is there any player the Cavs could add who’d make them better than the Warriors? The Finals have been the canvas for brilliance on both sides of the ball by Durant, a two-way monstrosity. Cleveland shows no signs of being able to contain Golden State, particularly from deep; the Warriors outscored the Cavs by 30 on 3-pointers. Kyrie and Kevin Love are not two-way monstrosities.

It’s not just this series Cleveland is in danger of falling too far behind. The arms race feels over; who could the Cavs acquire that would swing the balance of power back toward Ohio? The best player alive has done everything anybody could, but the math don’t lie. Three points is beating two. Curry and Durant each play alongside a fellow MVP. LeBron doesn’t. The two pair is beating the high card. It’s starting to smell like history again.

Wanted: J.R. Smith’s Mojo

By Aaron Fischman (@ByAaronFisch)

Prior to Game 2 Sunday night, Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue found himself imploring J.R. Smith to shoot more. Yes, that would be the same shoot-happy J.R. Smith who infamously told reporters before his Cavaliers debut in early 2015, “Worse comes to worse, my motto is: ‘When in doubt, shoot the ball.’” Long been known as a gunner, along the lines of, say, Jamal Crawford, Nick Young and Lou Williams, J.R. Smith’s offensive marginalization has been apparent all season long. Over the course of the 2016-17 campaign, the mercurial shooting guard attempted the second-fewest shots per game of his career and the fewest since his second pro season as a 20-year-old with the Hornets.

Although the 8.7 field-goal attempts per game average was awfully low by Smith’s standards, his shot rate this postseason has plummeted much further. To better contextualize his plummeting offensive impact, Smith launched a robust 12.8 and 9.4 shots per game in the 2015 and 2016 NBA Finals, respectively. He also tried a combined 96 3-pointers (7.4 per game) in the last two Finals. In fact, Cleveland’s Game 3 and 6 wins last Finals featured Smith attempting 10 treys in each contest. Undoubtedly, he played a key role in that championship run.

Flash forward a year and Lue has had to resort to prodding Smith to shoot. “He’s an assassin,” Lue told the media at Saturday’s practice. “We’re reminding him of that. Go out there and shoot. We need him to.” The next night, Smith simply didn’t or couldn’t deliver what Lue claimed was needed. In 9:49 of action in the opening quarter, the rarely shy shooter was a nonfactor offensively, taking zero shots (and unsurprisingly not logging a single assist). Although the score remained close well into the third quarter, Lue opted to play Smith a mere five minutes the rest of the way. To open the third, after he committed two quick fouls, numbers three and four, Smith was benched, never to be seen on the court again Sunday night.

While foul trouble certainly played a role in limiting Smith’s minutes to just under 14 in Game 2, Lue also likely determined that the guard’s improved defense was not up to par against the mighty Warriors.

The marginalization of J.R. Smith may be a tough hit for the Cavaliers to absorb when facing the otherworldly Warriors, but the fault is not only his or the team’s for not utilizing him properly. How does any team hope to keep up with the otherworldly Warriors when, beyond its top three players, the supporting cast finds scoring to be such an exceedingly difficult task? Excluding James, Irving and Love, two Cavaliers have hit more than two shots in either of the first two games: Tristan Thompson made four shots Sunday, and Richard Jefferson hit three in Game 1. That’s been it.

Considerable credit must also be given to the Warriors, whom many laud for their offensive poetry while underappreciating what they do on the less sexy end. During the regular season, the Warriors impressed with a league-low 32.4 opposing 3-point percentage. The Cavaliers connected on an elite 38.4 percent of their regular-season 3s (only the Spurs were better) and hit an even more ridiculous 43.5 percent in their first 13 playoff games. Through the first two Finals games, the Warriors put an end to that. So far, the Cavaliers have been silenced from deep. Cleveland’s 19-of-60 from long range looks even worse when James, Irving and Love are taken out of the equation. The non-big three, most notably including Smith, Kyle Korver, Iman Shumpert, Deron Williams and Richard Jefferson, clock in at an abysmal 6-of-28.

As the series shifts to Cleveland, tune in to see if Smith and his bench compatriots can get it going from 3. Right now, it’s looking bleak.

There’s still hope for Cleveland and it starts with LeBron James

By Brandon Jefferson (@pengriffey_jr)

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, the Cleveland Cavaliers are heading back home for Game 3 of the NBA Finals down two games to zero against the Golden State Warriors.

Just like in 2016, the first two games at Oracle Arena ended in blowout wins for Golden State. The Cavaliers know the feeling of having their back against the walls on the NBA’s biggest stage and while most of the world might be ready to write them off (again) two words make this series far from over: LeBron. James.

James started Game 2 as if he were shot out of a cannon. In the first half he posted 18 points and 10 assists. All 11 of his field goal attempts were at the rim — his average shot distance was under three feet.

LeBron is the best basketball player on the planet, the Warriors cannot completely shut him down. He’s too good to not have an impact on the game in some way. Golden State is going to have to pick their poison with him. Yet, through 24 minutes of Game 2 James was having his cake and eating it too.

At the end of the night, the Warriors won handedly once again (132-113) and James’ second half numbers of 11 points, four assists and five rebounds were more pedestrian by his standards.

James seemed to ease off the pedal in the second half, likely in hopes of getting Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Cavs going. He took seven total shots after halftime, three of them were from behind-the-arc and he split on the other two jumpshots he took. After getting what he wanted early, James seemed to fall right into the Warriors’ gameplan. Not only was he not having much of an effect as a facilitator, he began settling for outside looks.

However long this series lasts, LeBron is going to need to play like he did in the first half if the Cavaliers are going to have any hope of completing a comeback.

While the 2016 storyline keeps trying to creep up into the 2017 iteration of this matchup, it is the 2015 NBA Finals LeBron that Cleveland must have show up from here on out. With Irving and Kevin Love missing, LeBron was able to carry a group of second teamers to a hard fought six-game series against a fully-manned Warriors contingent.

Irving has yet to find his footing, and though Love has made noise on the stat sheet it hasn’t done much to help Cleveland’s outcome on the scoreboard. James has been his all-world self, but he’s going to need to continue to push the needle offensively and make the game easier for his supporting cast.

Next: Has Stephen Curry finally figured out how to defend LeBron James pick-and-rolls?

We’ve seen him do it before (2015 and 2016 NBA Finals) and he’s going to need to do it again to extend this series back to Oracle. For Golden State, they are going to need to limit how big of an impact he has on the game. Either live with his scoring and slow down the supporting cast or let him make plays for others and keep him from getting good looks. One of those two things is much easier to do than the other.