Friday, June 12, 2015

Flat Cavaliers rolled by Warriors in Game 4

The Cleveland Cavaliers looked like a tired and flat team,but made a third period run to pull within 3 points of the Golden State Warriors at the Quicken Loans Arena.
Quarter four was all Golden State as the Warriors crushed any hope of a comeback and tied the series at two games each with a resounding 103-82 win.
Timofey Mozgov led Cleveland with a career high 28 points to go with 10 rebounds,while LeBron James finished with 20 points on 7 for 22 shooting.
Game 5 will be Sunday night in Oakland.

Swashbucklings

1) Let's start with about the only good news to come out of last night's game-Timofey Mozgov's 28 points.
Mozgov cannot be expected to put those (or anything approaching) numbers every night,but Mozgov showed an ability to clean up the mess down low and generally dominated the Warrior inside men.
It would be interesting to see if David Blatt runs a few plays for Mozgov Sunday night...

2) LeBron James was not himself (as noted above) and the Cavaliers do not have the luxury of James being anything other than superhuman.
It's not knocking James,everyone has off nights-Cleveland just cannot afford even average games from James at this point.

3) J.R.Smith was just abysmal.
2 of 12 and 0 for 8 from downtown?
That spells abysmal.
If the basket was Lake Erie,Smith would have clanged the shot off the Great Lake Science Center.

4) Not that Iman Shumpert was much better.
Shumpert also hit two whole shots,his off of nine attempts and one went in from beyond the arc.
Whoo Hoo.

5) Tristan Thompson was solid enough with 12 points and 13 rebounds.
I know the playoff cliche' is that Thompson has built value for his next contract,but if Cleveland looks at the film and builds Thompson and Timofey Mozgov with a little more low post action with patterned plays,Cleveland could give LeBron James the help that he's not getting from J.R. Smith...

6) Expecting what the Cavaliers have gotten from Matthew Dellavedova every night is unfair to Dellavedova,but he wasn't very good last night.
I can give him a small pass considering his condition and hospitalization for leg cramping,but....
Too many floating lunges at the rim and desperation tosses made me think that either the Cavalier desperation forced the hand or Delly is starting to think he's an offensive force-Think in the way Ollie suddenly thought he was a player in Hoosiers...

7) I also thought the Cavaliers might have tried a bench player earlier in the fourth quarter as the game was slipping away.
Don't get me wrong-Shawn Marion,Joe Harris,Mike Miller or Kendrick Perkins wouldn't have won this game,but they might have been effective and maybe helped even for just a few minutes to rest some aching players in the final three games.
David Lee worked himself off the Golden State bench in the same situation,perhaps Cleveland could have profited by a similar move..

8) This was a tired bunch of Cavaliers and I have this feeling that the Cavs might have blown their best shot to win this.
Now it's a best of three series with two games in Oakland,so they'll have to steal another game there.
I'm not ruling it out,but the championship took a blow last night.


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