We can talk X's and O's, rotation tweaks and other adjustments, but it's all noise until the Cleveland Cavaliers play coherent, NBA Finals-level defense for more than five consecutive minutes.
They have been a wreck on that end, looking wholly unprepared for the intensity of the biggest stage and the mental challenge of tracking the league's most dynamic offense. Their switch-most-things strategy away from the ball has resulted in Keystone Kops-level comedy: two Cavs chasing one of the Golden State Warriors as another roams free; lottery-level miscommunication; and dudes just flat running into each other.
The Warriors are going to score, but you at least have to make them earn it. If Cleveland continues to give them 20 points per game on backdoor cuts, botched rotations and semi-transition mishaps, we all will be flying home on Saturday:
Cleveland's only passable group on defense is the starting lineup, and it's probably not a coincidence that unit includes Tristan Thompson -- a legit big man who provides a whiff of rim protection and keeps Golden State honest on the glass.
The Cavs enter Game 3 facing a bit of an existential dilemma: They've committed under Tyronn Lue to a shooting-happy style heavy on smallish units featuring Kevin Love or Channing Frye at center when Thompson rests. (That strategy won't include Love in Game 3; he is unavailable due to the elbow to the head he took in Game 2.) This is different than the smashmouth, slow-it-down strategy they used to hang with Golden State in last year's Finals. There is also almost no evidence those shooting-heavy units, especially the undersized ones, can credibly defend the Warriors. They certainly can't dissuade Golden State from playing the Death Lineup, with Draymond Green at center.
It's tempting to suggest the Cavs revert to the Thompson-Timofey Mozgov bulldozing attack -- the Warriors expect to see a bit of it Wednesday night -- but the toothpaste might be out of the tube.
Everyone just has to be better, starting with Kyrie Irving on Stephen Curry -- who hasn't even gone off yet. As Kevin Pelton pointed out after Game 2, the switcheroo defense is going badly for the Cavs. But they are using it because Irving has not shown he can stay attached to Curry as the MVP zips around picks. Curry has ditched Irving for several open triples, and the Cavs are lucky he hasn't hit more of them:
• The Cavs have gained traction on offense when LeBron James or Irving dribbles into the post, backs in and waits for a screener to dart down from the top of the arc -- a snug inversion of the pick-and-roll that is trickier to switch, especially when Curry is involved:
This is one reason the Cavs need at least something from Love when he returns, even though this is clearly a terrible matchup for him: His post-ups against mismatches are drawing help rotations the Cavs can't generate in other ways. They just haven't leveraged that extra attention into points. Love has been awful finishing around the basket, a team-wide bugaboo for Cleveland against Golden State all season.
Love is 5-of-15 on post-ups against the Warriors over four games this season, per Synergy Sports, and he hasn't drawn a single shooting foul -- normally the thing that redeems his (sometimes) artless wobbles around the rim. The Cavs over those four games have hit just 49.6 percent of their shots in the restricted area, a mark that would have ranked dead last overall among team offenses -- and the lowest figure Golden State has allowed against any opponent this season, according to NBA.com.
When the Warriors have sent emergency help flying at Love and James on the block, their defense in that area has been impeccable. During that brief, scary window when two guys smother one Cav, leaving three other Warriors to defend four Cavs, those three defenders have nailed every rotation. Love and James see no clean kickout passes, and if they do, it is almost always to the least-threatening shooter on the floor.
But the Cavs need to force rotations somehow, and they aren't doing it enough on the pick-and-roll with Golden State switching so often -- removing the need for a third defender to crash into the paint on the help assignment that triggers so many of Cleveland's kickout 3s. (This is why Lue has made noise about playing faster as a way of shooting before the Warriors can set their defense. Let's just say the Warriors are cool with Cleveland trying to run with them.)
Post-ups from James and Love bend the Warriors' defense a bit. Love has done minor damage against Harrison Barnes when the Warriors go small with Barnes at power forward. Some of that is on Golden State, which has experimented in those segments with Green guarding James while Barnes tussles with Love. The Warriors could erase Love's edge by swapping those assignments.
Still, the Cavs turned one double-team of Love into a semi-contested J.R. Smith triple, and that counts as progress.
Golden State helpers have less distance to cover against those post-ups when Thompson is lurking near the rim, just a few feet from the action. His guy slides over, a third Warrior ducks inside Thompson's shoulder to snuff the one-pass-away dump-off to him, and the defender behind that guy zones up between shooters on the weak side:
That's the dilemma with Thompson and, to a lesser extent, Mozgov: The Cavs need at least one of them on the floor to have any hope of defending the Warriors, but they cramp Cleveland's spacing. James' easiest strolls to the basket in Game 2, including two nearly identical dunks after crossovers, came with Thompson on the bench.
"When Tristan isn't out there, we definitely feel the spacing," Smith said at practice Tuesday. "But it's tit for tat. When he's there, and his guy contests a shot at the rim, he gets us some offensive rebounds."
The Warriors feel the longer-help rotations when Thompson sits, but they also can relax a bit on the glass. "It helps their spacing," Warriors guard Shaun Livingston said, "but if we can play our small lineup more, it plays right into our hands."
Cleveland is caught between bad choices. Its super-shooting lineups with Love, Frye or even James at center will hemorrhage points. The Warriors can switch almost everything, rendering a lot of that shooting moot.
But the Cavs have struggled to generate clean looks with Thompson clogging the lane. The best course of action -- and perhaps the only one the Warriors privately fear -- is a return to last year's strategy of going big, slowing to a crawl and having both behemoths crash the offensive glass.
Cleveland smartly assigned Thompson to Green in an effort to mimic the Oklahoma City Thunder and switch the most dangerous pick-and-roll in the league. The Cavs want Thompson to press up on Curry and shade him in one direction, but he hasn't executed; Curry has gotten clean step-back looks, and if that continues, he will bust out at some point.
The strategy has left Love on Andrew Bogut to minimize Love's lack of foot speed -- a run-of-the-mill issue against 28 other teams that becomes borderline fatal against Golden State. They know Love can't hang with Curry on switches, so they're defending the Curry-Bogut pick-and-roll in a more traditional way -- with Love coming up to trap Curry, leaving Bogut a free roll to the rim.
If Bogut beats you making plays in space, you tip your cap and go home. He's slow enough that the Cavs have a chance to resettle themselves before he does any damage, and he wants no part of finishing hard at the rim.
But the Warriors in Game 2 flashed an interesting way to grease the wheels for Bogut: Have Green flash up to the foul line as sort of a middleman, catch a shorter-distance pass from Curry and zoom into a 4-on-3:
That's a variation on "shorting" the pick-and-roll, and it's a smart route around Cleveland's switching -- a way of sliding Green into his usual attacking role without having him set the initial pick. The Cavs improvised quickly enough to quash this play, but just barely, and Love's aimless, Bargnani-level retreat provided some openings for Golden State.
Regardless of Love's absence, Cleveland needs to be ready for this wrinkle in Game 3.
• Love should probably never, ever guard Green, but when the Cavs have tried him there, they've had the right idea in putting out fires:
That's just Curry being mean, but look at Richard Jefferson. He spots that meanness early, ditches Andre Iguodala and plants himself in the paint to wall off the Curry/Green threat. That's the least-of-all-evils path: Make Iguodala and Green beat you with non-corner 3s, provided you make some token attempt to contest them.
• The Cavs have been especially bad on defense when the Warriors run two actions at once -- a pick-and-roll on one side, and maybe a pindown for Klay Thompson on the other side. That is too much stimuli. They got so confused handling this dueling activity -- a Curry/Green pick-and-roll, with Bogut screening for Thompson at the same time -- that they eventually forgot about Iguodala hanging under the hoop:
Here it's Smith, so mesmerized by the Iguodala-Curry pick-and-roll that he loses Barnes, leading to a Festus Ezeli dunk:
There is no magic remedy for this stuff. Be better, or go home.
• Another thing that could loosen the Warriors' vise grip: Set more flare screens away from the ball! Every team is easier to guard when the dudes away from center stage are just chilling out.
The Cavs engineered two good corner 3s for Love by blindsiding his defender with a back screen when the Warriors focused their radar elsewhere:
Yay, team basketball!
• The Cavs also need to do a better job searching out pick-and-roll combinations the Warriors can't switch.
Step No. 1: Find Curry.
Step No. 2: Have Curry's man screen for either James or (if Curry is on Smith) Irving.
Step No. 3: Profit from the one mismatch Golden State can't handle.
This is a little harder than it sounds. James has jumper-phobia, so the Warriors will duck under screens against him -- negating any need for a switch. The Cavs have done a nice job forcing the switch anyway by setting solid picks, and then setting them again two or three times until the Warriors surrender.
If Iman Shumpert is on the floor, Curry will hide there, and the Cavs don't trust Shumpert to do much of anything on offense.
Another way around Golden State's switchcraft: Use Tristan Thompson as the screener for James and Irving when the Warriors have a real center -- Bogut or Ezeli -- in the game. The Warriors avoid that switch, meaning they revert to a more traditional pick-and-roll defense the Cavs can puncture.
In four matchups to date, the James-Thompson duo is the only pick-and-roll combo that has produced decent results, per NBA tracking data provided to ESPN.com. The Irving-Thompson combination is more dangerous in theory, since Irving can pull up for jumpers if Golden State's centers hang back in the paint.
"That play is so tough," Ezeli said Tuesday.
But they're not hanging back against Irving, and the two Warriors involved in that pick-and-roll have boxed it in so that they don't need help from a third teammate. That help rotation is the lifeblood of Cleveland's pick-and-roll offense. A defense that defends those plays 2-on-2 strangles it into submission:
Curry stays close enough to Irving, Ezeli creeps out to deter the Irving jumper and, once Irving pauses to contemplate his (bad) choices, Livingston can slide back out to Smith on the left wing. It's basically a 2-on-2 game, and if the Warriors keep it that way, they're in good shape.
"That's the goal," Ezeli said, "because they are really looking for that shooter on the weak side."
Still, the Cavs need to explore these combinations more. If James gets a head of steam, he can drive right at the Warriors' centers and lay the ball in over and around them. Irving will spring open eventually.
Of course, if the Cavs inflict some pain, Golden State can just take its centers out, slot Green there and start switching everything again.
And that's the story of the series so far: The Warriors have had counters for everything, and they've barely needed them. The Cavs should hit a new level at home. If they don't, they're toast.