NBA Finals prediction

Draymond wears #23 because of J-Rich. Not His Airness. Not LeQueen 

(1) Golden State vs. (1) Cleveland

Let’s start this prediction off by revisiting my imitation of a patented LeBron James backhanded compliment from my conference final preview:

KING JUAN:

Cleveland’s been playing some impressive ball. Undefeated in the playoffs. Heading toward a second straight Finals appearance. It would be LeBron’s sixth straight NBA Finals appearance, which is a mighty impressive accomplishment, but we all know that the Thunder pose the biggest threat to Golden State’s second straight title.

I stand by that statement. And what I watched or heard about both conference final series only strengthens that belief.

From what I’ve seen, the Warriors have too many ways to win this series whereas too much has to go right for the Cavs to win. I could and probably will be wrong, which is why it’s fun to analyze and predict a sports outcome, but this is how I see the Cavs winning: 

• LeBron has to play just about his greatest ever series.
• Cleveland needs to magically discover a defensive ferocity akin to what they did in last year’s playoffs under David Blatt.
• Channing Frye needs to continue to be a flame-shooter from downtown à la NBA Jam.
• Iman Shumpert needs to play a lot more and knock down three-pointers like he’s the second coming of Mike Miller.
• K-Love needs to be a more consistent contributor and be an impactful player for at least 3-4 games with his outside shooting and/or rebounding while having his minutes significantly limited because his defense is paltry.
• Kyrie needs to resemble a competent defender. (Can someone ask Russell Westbrook if he thinks Irving is an underrated defender? Now that will be a hoot.)
• Delly needs to play more minutes—and shoot better than he has in the playoffs.
• Tristan Thompson needs to also play his greatest ever, on the defensive end and on the offensive glass. (He has snared 17.7% of available offensive rebounds, which is best in the playoffs.)
• Lue will have to put LeBron at the 4 a significant amount of time and surround him with outside shooting and their best defenders. (Many sportswriters and NBA executives and coaches—including those from the Warriors—believe this is Cleveland’s best chance against Golden State. Lineups like Delly at 1, Shumpert at 2, Frye at 3, James at power forward, and Thompson at the 5. I believe it’s their best approach, too—and there are analytics to prove it.)
• In all likelihood, the Cavs will have to grind the game down, cut down our fast-break transition points and try to beat us on the offensive glass like they did in last year’s Finals.

I think most of these intangibles have to happen for the Cavs to have a chance of beating the Warriors, and I just don’t see it happening.

Under Tyronn Lue, the Cavs have emphasized offensive power at the expense of their defense. In these playoffs, Cleveland is 15^th out of 16 teams in defending pick and roll plays. Take a guess what Golden State’s bread and butter has been this season: a Curry/Green pick and roll. With their rangy defenders, athleticism and excellent switching, the Thunder essentially took that play out of our arsenal for most of the series. But in this series, oh baby, when Curry or Green see Irving and Love on the court at the same time, they are going to dial up a pick and roll on them again and again and again. Through the first four games of the Eastern Conference Finals, Love and Kyrie were allowing 1.2 points per possession when they defended a pick and roll. The Warriors will remorselessly attack them like the Raptors did. Compared to playing the Thunder defense, which was like trying to run through a Yucatan jungle of thicket, facing Kyrie and K-Love on defense will be like skipping through a sunny meadow.

How will Lue combat that defensive breach? In the Western Conference Finals, Billy Donovan’s answer was to keep Enes Kanter—a defensive liability—off the court more than he would have probably wanted; Donovan consistently limited his team’s deficiencies, but I have a feeling Lue will be more careless early on in this series; I think he will continue to believe that Cleveland can simply outgun the Warriors. That will be one of the key and interesting quandaries LeBron and the Cavs will have to negotiate. If they put J.R. Smith on Curry, who my source—a longtime, born-and-raised Cleveland Cavaliers fan—has told me has played his best defense in these playoffs, that still leaves Irving on Klay (a.k.a. Tray Thompson), which makes me smile with anticipation. And where does Lue try to hide Love on defense? Opponents have shot 65% at the rim when Love is defending the basket. Like Warriors beat writer Tim Kawakami wrote in his Finals prediction, the “Warriors almost never have to make those kinds of either/or decisions.”

Like I have been saying earlier this year once the Warriors decidedly beat the Spurs and mopped the floor with the Cavs in Cleveland, the only way the Warriors don’t win this year’s championship is if one of our major players gets injured. That was almost incorrect because the Durant and Westbrook and Thunder team we have anticipated for years almost finally hatched. But now that we’ve gotten this far, I think that’s the only way we lose against the Cavs because you don’t beat the Warriors by outshooting them. You don’t beat us in a seven-game series by making this a shootout. Over the past two seasons, the teams that have beaten us did so with defense, holding our team below or around 100 points, then managing enough offense to squeak out a win. This year’s Cavs team is a different beast compared to the one we faced last year, but they’re not ideally built to beat us.

Which will continue to make LeBron James, the most physically talented basketball player I have ever seen—a 6’8, 250 pound superhuman who can allegedly run the 40-yard-dash in 4.6 seconds (I believe it)—the most unfortunate fortunate player of his generation—an all-time great who consistently leads his teams to the Finals but almost always faces a superior opponent.

And his Hero-Basketball-Savior complex will continue to reign.

Sorry, Cleveland fans.

Warriors in 5

LeBron's reaction after our Game 6 victory in OKC