Warriors will need stars in Cleveland
The Golden State Warriors need their star guards to show up if they want to win in Cleveland.
The Golden State Warriors are taking a 2-0 lead into Cleveland, where they clinched the NBA championship a year ago.
The Warriors have completely dominated LeBron James‘ team thus far in the series, winning Games 1 and 2 by 15 and 33 points respectively. Through eight quarters, this series has not been nearly as competitive as the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder. That series pushed the Warriors’ star backcourt to elevate themselves.
In this series, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson have not played to their standards and, quite frankly, they haven’t needed to.
In Game 1, the Warriors’ bench, led by Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa, took control of the game while Curry and Thompson struggled to combine for 20 points on poor shooting. Game 2 was about Draymond Green who was either left wide open or, better, defended by Kyrie Irving. Meanwhile, Andre Iguodala is having another fantastic NBA Finals series, one that has started to generate some Hall of Fame talk on social media. Curry had a decent Game 2, but there was no need for his heroics as the game was won pretty early.
If the Warriors want to close this out in four or fives games, all of the Warriors’ stars need to be ready to play.
This team doesn’t win 73 games without Curry. While he’s dealt with injuries throughout the playoffs, his presence alone changes games. They are not the greatest team of all-time without their two-time MVP. While the team is great and have been able to grind out wins as he’s been trying to get his sea legs back under him, they can’t finish off James and the Cavs without him.
Role players play better at home. The support of the home crowd elevates their play. We’ve seen that in this series, from Livingston to Andrew Bogut to Anderson Varejao, they’ve all given the Warriors productive minutes. But Curry and Thompson need to get back to being the players we know they are.
In fairness, Cleveland has done a good job of neutralizing the Splash Brothers. They’re doubling them hard, forcing the ball to go other places. Fortunately for Golden State, their third, fourth, and fifth options have been knocking down shots. They’ve dared Green to shoot the ball and he’s hitting them. After burning the Cavaliers twice, it’s safe to assume that they’ll make some adjustment on him thus opening up more opportunities for Curry and Thompson.
Thompson has yet to get going in either NBA Finals series, but after his incredible performance in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, it feels like a matter of time before he erupts and feasts on the Irving or J.R. Smith‘s poor defense.
In last year’s Game 6 of the NBA Finals, Curry scored a team-high 25 points, grabbed 6 rebounds, dished out 8 assists, and took 3 steals. As the best basketball player in the league, he knows when he needs to step up and take over.
If they don’t show up in either game, then the series is going to shift back to Oakland tied. But knowing what we know about the greatest shooting backcourt of all-time, they’ll be ready.