DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum NBA Finals Discussion III

Iggy hasn't been on lebron that much this series...but I guess that doesn't help your statistics

Yeah, you said it ...

I'm curious, who EXACTLY do you think has been guarding Lebron most of the series?

Just spoon feed JR easy 3's these last 2 minutes.

2-12 from JR Smith, wow, it's about time for a benching.

Another brick by Smith. Can someone try to shoot that bad?

And like clockwork ... the Cavs have a bad game and leadtheway posts a career high for posts.

S0 much for my predictions.

Very disappointing.

I'm takin' a nap, shower, then goin' to work.

CRAP GAME!

- UNTIL NEXT TIME -

I'd have more confidence in Perkins shooting 3s than JR right now.

It's justified! Blatt should totally be winning with this band aid roster. Fire 'em all! Suck for a lotto pick, have Austin Carr coach the team, and let DaJuan wagner leave retirement to play for us!

I'm just shocked the bench couldn't close the gap in garbage time.

I agree, I just don't understand how Smith-who is supposedly this great outside shooter stunk it up so dang bad.

I think that Blatt is going to have to look at going deeper into his bench. Our remaining starters, Delly, Lebron, and Shumpert, are all beat up right now. We are going to have to use Miller, and Jones, and Marion, and maybe even Joe Harris to get these guys some rest. Man, they are beat up, and hurt, and just don't have any more to give when they get so run down.

Golden State has been very fortunate to avoid injuries, and the Cavaliers have not. While I respect that the Cavaliers have never used it as an excuse, it definitely is a factor.

I have said it all along .... if Cleveland is going to win a championship, it is not going to be easy. I think that we can do it, and the extra day of rest will help a lot ..... but it will be the hardest thing that anyone on this team will ever have done, and almost certainly the hardest thing that they will ever do over the rest of their lives.

We get 2 days of rest. Kind of glad GS had a big lead. Got guys some more rest. JR Smith should never see the court again. Put in Mike Miller or Shawn Marion. JR has been the worst player on the court every possession he's on.

Hopefully he locks himself in a gym until they leave, and as soon as they land in California, and does nothing but work on getting his shot back.

I'm not blaming JR for this. They were all cold tonight. It was a team loss. Only Mozgov seemed to have it together.

I don't know what happened to JR. He's the guy who hit 8 threes in a game a few weeks ago. Now he can't hit the floor if he dropped the ball. he had three wide-open looks in a row on that one possession and didn't look close to hitting any one of them.

Actually, none of our guys were hitting wide-open shots. Lebron was missing badly, Delly was missing, Shump was off. For those guys, we can at least blame tired legs. But JR really hasn't been playing that much. I just can't figure why he's looked so gawd-awful.

And I'm not sure what playing Miller, Marion or anyone else is really going to do. Every time we've played them (outside of a few Mike Miller minutes) they've been a liability. Although when we DO rest Lebron, we need to make sure it's not when BOTH Thompson and Curry are on the floor. That's killed us the last two games.

We left 8 points at the line tonight, and allowed 16 fast break points. We didn't play our style of game. This falls on the players.

We got scrubbed up tonight.

We missed wide open shots all game. that was embarrassing. lets hope we get back to Cavs ball in GS next game.

I'd like to stay optimistic but our patchwork team looks about done.

Oh, I don't deny that at all.

However, let's not forget that Lebron was already beat up, and then bashed his head into a TV camera. (and that's no joke) Delly got out of the hospital yesterday. Shumpert couldn't raise his left arm on Tuesday.

Golden State is a very, very good team. They are also a very healthy team. By right, the Cavaliers should have no chance ..... yet I somehow still believe that they are going to pull this out. It is not going to be easy though. It could never be allowed to be easy for Cleveland.

There's two days of rest, albeit jet lag, with this rest of this series. The schedule plays into our advantage.

Rishuz is just asking all of you to settle down. Go meltdown in Buffalo.

Man, do we all become jerks to each other or what during tough losses?

I think we're fine.


But I'm terrified with how bad Shump and JR have been. That's not gonna change at this point. Blatt needs to use his timeouts more frequently to give Lebron rest.

Okay a couple things to consider here ...

- I don't even need to express the fact that we're dead-tired by now and playing a 7-man rotation. These guys were running on fumes to begin with and then ended up doing the exact OPPOSITE of what we needed to do as far as dictating the pace. I felt like we let them play a lot more run and gun and we wore ourselves our really quickly. Even after that 3rd quarter comeback, we just had nothing left in the tank. Then in the 4th quarter, we have Lebron on the bench and we're pushing for fast possessions. Come on guys!! At that point, I'd probably be fine with TT and Moz camped out for a rebound and someone jacking up a 3 with 1 second left on the shot-clock. We just need to draw out the possessions as long as possible at that point and not get into a run-and-gun shootout where we give up 9 points in 60 seconds.

- Our outside shooting and free-throw shooting were just atrocious tonight. 4/22 for threes? YIKES. Lebron was 50% from the line too. If we get anything from JR, Delly or Shump then this would of been a game.

- I thought Moz played great tonight, but we need to stop posting him up. I think he works better off the ball on back-door cuts and screens. I think we really can use him on the offensive end. He's half a foot taller than most other guys, and he was drawing a lot of fouls.

- Speaking of which, how is Joey Crawford still employed? That first quarter screw job really put us behind the eight-ball. Several no-calls on drives from Lebron, followed by a couple of phantom fouls on us. Not to mention the several calls where Moz went straight up and they still called it. It really took us out of the game early on and seemed to take the energy right out of us in the second afterwards. By the third, we put forth the effort again, but gassed ourselves mounting the comeback.

- And then there was Lebron. You could tell early on that he wasn't in Godzilla mode. Not sure if it was because he wasn't getting calls, he hasn't figured out Iggy, or he was just exhausted from the last few games ... but he was missing some pretty easy shots even before he concussed himself. He only shot around 30% tonight. We need SuperBron back if we're going to have any chance.

- It's going to be a tall order winning this now. It's a 3 game series, we don't have home-court anymore, we're dead tired and JR Smith is on a milk carton. Still, I'm hoping that GS gets back some of that over-confidence they showed after their Game 1 win. I'm hoping that with some rest and maybe some shooting practice, we can give ourselves a chance to win a tight one in Game 5. That would put us back at home again to win it all in front of a delirious crowd.

Chris Mannix ‏@ChrisMannixSI 19s19 seconds ago
LeBron on the fans leaving early. "I came out of the game early. We were on the same page."

https://twitter.com/ChrisMannixSI

I just realized they beat us by 21 points. Holy Toledo!

We looked exhausted

Jr smith has been killing us

Delly was exposed

We can't adjust to the warriors offense since they changed things up in game 3

I could see another blowout in game 5

I've been calling for Marion since game one. We can't continue to play a seven man rotation. Up the rotation to nine, giving at least 6 minutes to each guy (Miller and Marion). They can't have that little left in their figurative tanks at this point.

So much bad to hang your head on. The refs, tanks of important players obviously dry, JR had a horrid game, bench offered no points and just the list continues.

After watching last night, I'm not even sure we have what it'll take to win. If the players don't respond to the two day break in a huge way, we're done IMO.

Just... ugh. Steve their coach made crucial adjustments too, starting igndela one of them as well as the man and half attack on LBJ.

I think this showed that the decision to only play seven isn't sustainable. Even if Miller and Marion leave the floor at minus five twice, we need to give our better players the needed rest to get their legs underneath their jumpers and swarm defensively. We're asking guys to expend a lot of energy on that end of the floor, and we didn't have it tonight. GS did a little bit better of a job moving the ball, but they got a lot of uncontested buckets because of how drained this team is.

There've been grumblings about guys wondering why more of the bench isn't getting involved. I think that came from Chris "Multiple Sources" Broussard, but that, and how LeBron never makes eye contact with Blatt (did he do that with Spoelstra?) make me wonder if maybe, just maybe, that might be one point of contention among others. I mean I will wait to draw any firm conclusions about the relationship between the staff and players until there's more reliable news out there, but it is puzzling as to why guys who have been there in crunch time aren't getting any minutes when the team is as exhausted as they are.

Game six will be on one day of rest. They need to figure out who the hell else they can trust to replenish our energy levels.

j/c:

I think Excel made a lot of great points in his analysis of the game. I have some of my own.

--This series is about who controls the pace. GS went small and doubled LeBron on defense. LeBron passed the ball to perimeter players, who missed shots earlier in the shot clock. GS, while they did not get a lot of fast break points, still got the pace up-tempo. They even got some offensive rebounds from their wing players.

--Expounding on that, I think it is absolutely essential for us to get the early lead, use most of the shot clock, and not get into any sort of up-tempo game w/them.

--Our legs were dead. LeBron and Delly's in particular.

--Moz had a huge game. I agree w/what Excel said about cutting to the basket, but I don't mind the post ups.

--TT had yet another solid game. Not sure why people didn't recognize that. He rebounded well, scored some, and defended well. That's showing up.

--I don't like it when Delly tries to create too much. A few times a game is fine, but not in back to back to back possessions. Those turnovers were huge.

--As you guys have noted, JR Smith in particular and even Shump are killing us by missing so many outside shots.

--I noticed that GS was giving those two open looks, but kept a guy on JJ. That was different, but it worked.

--I really hope we don't start blaming the coaching. The post I responded to brought that up. Guys, we are in the NBA Finals a year removed from being in the lottery for several straight seasons. Sheesh! Please don't start that nonsense. We are undermanned and playing beyond expectations. I don't think we should start assigning blame.

--Of all the games thus far, this was the game where we really missed Kyrie and Love. Love hitting 3s and posting up smaller defenders would have really helped. Kyrie creating and hitting 3s would have really helped. GS would NOT have been able to double LeBron the way they did had we had Love and Kyrie.

--It's going to be rough for the Cavs moving forward. I'm glad we get the extra day of rest, but we are flying to CA. Jet lag is real! Then, we have turn around and fly back for Game 6 on one day's rest.

--I know it is disappointing when we lose, but this team has overachieved. No one can say that they could have predicted we would be even in the NBA Finals w/out Kyrie, Love, and Andy. No one! Let's not assign blame if they lose and try to blow things up. We have a good thing going here. We will be a force and probably the favorite to win it all next year when we get our injured guys back. Let's not start any stupid movements like "let's fire the coach."

My analysis is pretty similar to yours...

Secondary scorers: Iguodala and Barnes, 36 points... Shumpert and Smith, 9.

If they are going to clamp down on LeBron (and LeBron was tired) then somebody has to pick up the slack and be a threat, Mozgov getting put backs and scoring points is nice but it's not a threat when they are trading 2s for 3s.

Blatt has to find a way to get a few more people rotated into the game for 2 or 3 minute spurts.. he just has to.

You could tell by the number of 3s and the number of free throws that clanked off the front of the rim... that's a sign of tired legs, when shots are consistently short it's not a shooting issue, it's a fatigue issue.

Can we finally stop with the "the Cavs are a better team without Love and Irving" crap.. sometimes you need to score the basketball and they are both very good at that. Smith, Shumpert, Delly are very good bench players, they are not 38 minute a night guys... James Jones looked like he is 48 years old last night... Thompson and Mozgov are the only two guys who seemed to play well last night but swapping out Thompson for Love allows us to stretch the defense...

I rag on the pundits but their predictions are coming true, the Cavs have put up a great fight but the fatigue is visible... they have an extra day, they have to find a source of energy somewhere for at least 2 more games.. I think they need to win the next 2 and finish in Cleveland, if they have to go back on the road for game 7, I won't have a good feeling..

Lastly, I know a few calls early in the game shouldn't decide the game... but the Cavs started hot, LeBron literally got whacked in the face twice, once by Klay Thompson while posting up and again by Curry while coming off a screen and neither was called... go down to the other end and GS got a couple touch fouls going to the basket... This led to the nice run that GS a decent lead and I think it really sucked the energy out of a team that was already running on adrenaline and fumes.

And if that that foul on LeBron, tackling him into the camera row was just "a good hard playoff foul"... then the Cavs need to learn from that and start inflicting a few of those on Curry, Thompson, and Iguodala...

Bro i'm happy we're even here. i'm happy we stole one in GS and finally won another finals game here in The land.

I get mad initially with bad plays and this bad loss.

but you know what? EVERYBODY had us getting SWEPT when kyrie went down. The fact that we even made this a series speaks volumes about our squad.

this 2 1/2 day rest is gonna be big for us, because we absolutely need it. we might be able to steal game 5 for all we know.

our Bigs are putting in work. i got no complaints from them overall.

but man...Delly isn't an offensive player. JR and shumpert need to get it together.

Excellent post. Our thoughts seem to be very similar.

The only thing I would disagree with is that I didn't think Bogut's foul was all that bad. I think LeBron had a real chance to get his balance a bit, but I think he was selling the foul and unfortunately hit his head on that camera.

Oh.........here is one thing that I don't think has been mentioned. GS is grabbing our jerseys repeatedly and many times those fouls aren't getting called. TT and Moz are especially being victimized by this grabbing.

I hate complaining about the officiating, but those are fouls and directly affect the outcome of plays.

Yeah, I had the benefit of sleeping before I posted. I just don't want to see an uproar and the "Blame Game" if we lose. Hell, we are not supposed to win.

I agree w/everything you said and while it is going to be tough, we still have a chance. Almost everyone thought it was over after the first game and we won two, so yeah, we have a chance.

We can only hope.

I don't think many people realized last night how much this schedule now plays to our favor. We get two days of rest between each game from here on out.

I don't see Golden State beating a rested LeBron 2/3 times.

Hmmmmm, that is interesting. I actually thought the schedule favored GS.

Explain it to me. And I am not saying that sarcastically.