DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum NBA Finals: Cavs vs Warriors Part II

It is very unfortunate to run into the Golden State buzz saw within the few years we have a window to win the title.

However, I wouldn't say we have three great players. Three great players wouldn't allow their team to get embarrassed like this ... I don't care who you're playing.

Let's run down the list

LeBron James - Literally cannot shoot. Seems hesitant. Appears slow. Terrible body language. Seems defeated.

Kyrie Irving - ISO king. Hasn't made others better. Cannot guard a soul.

Kevin Love - Drifter. Soft. Allergic to contact and the paint. Cannot guard a soul.

Tristan Thompson - Zero offense. Lost defensively on perimeter. Constant miscommunication. Worthless in this series.

JR Smith - Invisible in big moments. One dimensional.


Not to mention we've been out-coached, out-hustled, and over-matched by a superior team with more depth.


Ouch.

j/c:

The Cavs laid a real egg. They need to win at home. To do so, they will need to:

--improve their defensive intensity

--value each possession

--fix their defensive rotations

--stop trying to play small ball w/the best small ball team in the league

--get the hairballs out of their throats

It can be done.

I just don't understand the correlation between the money we've paid out, and the production we're getting in return.

We'll go nine exchanges without scoring a basket. We can't rebound. We can't play defense. Offense is a turnover waiting, which they score points over.

Call me names, I honestly don't care - Golden State is just far too superior for our team of duds and turd piles. LBJ included, because alot of turnovers came from his hands.

I'm not even watching the series anymore so technically this is my last thread in this one for awhile. Sorry everyone, I know I wanted this one really bad too.

For those still engaging and sticking in tune with them, good luck. Godspeed. Best wishes. You'll need all that and more for a chance to just not get blown out hardcore.

Just read several threads over in the Pure Football forum. LOL.......it's really weird because we have one Cleveland team that sucks in almost every way imaginable and they get defended w/vigor while we have another Cleveland team in the NBA Finals and they get trashed.

Like I had the Game cast on my phone, sitting on my forklift..

And I just sat there, watching GSs score keep going up.. while ours sat there..

"Just make a basket.." I yelled seemingly randomly throughout the warehouse..

It's about expectations. If the Browns made it to the Superbowl, they'd be getting pounded too if they played like the Cavs have played.

GMAFB. We just got totally embarassed and smacked around like an unwanted bastard child.

Your guy TT is making the same scratch as Draymond Green and more than Steph Curry. One of the teams is getting their money's worth. Thank goodness those world class switch D skills of his held the deficit to 32 points.

You are correct. I think the Browns would get a pass year the first time they went deep into the playoffs.. but the Browns are a projected 4 or 5-win team. The Cavs were the prohibitive favorite going into the year with a revamped roster designed specifically to beat this team... and they are getting embarrassed.

Heck I'd love to complain about some of the crappy officiating but when you get beat like that, the fact that GS got damn near every 50/50 call seems kind of petty.

the bottom line is everyone is choking, Lue has no idea how to get it going, and Lebron just isn't good enough to carry teams against an elite opponent. The only good i can see coming out of this, this shows Griffin what he needs to do. he had his full squad, he sees they aren't competitive as they are built against the team they need to beat. I look for big changes in offseason. I would bet the little 3 will be broken up. I'd LOVE to see kyrie swapped for CP3, that alone would fix so many problems on both sides of the ball. Its just obvious you can't have iso heavy offense to be effective. We didn't do it during the playoffs and then all of sudden we're doing it against the best team ever. To even have had a chance we needed to move the ball and get everyone in the flow. Our help defense and the amount we switch is just asinine. it causes so many breakdowns and easy baskets.. I can't even count how many times the shell broke and they made a pass to guy standing by himself under the basket while we just pointed fingers.

You don't need to be an all nba defensive team but you better be able to play it top 5, thats why golden state is so good, yeah they can score, but they shut you down as well.. we haven't even cracked 100 points after doing so every game in the playoffs. Igoudala owns lebron, they love seing us go iso, because they just stick iggy out there and poof..no more scoring for lebron and turnovers will ensue as everyone else waits for the bailout pass. It's a team game, none more evident against a team like GS. Yeah theres still some games left, maybe a chance at redemption, but the fact that 2 out 56 finals has the team come back from 0-2. The series is done, but the front office atleast knows now what they have isn't going to work, now they can get to work.

That's exactly it. We have the highest payroll in the NBA, and what's supposed to be a "Big-3", with TT making near-max as well, and we've completely rolled over so far. The Browns get a pass because they're trying to start from scratch every year.

Love, Irving and TT have all been exposed as one-dimensional players. If Love can't hit threes or post-ups, and Irving can't beat anyone off the dribble, then they really have nothing else to offer. They are sub-average defenders and they don't set anybody else up on offense. Well, Kyrie COULD, but he'd rather force up a tough shot rather than pass it out to an open teammate.

Meanwhile, Frye is getting all of 5 minutes a game now ... after being one of the big reasons we got here.

Maybe we honestly need to do what we did last year? Start Lebron with Delly, TT, RJ and Shump. Let Lebron play point forward and let everyone else play defense. We could at least grind it out with their starters, maybe wear them down a little. Then when Bogut comes in, put in Frye to counter. Let him shoot 3's all day and pull Bogut out from the middle. When they put their bench in, then we send out Love and Irving to put up some points.

And what exactly can we do that would compete against a team like GS? It's sort of like the Jazz in the 90's saying: "Let's trade Stockton and Malone, and maybe we can get past Jordan ..."


While we're at it, let's trade Kevin Love for Anthony Davis. Why would the Clips want to make that trade?? CP3 is their best player, and Kyrie has been completely exposed as a one-tool player.

because that trade almost happened this year.. Clippers are going to break that team up as well, Paul is 30, LA could take a young guy like Kyrie and maybe Doc feels he can get more out of him, Plus it give CP3 the chance to play with lebron in the east where theres a good chance of another finals run.

It didn't almost happen. It was a Scream'in A fueled rumor that likely had no substance to it.

I think you just came up with something more closely resembling a game plan than anybody in Cleveland has come up with through 2 games. Our game plan so far has been, let's do what we did in the regular season when they blew us out and in game 1 when they beat us handily, only let's try to do it better.

It's one thin to lose by 8-10 points and call it a tough fought contest. We lost by 32 points with Lebron James on our team.

I don't mind losing, I'm sportsman enough to lose with pride. But we literally got put over someone's knee, our drawers dropped and then SPANKED.

That I don't like.

negative, there were multiple accounts of it

Can you read? Try it, before opening your big mouth.

Thats a horrible plan...lebron can't carry the team anymore, and this "defense" of Delly/TT/Shump/RJ, isn't defense..they are part of the problem. The bottom line is there isn't much game planning thats going to work when everyone is scared to shoot and even more scared to miss. It's a personnel issue as well has a grand canyon sized talent gap

From anyone with credibility? Most accounts I saw of it were the one from SAS, and then blogs and small-time writers just regurgitating the same rumor. And it wasn't even a "rumor" for the most part. Just people suggesting the trade should happen.

I didn't say it was a great plan, I just said it was a plan... what is our plan? I keep hearing we want to play faster.. then I see a lot of iso action and passing into the low post and backing players down, I see us walking the ball up most of the time, I see us setting screens and either not using the screen at all or coming off the screen and stopping..

And yes, I see guys being afraid to shoot, like JR. I thought he was going to have to be big in this series and so far he has just been invisible.. and the most efficient 3-point shooter in the entire playoffs, Frye, can't get in the game for some reason.

I see our defense so singularly focused on stopping 2 guys, that 4 other guys are destroying us with wide open 3s, layups, and put backs because they get forgotten about.

So yes, I have put a fair amount time into figuring out exactly what our plan is supposed to be.

The turnovers are what are driving me craziest. We simply weren't doing that in the rest of the playoffs. Guys were catching passes and taking shots. Why does everyone have stone hands all of a sudden? That's not a talent gap, it's completely mental and something we should be able to still fix this series.

As a fan of the team getting smacked around like the Cavs are, I do have to marvel at the team Golden State has built. I'll admit, I don't know a great deal about basketball, but it seems as if this team has virtually no weaknesses. When their star(s) aren't playing well they always have someone that can step up. Cleveland has nobody they can turn to when Lebron is off his game. Like many have said, Kyrie and Love are so one-dimensional. If they aren't shooting well you're done playing a juggernaut like GS. I just hope we can at least compete these next couple of games and maybe win at least one.

After going down 2-0 in the series you like to have something you can say you did well, something to hang your hat on.. "We just need to keep doing X and improve a little on Y." There is no X, we have done nothing consistently well.

I'm a big Cavs fan and I'm usually fairly optimistic but in watching games 1 and 2, it appears we are being toyed with. The GSW game plan is to keep doing what they do, hang around and keep it close and wait for us to get into a matchup situation that is strongly in their favor or wait for us to go into one of those 5 minute droughts where we can't score so they can methodically open up a decent lead.. it's like they know it's coming, they just patiently wait for it to happen. Then when it happens, we start pressing, which makes us even worse, we go even more into iso ball.. the same cycle has repeated in both games.

Our problem is we sulk. We honestly play like one of those little-league/pop-warner teams that stack the deck with a bunch of all-star kids, and then steamroll through the rest of their teams in their league because they aren't stacked the same way. Then as soon as you put them into a playoff game against someone who's equally as talented, they wilt because they have no idea how to fight back against someone who's equally as talented. They could probably hang with them if they just kept up the effort or tried something out of their comfort zone. But since it isn't the cake-walk they'd hoped it be, they just sulk and get their butts handed to them.

j/c

as a basketball fan and someone who knows far more about it than any other sport, I'll say that GS is one of the most complete teams I can remember.

They do have a weakness in terms of their interior defense, but NBA teams struggle to score inside and GS negates it with their quickness/pace

Cleveland could play them 100 times and maybe win 10.

Sadly, we probably would have beaten OKC in a series though

I'm 57 and now have given up on ever seeing a Cleveland championship in my lifetime. I know it isn't true, but I have to wonder if God hates Cleveland fans.

That's why I wanted to play OKC and not the Warriors in the Finals.

I felt like we wouldn't end up on top playing the Warriors, but didn't think it would be this bad.

I actually enjoyed watching the Warriors play OKC better than the Cavs. This Finals? It just hurts... I guess we just tough it out.

I think thats the worst possible confession from cavs fans.. Admitting there is absolutely nothing that can be done to turn the tides, we are just overmatched in every single facet.. Like rearranging chairs on the titantic...its still going down. To be clear, i wasn't being negative to you and your post, i was just speaking in general terms as far as a plan, the plan is, take your medicine and try to fix it in the offseason.

Thats what i said after game one when i said the cavs were mentally weak..which vers decided that i was full of it for saying so..lol, anyone that watches the cavs body language when things go bad, you can tell they don't have the mettle that championship teams have.. Take GS against OKC for example, instead of sulking when they were losing, they got pissed, came back and did what very few teams have ever done...it was at that moment i knew the cavs had zero chance.

That awful game was worse than the San Antonio finals and the Orlando ECF finals. I stopped watching in the third quarter. i left the game on, but started surfing YOUTUBE. I decided not to subject myself to that kind of torture again. It's like getting your fingernails pulled out.

I'll still keep watching and pulling for them though.

I'm not making excuses and this would have worked in our favor had we played OKC, but isn't it odd that there's so much rest for the home team until we're the home team?

I understand that they've added in a day of travel between but between games 1 and 2 there were 2 full days. Between games 3 and 4 there's only one...I imagine if we come out and play well in game 3, and win it will be better to get back on the floor as quickly as possible but it's decidedly odd that the only stretch where there's a one day layover is while we're at home...

I think we can win a game, maybe even 2.. but that's about it and they are going to have to be 48 minute knock down drag out energy draining wins...

For us to actually make a series of this, SO many things have to happen.. Curry and Thompson need to stay kind of quiet, our defensive intensity needs to go up 100% on everybody else, Love, JR, Frye all need to start shooting lights out from 3, Thompson needs to rebound better even when it's 1 on 3 at the glass, Kyrie needs to magically start valuing an assist as much as he does a basket, and LeBron needs to start playing like great LeBron and not just good LeBron..

But right now we are in the position of having to beat GSW 4 out of 5, and at least once at GS... I won't say it's impossible but I ain't putting any money on it.

yeah usually you don't see the terms obliterated and crush, or dismantled when talking about a finals game. I think what make this one so much worse is the expectations. In 2007 we overachieved with a in his prime lebron, now we got old lebron and much better players (on paper) so everyone assumed this year was it.

I think as a team they need to take on the mentality that there is no time to get tired, you aren't saving yourself for a playoff run..this is it, win or go home, there are no other games promised after these next two. You want to keep playing, win, or start booking your fishing trips. I don't see anyway to beat GS 4 times out of 20 games let alone 5. I just hope we take care of home court and save the fans the embarrasment of watching another team celebrate a championship on their floor.

Well that game Sunday was embarrassing. That game was a MUST WIN and the Cavs played as if it was a MUST LOSE.