The 2016 NBA Finals finally produced a well-contested game. And, in a series between two teams who are most dangerous when firing from three, the better three-point shooting team in Game 4 was, straightforward enough, the better team.
The Splash Brothers – Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson – finally brought a heavy downpour of points, Harrison Barnes gave the Warriors some steely production and Golden State scored an NBA Finals record 17 threes on Friday night.
The Cavs were stagnant offensively in the second half, both stifled by a hyperactive Warriors defence and simply looking drained. Cleveland stopped moving the ball, stopped moving off the ball and generally just shrank from the moment. LeBron James was left to repeatedly batter his way into the middle, and Kyrie Irving created some offence, but it was taxing and not nearly enough.
The hosts, still in the clutches of desperation down 2-1 in the series, had 10 assists and made a mediocre, but at least near-acceptable, 5-of-16 threes (31.3 per cent) in the first half. They looked OK. They led by five at the break.
In the second half they had just five assists and hit 1-of-9 threes. It doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that – Cleveland cratered.
But it is, a bit, more complicated than that. The Cavaliers built a three-point machine throughout the play-offs, their attack evolved, and as soon as the finals arrived they just kind of abandoned it. The moment things get nervy, guys such as JR Smith, Kevin Love, Channing Frye and Iman Shumpert have basically disappeared, standing around waiting for LeBron to do something superhuman. Even in their 30-point Game 3 win, they only attempted 25 threes.
The Warriors, for as out of sorts offensively as they have looked at times, have at the least stuck to their best style. They have not attempted fewer than 27 threes in any game this series. Their 17-of-36 (47.2 per cent) outburst in Game 4 is just the natural high balancing out previous lows (9-of-33 in Game 3, 9-of-27 in Game 1). They have remained a team who know their strengths and play to them.
The Cavs, by contrast, have never quite appeared to know the best way to assert themselves. They are taking 10 less threes per game than they were earlier in the play-offs. Take that new element to Cleveland away, and they’re more or less like the same team who couldn’t really compete in the end in last year’s finals.
The blame doesn’t rest on their defence, which has remained pretty solid throughout the series; where they have lost these finals so far is in the confusion of their offence, the dissonance between what they do best and what they are actually doing.
And that – what they do best – seems to be the key thing the Cavaliers have forgotten. In their apparent reluctance to try to go shot-for-shot with the Warriors, they’ve denied themselves their best chance. The LeBron-and-some-guys offence wasn’t nearly enough last year, and an added dose of Kyrie Irving to an otherwise stultified attack hasn’t fundamentally changed the equation.
Perhaps it’s unfair to put all that on Cleveland, and maybe it’s even insulting in a way to Golden State’s defensive efforts. But it would be overselling things to say the Cavs have been flatly, dominantly denied. They have also retreated.
Whether a failing of their nerve or a (misguided) deliberate plan to counter the Warriors, they just not have even tried to play the same way they did in marching through the Eastern Conference play-offs.
Golden State, meanwhile, with the confidence of champions, have stuck with it. Curry, mired in a pretty bad series all-in-all, and Thompson had some ugly attempts in Game 4. Airballs, shots into the bottom of the backboard, wild bricks – but they kept shooting, and they ultimately finished with 63 combined points.
“It wasn’t perfect and great basketball by any means,” said Curry, who despite still being pretty shaky had 38 points and hit 7-of-13 threes on Friday night, “but on the road we gave ourselves a chance.”
It definitely was not perfect. It has never, in this series, really looked perfect. But, in a pretty uncomplicated dynamic, the Warriors have continued to be the more committed three-point shooting team, the better three-point shooting team.
And, so, they have continued to be the better team.
jraymond@thenational.ae
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