The Cleveland Cavaliers face a summer of question marks following their defeat in the NBA finals. Of course, the biggest question is how LeBron James will decide – but apart from the King, there are also open personal details. SPOX illuminates the situation of the vice champion.
Let’s just say that the Warriors are a historically strong team (they are): The Cavaliers had exactly one chance to make this series really interesting, and that was Game 1, in which LeBron James did the maximum you can expect from a player (51 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists), and a bit more, and the Cavs showed a good performance all around, with which they brought the Warriors down to their level as far as possible.
Then George Hill threw a free throw and J.R. Smith made one of the stupider mistakes in the finals history. Cleveland fell apart – the viral video of LeBron on the bench has probably been seen by everyone by now. In the overtime Golden State rolled over the Cavs and the rest of the series was similar, although game 3 was a close affair, at least on paper.
The same was to be expected, however, and almost no one gave the Cavs a realistic chance of victory. The reasons for this are quite obvious: This was not a real top team.
Cleveland had already struggled with good but not outstanding teams in the East such as the Pacers and Celtics and needed seven games and some superhuman performances from James to reach the finals. Things looked different against Toronto, but the Raptors in a duel with Cleveland are an issue in themselves anyway.
The Cavaliers 2017/18 depended to a dangerous degree on a player’s performance and the triple quota. Her defense got better in the playoffs, but she wasn’t good at any point. On the other hand there was a lack of continuity and automatism, because there were many personnel changes during the season, the team hardly completed any real training sessions and could never achieve a real rhythm due to injuries.
Nevertheless, they made the finals, which speaks for LeBron’s brilliance on the one hand and for the relative weakness of the East on the other. However, they lacked a lot to survive against a team like Golden State: two-way players on the grand piano, a reliable three-way (29.5 percent odds in the finals), mutual trust and, last but not least, a second dynamic scorer who could create for himself and others. Rarely has Kyrie Irving’s value for Cleveland been more evident than in this series.
LeBron could do a lot on his own, but he couldn’t beat the Warriors either. So of course he knew exactly how important Game 1 was, because there could have been a psychological boost for the remaining Cavs. The exact opposite happened and LeBron hurt his right hand out of frustration when he hit a blackboard.
As a result, his performance suffered as a result – but you don’t have to kid yourself: Even with LeBron in top form the Cavs would not have won this series.
Page 1: Why didn’t the Cavaliers stand a chance against the Warriors?
Page 2: Did the midseason trades break the Cavalier season?
Page 3: Will LeBron James stay with the Cavaliers?
Page 4: LeBron or not – will Kevin Love stay with the Cavaliers?
Page 5: What other options do the Cavs have? What happens to Tyronn Lue?