I felt there was really only one unanswered question going into Game 6 of the NBA Finals, that being whether LeBron James could use the emotion of the home crowd and the urgency of an elimination game to overcome having only one day to recover from Game 5.
For most of the first half, the jury was out; some thought that he was “saving” himself for the second half. As the third quarter ground to a close, however, it was pretty clear. Lebron was done, and so were the Cavaliers.
If you look at Lebron’s production in Finals games with two or more days of rest, this is what you see:
Game 1: 44-8-6
Game 2: 39-16-11
Game 5: 40-13-11
In the games where there was just one day of rest, his production looks like this:
Game 3: 40-12-8
Game 4: 20-12-8
Game 6: 32-18-9
It’s a subtle difference, but in an NBA Finals series, when you’re carrying your team, it’s huge.
I have felt since I watched it happen that the series turned late in Game 3, not with the lineup change in Game 4. Don’t get me wrong, that was a great coaching move which obviously changed the course of the series, but I’m talking about the Warriors’ comeback from a 20-point deficit in the third quarter of Game 3. Although they didn’t win the game, they kept James on the floor the entire second half, and made him play hard to make sure that game didn’t get away. If the Warriors had not fought their way back into the game, James could have rested the entire fourth quarter, and Game 4 could have looked completely different. If the Cavs win Game 4, then the Warriors are playing three elimination games, rather than zero. Little things.
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I felt Game 6 was the first game of this series that was unremarkable. A game, gritty, overmatched Cleveland team tried to win, and didn’t. There were moments where this Warrior or that Warrior stepped up and hit a shot, or got a rebound, but those things will happen when one team is better than the other. It was suspenseful up to the point when the lead hit 15. That’s the Warriors’ magic number — they were undefeated in games where they led by at least that much. After watching the Cavs for six games, you just knew they couldn’t score quickly enough to make up that kind of deficit.
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How about the visiting team celebrating on the other guys’ floor? If you’re a Bay Area sports fan, you’re used to that. The Giants have won three World Series since coming to San Francisco, and all three have been clinched on the road. The only World Series that have been clinched on the Giants’ home field have been by the New York Yankees in 1962 and the Oakland A’s in 1989. The last championship clinched by a Bay Area team on its own field was in 1974, when the A’s beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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This series continued a most unusual trend: In the 2015 playoffs, there were six series that stood at 1-1 after the first two games. In every case, the team that LOST Game 3 WON the series! The Warriors did it twice, to Memphis and Cleveland. The Clippers did it to San Antonio and had it done to them by Houston. Over in the East, the Cavs did it to the Bulls, and the Hawks did it to the Wizards.
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Steph Curry accomplished a lot in this Finals series, and in the playoffs as a whole. Here’s one thing he did that had never been done before: His team defeated all four teams that boasted the other First-Team All-NBA selections:
New Orleans – Anthony Davis
Memphis – Marc Gasol
Houston – James Harden
Cleveland – LeBron James
What are the chances of that?
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The only downer for me in this whole thing is that, while I believe the Warriors would have beaten the Cavs with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and Anderson Varejao, we’ll never know. I think the games would have been much more entertaining, but my feeling is that Kerr and his staff would have figured out a way to beat Cleveland anyway, and I wish they’d had the chance… but I’ll take it.
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Lastly, I want to thank all of you who read this piece, and anyone who read anything else I threw onto this site during the Warriors’ playoff run. It would have been great just to watch, but having a place to post my thoughts and observations made it much more enjoyable, but it only works if someone reads it.
Please follow me on Twitter at @jcannonsports so that you can find out when I write something, which will continue to happen once in a while at Crossover Chronicles and Bloguin.
