Warriors Don’t Need Hero Ball to Beat Cavs

For a moment, it seemed like the Warriors were in trouble.

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There was a minute left in the first quarter, and J.R. Smith knocked down his second three in two minutes to put the Cavaliers up 29-15. At that moment, it was all going south for the Warriors, all fingers pointing towards a Cleveland rout and steal of Game 1 – the Cavaliers scoring at will, Smith heating up, and the Warriors looking discombobulated on both ends of the floor.

But like a light switch, the Warriors quickly turned their discombobulating manner into organized chaos. Leandro Barbosa made an ill-advised jumpshot, followed by a dunk by Andre Iguodala. Steve Kerr then unleashed wild card Marreese Speights to start the second, and a couple of “wow this guy plays a lot better than he looks” buckets cut the lead to four. Consecutive contested threes by Stephen Curry soon followed, and voila, the Warriors suddenly led 39-36.

And any sense of panic was over because the Warriors had shaken the jitters off and begun to play their style, a style that has been near unstoppable this season.

For the Warriors’ biggest advantage in this series is their ability to beat the Cavaliers in many ways, while the Cavaliers can only beat the Warriors one way. They came pretty damn close, too; if Iguodala hadn’t defend LeBron James perfectly in the final sequence of regulation, or if Iman Shumpert’s desperation shot from the corner had been just a few inches to the left, we would be talking with angst about how the Warriors just blew away home court advantage.

But they didn’t, even though James exploded for a Finals-high 44 points, taking whoever the Warriors threw at him and just laughing at it, hitting jumpers left and right and bullying his way inside like a freight train. If the Cavaliers have any hope of winning this series, they need James to put up similar numbers, and even so, as the Warriors proved already, it still may not be enough.

Curry can go for 50 on any given night, but he doesn’t need to resort to the hero ball of James. He can afford to be conservative and put up a decent but not jaw-dropping 24 points because he has the necessary supporting cast, system, and faith in his teammates. And when it’s time for the MVP to take over, he will, whether it’s knocking down a huge jump shot toward the end of the regulation or setting the tone by making four consecutive free throws to begin overtime, cleverly drawing fouls on jump shots.

Quite simply, Curry has the luxury to rest up, get his teammates involved, and have enough left in the tank to help close out the game, while James has to maintain a consistent high-level scorers mentality while playing a majority of the game to just to give his team a chance to win. No one will admit it, but fatigue is an easily correlation to why James missed the potential game winner wide right and all of his shot attempts in overtime after playing 46 minutes in all.

Who the best player on the floor is during these Finals is irrelevant, as we learned in Game 1. Heck, James may win Finals MVP at this rate whether the Cavaliers win or lose, but when it comes to the hardware that actually counts, the collective team effort of the Warriors will trump the one-on-five play of LeBron James any day of the week.

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