{"id":24732,"date":"2016-06-10T08:01:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/after-blowout-warriors-need-to-respond\/"},"modified":"2016-06-10T08:01:27","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:01:27","slug":"after-blowout-warriors-need-to-respond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/after-blowout-warriors-need-to-respond\/","title":{"rendered":"After blowout, Warriors need to respond"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND<\/strong> \u2014 It\u2019s been the postseason of blowouts.<\/p>\n

The NBA Finals have been no different. There was a 63-point turnaround from Game 2 to Game 3 in the span of about 72 hours.<\/p>\n

Try to make sense of this: The Cleveland Cavaliers had their entire roster available to start Game 2 of the NBA Finals, and wound up losing that game to the Golden State Warriors by 33 points. So in Game 3, with starting forward Kevin Love limited to watching in the locker room while he continues recovering from a concussion, the Cavaliers won by 30.<\/p>\n

This sort of wild back-and-forth isn\u2019t just rare, it\u2019s unprecedented.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, no matter if you lose by 30 or one, it\u2019s just one win,\u201d Cleveland star LeBron James said after the Cavaliers\u2019 120-90 win on Wednesday night in Game 3. \u201cYou have to be able to have a short mind and also learn from the mistakes that you made in the previous game and just try to better yourself in the following game.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was Cleveland\u2019s mandate going into Wednesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

The task now falls to Golden State heading into Game 4 tonight.<\/p>\n

This is the first time since 1965 that there\u2019s been two 30-point margin of victories in the NBA Finals \u2014 and the first time ever that teams have both won and lost games by 30 in the title series. There hadn\u2019t even been an instance of a team winning one game by 20 and then losing the next by 20 since the Chicago-Seattle series in 1996.<\/p>\n

Again, try to make sense of that. It\u2019s not just this series \u2014 these playoffs are on pace for the highest average margin of victory that the NBA has ever seen. In theory, a matchup of the Eastern Conference and Western Conference champions should at least occasionally have some moments of drama in the final minutes.<\/p>\n

So far, that\u2019s nowhere to be found in this series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only change is just playing hard,\u201d said Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue, who wasn\u2019t going to spell out any specifics of anything related to the new ideas gleaned out of the Cavaliers\u2019 strategy sessions on Monday and Tuesday.<\/p>\n

While Lue wasn\u2019t sharing, the Cavaliers \u2014 even with Love in the locker room \u2014 might have figured something out Wednesday night. They didn\u2019t switch as often against Golden State\u2019s steady diet of pick-and-rolls, and they showed the Warriors some new wrinkles \u2014 partly out of desperation, partly because they had different personnel units capable of different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the game would have been the same whether he played or not,\u201d Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Love after Game 3. \u201cThis was about one team being emotionally fired up and angry about being down 2-0, and another team being comfortable. So I don\u2019t think that had anything to do with it. I think it was just the level of intensity that they brought. They would have brought it with Kevin, too. So I don\u2019t think it made a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one would say Cleveland is more talented when Love isn\u2019t in uniform.<\/p>\n

But in Game 3, they were better without him.<\/p>\n

His status for Game 4 is unknown, and Cleveland might have a dilemma on its hands when Love gets medically cleared to play again. If the doctors say he can play, then he\u2019ll play \u2014 but it wouldn\u2019t seem likely that the Cavaliers will get away from what worked Wednesday.<\/p>\n

What Lue should do will be one of the more debated topics until Friday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to tell you,\u201d the Cleveland coach said when asked how he would use Love in Game 4, if he\u2019s cleared.<\/p>\n

The Cavs had three players \u2014 James, Kyrie Irving and J.R. Smith \u2014 each reach 20 points in Game 3, which is three more such outings than the Warriors have gotten from Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in this series.<\/p>\n

The \u201cSplash Brothers\u201d haven\u2019t exactly lived up to the moniker.<\/p>\n

Combined, they\u2019re shooting 31 for 77 (40 percent) from the field in the series, 16 for 45 (36 percent) from 3-point range, and have shot a combined nine free throws between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best part about this team is we responded well the whole year, and we\u2019ve had a bad history of Game 3s, which is unfortunate,\u201d said Thompson, after the Warriors dropped to 0-4 in Game 3s in this postseason. \u201cBut luckily for us a golden opportunity still to go home up 3-1, so no time to sulk. I mean, me and Steph haven\u2019t really shot the ball as well as we want to. That\u2019s all right. We\u2019re still up 2-1.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 It\u2019s been the postseason of blowouts. The NBA Finals have been no different. There was a 63-point turnaround from Game 2 to Game 3 in the span of about 72 hours. Try to make sense of this: The Cleveland Cavaliers had their entire roster available to start Game 2 of the NBA Finals, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24732"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}