Written by Shaun Powell at NBA.com
The Cavaliers were bringing a healthy Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving this time and so the NBA Finals would be different, a popular belief that has indeed been proven prophetic.
Two games into the new series, the rematch is a mismatch. The Cavs have nothing to show for their labor in Oakland except a pair of lopsided losses, totaling almost 50 points, made more demoralizing by the manner in which Golden State seized control of the Finals. Steph Curry, the unanimous MVP, has mainly been a bystander. Klay Thompson, who scored 41 in a critical game a week ago in the West finals, is barely breaking a sweat. Despite the Splash Brothers being more flash than splash, and unable to score 20 in any game, the Cavs are offering no answers, counterattacks or a way of taking advantage.
Instead, the state of the franchise — and by extension, the battered soul of a discouraged sports city — has adopted the position assumed by Love in the second quarter, when he took an accidental elbow to the noggin by Harrison Barnes. Love lay horizontal and dazed, with teammates standing over him, wondering what the hell just happened.
Well: Isn’t all of Cleveland asking itself that very question today?
Even the Warriors are taken aback by the ease of these victories, although they’re being very PC and instead are saying all the right things. Still, the fourth quarters have lacked suspense and drama, and the basketball world, hotly anticipating a tight and long and potentially epic series, is getting punched in the stomach.
“It’s a trap to think that we’ve figured things out,” said Curry. “We know how quickly it can go away.”
There’s no ignoring or dismissing this very important fact: LeBron James and his support staff must beat the defending champs, a team that won a record 73 games during the season, four times in five games in order to feed championship-starved Cleveland. But what seems more likely today, an improbable rally or falling on the wrong end of a sweep, especially with Love’s status in Game 3 in question? True, the Cavs are unbeaten in the playoffs at home, where the series will swing for the next two games. That said, these Warriors are hardly the Pistons or Hawks or Raptors. And these Warriors have now beaten the Cavs seven straight times, including the regular season, which suggests the matchups and numbers are solidly in Golden State’s favor.
The Cavs are frantically, and maybe desperately, searching for solutions. None of the Cavaliers have put their fingerprint on this series yet, not even LeBron. You could make the convincing argument that Warriors sub Leandro Barbosa — Barbosa! — has outplayed most of them. They’ve been sloppy, clumsy, at times clueless, and lost so far.
