The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

[Boltman]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Steph Curry plays bone headed basketball and it finally caught up to him. The behind the back pass along the out of bounds line (seriously??), the random passes into the middle of the paint with only Varejao down there with 3 Cavs ready to pick it off, and the senseless chucking just to try and get three instead of two.

This is why I hope he's the last of his kind. I don't want kids in 5-10 years coming into the league becoming Nick Young's, Jimmer Fredette's, etc. because they are trying to be like Curry.

I hope it leads to the death of small ball, 3 chucking.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Like I said, i hope its the death of that small ball 3 stuff.

Even Mike D'antoni's first option on offense is to get to the basket.

Why would it end? They won a title, 73 games and lost a close game 7. What about the strategy isn't working? Is a strategy only viable if you win a title every single year?

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Curry ain't the first nor will he be the last to screw up on a pass like that. Doesn't mean the league is in bad shape going forward.

Same with 3s because at the end of the day, it's about finding that right balance.

[cima]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Yeah, let's not overreact about the Warriors' strategy. If Bogut and Curry are healthy, they may be champs right now.

[VDusen04]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Curry had some bad games but guys have bad games. And Curry's bad was probably more to do with trying to accomplish too much with the deep ball.

He needs to go back to driving and using that as a weapon to get threes off.

If anything, his play in the Finals proved you can't win by just shooting threes. It gets easier to defend that when nobody is worried you'll drive.

Kevin Love was able to defend Curry because he knew Curry had one thought on his mind so there was no way Love was taking a step back. He rode him and Curry clanked off the side of the rim.

If Curry is going to take 14 three pointers and only 5 shots inside the arc next season, he will fall off the earth and be another shooter remembered as that guy who had a nice two year run.

Going to shield myself from flying projectiles before saying this but... the stark difference in Curry's postseason approach—not in terms of him struggling against defense, but him not taking what the defense was so clearly giving to him... something he had no problem taking advantage of for just about the entire season—is one of the driving factors behind a lot of folks wondering if something was up with Curry that we didn't know about.

He was an incredible finisher in the paint in the regular season. Surely, I was blown away first and foremost by his range, but his ability to finish creatively and accurately around and over challenging defenders inside was the cherry on top. If he was just a gunner, it'd have still been a crazy show. But it was all those times where someone finally seemed to lock him down, only for him to elude and casually bury a lefty scoop floater from 13 feet over a challenging center that really put things over the top.

I don't know where to go for full-season statistics for this but as of March, his accuracy in the paint and restricted area was through the roof (62.5 percent in the paint on 6.4 attempts per, aka 0.2 attempts less than LaMarcus Aldridge, and 66.4 percent in the restricted area, accuracy behind only DeAndre Jordan, Hassan Whiteside, LeBron James, and Dwight Howard). http://thesportsquotient.com/nba/201...ates-the-paint

As I already suggested before, maybe it's as simple as fatigue or buckling under pressure. But of the opportunities the Cleveland defense did clearly give him (and OKC for that matter), his decision-making and execution varied greatly from virtually any other point of the season.

All that said, I don't agree with this:

If anything, his play in the Finals proved you can't win by just shooting threes. It gets easier to defend that when nobody is worried you'll drive.

I mean, I get it. The Warriors lost soooo it is what it is. But I don't think much of anything was negatively proven regarding the three-ball. When you lose Game 7 by four points, it's usually not going to be so much about system failure as it is about a few things happening down the stretch that tilted the contest in one direction or another.

In truth, we're saying the Finals proved a team can't win by just shooting threes, if that's what we want to call Golden State's approach in Game 7. But in fact, if Curry knocks down his super duper wide open look from the right wing in the game's final minutes... and/or if LeBron James doesn't recover to make one of the greatest defensive plays in NBA history, we'd be sitting here talking about back-to-back Warriors championships. That's way too thin of a line between winning and losing to make any declarations about how the Warriors couldn't win by playing the way they did.

[JazzMan]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

We're back on "can't win shooting a bunch of 3s"? Predictable.

Obviously, you can. You just can't win playing dumb basketball fishing for "daggers" and highlight plays.

Curry got too cute. They should have ran it through Draymond way more. He's the natural leader for that team and he was their MVP this series, no doubt.

[23]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Why would it end? They won a title, 73 games and lost a close game 7. What about the strategy isn't working? Is a strategy only viable if you win a title every single year?

Meaning teams usually try to mock what they see work.

Yes they won once but chucking 3s aint the answer. Balance always is so thats my point.

There have been plenty of stretches where their style of basketball didnt work including the last 4 minutes of game 7.

So yeah i dont wanna hear about it working right now.

[tripleh1142]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Like I said, i hope its the death of that small ball 3 stuff.

Even Mike D'antoni's first option on offense is to get to the basket.

So would people rather see Lebron and Kyrie iso for 20 seconds every possession? I'd much rather see ball movement and screens than iso ball. Before everyone jumps me I agree the Warriors were hunting threes way too often last night. To me the biggest mistake of game 7 was Kerr putting Ezeli back in. He was terrible in the first half.

[Boltman]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Obviously, you can. You just can't win playing dumb basketball fishing for "daggers" and highlight plays.

Curry got too cute. They should have ran it through Draymond way more. He's the natural leader for that team and he was their MVP this series, no doubt.

Draymond was their most effective player last night yet he couldn't get a sniff of the ball at the end because Steph was too busy being cute making silly passes, turning it over, and chucking **** three balls up.

Solid gamelan down the stretch.

[Rockie_Fresh88]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Obviously, you can. You just can't win playing dumb basketball fishing for "daggers" and highlight plays.

Curry got too cute. They should have ran it through Draymond way more. He's the natural leader for that team and he was their MVP this series, no doubt.

Yeah I respect his game a lot but it almost seems overly cocky some of the things he did at the end of the game .

[VDusen04]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Meaning teams usually try to mock what they see work.

Yes they won once but chucking 3s aint the answer. Balance always is so thats my point.

There have been plenty of stretches where their style of basketball didnt work including the last 4 minutes of game 7.

So yeah i dont wanna hear about it working right now.

And yet, despite some terrible decisions (Curry's behind-the-back pass and absolute refusal to walk past Kevin Love into the paint), the Warriors were still just a few plays away from repeating as NBA champions. No style is perfect, but few styles have dragged a team like this within 60 seconds of back-to-back NBA championships, even while said style is being mucked up by some stupid decisions.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

Meaning teams usually try to mock what they see work.

Yes they won once but chucking 3s aint the answer. Balance always is so thats my point.

There have been plenty of stretches where their style of basketball didnt work including the last 4 minutes of game 7.
So yeah i dont wanna hear about it working right now.

So we're going to use this 3 game skid as proof that the strategy is flawed and ignore the past 2 years when they ran laps around the league?


Not liking the strategy because of a viewing preference is one thing, saying it doesn't work is just wrong. They won the title just last year.

[cima]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

All I know is David Blatt better get a ****ing ring and Flopshow Bob shouldn't get ****.

[ehh]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

If they have a video of their misses I'll post it. But man oh man.... All I can tell you is that I'm happy the whole 3 point thing wasn't successful last night.

How may shots did the Splash Bros have last night that were airballs or drew all glass? Had to have been 3-5 attempts.

It's always fun to see the evolution of the sport but clearly many of us older fans think it's gone too far w/ the smallball three-point-chucking stuff. Call me a ***** or an old grouch but I'm happy CLE won.

[23]

Re: The Finals: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden St. Warriors Part 2

So would people rather see Lebron and Kyrie iso for 20 seconds every possession? I'd much rather see ball movement and screens than iso ball. Before everyone jumps me I agree the Warriors were hunting threes way too often last night. To me the biggest mistake of game 7 was Kerr putting Ezeli back in. He was terrible in the first half.

Nobody is calling for iso ball either, but ball movement is not what im talking about.

I'm talking about incessant chucking, ignoring other fundamental parts of the game.. like Vni mentioned, how many mid range shots did Steph attempt?

How about Klay, did he even drive to the basket at all or beyond the ft line without doing a turnaround fadeaway back towards the 3 point line?

Jump passing to Anderson Varejao on like 5 straight possessions was also another weird bunch of decisions, but no.. im not a fan of either.