Cavaliers restore pace as Stephen Curry falters in Game 3 of the see-saw NBA Finals

With Cleveland springing back to life and Golden State still waiting for Curry to push them, the real question now, Jonathan Raymond asks, is what a game in this series will look like when both teams have their offences functioning?

Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James, left, and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry reach for a loose ball during the second half of Game 3 of basketball's NBA Finals in Cleveland, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
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This is the thing about pace, as helpfully articulated by ESPN broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy:

“When you say play with pace, it doesn’t just mean get it up and shoot it quick.

“It means how you execute your offence, how early you get into your offence and the force and speed you cut with.”

In Game 3, backs against the wall, the Cleveland Cavaliers kicked the bad habits they had retreated to in the opening two contests and, as LeBron James put it post-game, “finally got our pace, finally started playing our basketball”.

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The Cavs had been a shell of their attacking best, they had lost their pace. And not just in the sense that they had slowed down their offence more than they needed to.

When they did move the ball, it was often without as much intent. When they fired long-range twos, it was usually out of rhythm with the shot clock ticking down because they could not create better looks. When they looked to the three, their newfound key throughout the post-season, they could not get open off-ball for clear attempts.

It was not always necessarily an attack without speed, but it was, as Van Gundy broadly outlined, an attack without purpose and direction.

Game 3, a 30-point win to answer their 33-point Game 2 loss, was (obviously) a reversal. Instead the Golden State Warriors this time wasted too many possessions with purposeless passing around the perimeter, too many possessions stuck winding down the shot clock and resorting to marginal one-on-one looks. Left too many threes clanking off iron (9-of-33 as a team).

A series of high picks and off-ball screens opened up space for Kyrie Irving, who found his stroke early and scored 30 points. James found his shot in the third quarter and made the Warriors pay with some outside-in play, scoring 13 points in the period. He finished with 32. JR Smith, with attention coalescing around Irving and James, finally, mercifully found his three-point shot (5-of-10) and added 20.

Stephen Curry’s ineffectual turn finally caught up to Golden State, too. With Klay Thompson going through an up-and-down night (that ultimately tilted more down), Draymond Green’s shot abandoning him and the bench finally playing a bit more like a bench, the Warriors could have used a big Curry night.

He did not score until four minutes were left in the first half.

“He has to understand his value,” Van Gundy said of Curry at one point. He was chiding the MVP for taking a bad foul and putting himself in a precarious spot, for the second straight game, with his number of fouls. But he could have been talking about the whole of Curry at the moment.

For the third straight game he looked like he forgot how to dribble, running around off the ball to no particular success while Green handled the job of initiating the offence. It is a strange sight to see a player who is probably basketball’s best ball-handler suddenly abandon all pretense of creating looks either for himself or teammates off the dribble.

He was a ghost in the first half, with just two points on five shots.

“He looked out of sorts,” ESPN reporter Doris Burke said Warriors coach Steve Kerr told her at half-time. “I don’t know (why), but he’s got to be more engaged.”

And he was, a bit, in the third quarter. It was far too little, far too late though.

If he is going to continue to be a shadow of himself, Golden State will have to continue to try to win this series with defence, the way they took the first two games. Where they fell apart in Game 3 was in dealing with Cleveland’s crisper passing, in failing to respond with accordingly swift rotations. They got bullied on the boards (52-32).

But also the Cavaliers just finally started to hit some shots. James hit a few longer-range attempts. Irving hit more than a few long twos. Smith nailed some tough shots. Is that sustainable? Well, yeah, at least maybe – it’s how they played and shot the ball earlier in the play-offs. It is a natural product of their pace, when they can calibrate it right.

With the Cavaliers springing back to life and Golden State still waiting for Curry to push them to their highest level, the real question now is what a game in this series will look like when both teams have their offences functioning at their best.

If we ever get to actually see it, it will probably tell us which way these now-see-saw finals will eventually tip.

If we do not, it probably means we’re in store for a few more of these kind of ugly outcomes, however which way they might go.

jraymond@thenational.ae

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