So much hype accompanied the Christmas Day showdown between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, to the point that for many, the game represented a referendum on the Cavs and what they had learned since the 2015 NBA Finals.
This viewpoint is entirely understandable. Cleveland knows that the Warriors are the league’s gold standard. In many ways, measuring up to Golden State is the ultimate aim of the Cavaliers’ season. Moreover, the intensity with which this game was played — it certainly felt like one of the NBA Finals slugfests we witnessed last June (more on that in a bit) — revealed just how much the Cavs care about avenging the NBA’s most recent world championship series. This game was undeniably a big deal on several fronts.
Yet, as much as everyone in the league anticipated — and salivated about — this reunion of LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and most of our friends (not Harrison Barnes, and not a full-strength Kyrie Irving, limited to 26 minutes), it remained a regular season game. Moreover, Cavs-Dubs remained an early regular season game, just before the 30-game mark of the long campaign. It was (always) going to be the case that unless one team displayed a powerful new strength or an alarming new source of weakness, Cleveland-Golden State would serve as an attractive Christmas viewing option, and little more.
This was discussed at partner site Comeback Sports the other day. The two best teams in the NBA might reside in the West, but because of the segregated conference system in the playoffs, Cleveland — safely tucked in the mediocre East — knows it stands above everyone else in that half of the league. Cleveland does not have to go through both Golden State and San Antonio to win the title; it just needs to go through one of them. For this reason, there’s no need to spend too much time focusing on Cavs-Warriors in the Finals… because it could be Cavs-Spurs.
The bigger point: Cleveland has a little more time and space in which to gear up for the Finals. Golden State and San Antonio, if able to create a West Finals sent from the basketball heavens, would tear each other apart in late May, with the survivor having to face a presumably fresher Cleveland squad for the whole ball of wax.
This brings us back to Cavs-Warriors on Christmas: If Cleveland fell short but put up a good fight, David Blatt and LeBron James had no reason to be alarmed. As long as Cleveland retained the ability to shape this fight the way it wanted to — chiefly in terms of creating a slower tempo and bothering the Warriors’ offense — its trip to Oakland would not be in vain.
That’s exactly how Friday afternoon’s game unfolded in Oracle Arena. The Cavs didn’t get a win, but they gained needed reassurance that if Golden State is their Finals opponent, they can play the Dubs the way they want (and need) to.
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Two fundamentally new data points emerged from this game, and will therefore receive a lot of examination if these teams reunite on the big stage in June of 2016. Harrison Barnes did not play for Golden State, and Kevin Love played (39 minutes) for Cleveland. Golden State’s deficit and Cleveland’s addition could lead one to conclude that the Warriors’ ability to win under such circumstances represents a more complete triumph and a sign of mastery in this matchup. That Steve Kerr is still not on the bench for the Warriors could reinforce such an opinion.
Yet, the verdict here is that Cleveland still gained more from this encounter, and plenty of convincing reasons support that claim.
First of all, the Cavaliers defended extremely well. They know how to get in Golden State’s grill and make the Warriors uncomfortable at the offensive end of the floor. If you had told Blatt and Bron-Bron before the game that the Warriors would fail to reach 90 points, the two men would have liked their chances. Even with Barnes out, Cleveland has to be very encouraged by its ability to continue to flummox the Dubs with its defense.
Second, Cleveland lost this game by a small margin — on the road — despite shooting terribly. The Cavaliers hit only 31.6 percent of their shots, and went only 5 of 30 from three-point range. Love — not on the floor during the 2015 Finals — hit just 5 of 16 field goal attempts and missed all five of his threes. Kyrie Irving went 4 of 15 and 0 for 6. All in all, Love, Irving and LeBron combined to make just 1 of 16 threes. Matthew Dellavedova and a not-fully-healthy Iman Shumpert both went 0 for 3. J.R. Smith hit 50 percent of his threes, but his four triples were the only four field goals he made. On a day when J.R. was feeling it, he couldn’t take enough shots give Cleveland even more of the scoring punch it needed.
Given the way Cleveland shot the ball, a team with the Warriors’ credentials should normally register a blowout. That the Cavs were in the hunt until the end despite their bricklaying festival should enable them to say, “We will beat this team if we can merely hit 40 percent of our shots and 30 percent of our threes.” There’s no reason for the Cavs to NOT think in those terms after this game.
A final point Cleveland can consider is that Golden State’s bench is shaky. As magnificent as the starters are (this is why Barnes is not only important in the present tense, but could very legitimately become a decisive figure in both the West Finals and the NBA Finals, should the Warriors reach both series), the Warriors’ bench-heavy lineup combinations have struggled for most of this season.
On Christmas Day, Andre Iguodala did not hit the clutch threes which powered Golden State to the 2015 NBA title. Festus Ezeli was not particularly productive in his 17 minutes. If not for Shaun Livingston’s massive 8-of-9 shooting performance — recalling his huge contribution in Game 6 of the Finals — Golden State would have lost.
Keep in mind, as an important added detail — that the Cavs play the back end of a back-to-back on Saturday night, while Golden State has two days off before its next game on Monday versus Sacramento. The Warriors were able to play their starters more minutes (154) than Cleveland did (147), even with Brandon Rush playing only 18 minutes before giving way to Iguodala, who played 30. Golden State’s three most important players — Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson — all played at least 36 minutes. After Love and LeBron played 39 minutes, the next-highest minute-getter for the Cavs was reserve Matthew Dellavedova, with 31.
Even with these limitations (including Kyrie’s managed minutes, referred to above), Cleveland stayed with the Warriors, minimizing the extent to which one can emphasize the Barnes injury to the exclusion of other factors.
If these teams play in the Finals, Cleveland will be able to gear up for the early games in the series and the Sunday games preceded by a two-day break on Friday and Saturday. Rest, bench depth, and starter minutes tilted in favor of Golden State on Christmas… and Cleveland still stayed close in Oracle. The Warriors might have won this game, but the Cavaliers won a valuable prize as well: encouragement.
