All Bets are Off

The more we absorb these Finals games, the less anything that has come before seems to matter. I’ve been struck by a number of pundit and fan responses these last 6 games.

The first response that caught my attention was from ESPN’s Analytics guru, Kevin Pelton. If there is one thing that colors every thought of the NBA’s analytical standard bearers, it is efficiency.  With that in mind, here was one of Pelton’s recommendations: (bold emphasis is mine)

So far, the Cavaliers’ primary strategy for attacking switches has been LeBron James posting up smaller defenders. That hasn’t worked. Because of Golden State’s ability to bring help defensively — in addition to the quick hands of Warriors’ defenders — post-ups have been responsible for many of James’ 11 turnovers through the first two games of this series.

Cleveland found more success in the second and third quarters of Game 2 by allowing James to operate one-on-one facing the basket. Because the Cavaliers put four shooters around James, the Warriors had a tough time bringing help defense and contesting James when he broke through the first line of defense. James shot 6-of-8 in the restricted area, according to NBA.com/Stats, accounting for all but one of his field goals — a big difference from Game 1, when James was 6-of-14 within three feet of the basket.

I couldn’t help but laugh.  This is anathema to everything the critics have begged of LeBron since the Cavs flamed out in the 2007 Finals.  The thought of the Cavs abandoning “LeBron in the post” for LeIso face-ups felt like some kind of Molly Griswold advice.  Except, the “only thing anyone will remember” is LeBron struggling to score and the Warriors soaking the visitors locker room with champagne for a second straight year. “Tom Thibodeau” is a thing because the man figured out how to make LeIso inefficient in 2008 when LeBron was arguably the most explosive athlete on planet earth.

But the joke’s on me.  Face-up LeIso has completely destroyed the Warriors in the last two games.  In an interesting dichotomy to the Cavs refusal to let Stephen Curry shake free, the Warriors single focus is staying home and refusing to allow LeBron to be a passer to get the role players going.  They strategically double and slap whenever LeBron gets a head of steam or attempts to back down in the post, but on the perimeter and near the elbows, they put a man on an island with the Lion.  It’s not a bad strategy, but it has completely backfired.  Why?

Reason 1: The strategy is predicated on lengthy wing players like Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala defending LeBron in isolation.  But instead of LeBron working to establish post position, the Cavs are running any number of simple 2-man pick and rolls to get LeBron isolated against bigs and smalls to improve the iso matchup.  That’s been their first adjustment.  And since LeBron is so far from the hoop, the Warriors will concede the mismatch on the perimeter, with guys like Draymond and Iggy lying in wait to double, contest, and swipe if/when LeBron backs down his smaller opponent or tries to drive past a big.  But the Cavs have made two more adjustments.  Check out what Tristan Thompson does to Andre Iguodala on this play after the Cavs work to get Curry isolated on LeBron.  Here’s the initial start of the backdown, where Iguodala’s job is to shed Tristan Thompson so he can swipe down when LeBron eventually tries to spin on or drive by Curry.  Draymond Green is cheating way off of Richard Jefferson, but he hasn’t forgotten about him.

TT gets his left arm on the opposite side of Iggy’s neck and in a clever maneuver that looks like basic boxing out, shuts him off from the baseline.  While AI2 was getting his bell wrung, I sincerely hope Tristan yelled “Swiper no swiping!”.

So instead of the methodical back downs that yielded little fruit in the early parts of this series, the Cavs started with screens to get a more favorable isolation matchup, then provided some resistance against the last-minute trapping/swiping/contesting that the Warriors have perfected.  When our conversations after Game 2 included phrases like: “it feels like the Warriors can help and recover without losing anything – it’s like the Cavs are playing 5 on 6” we were partially referring to these tactics.  The Warriors rarely commit early, they wait until that exact moment (usually later in the shot clock) when the offensive player is gathering before they send the hard traps.  That usually causes a sudden hesitation from the offensive player (make sure to control the ball, try a counter, change from a mindset of score to pass) that gives the Warriors the time they need to recover to the shooters.  Richard Jefferson did a lot of fighting in the post in game 5 to take those sudden double teams away and Tristan was anchoring the paint Thursday night.  Here’s the play in real time:

https://vine.co/v/ili2J62DIYV

Reason 2: Glean whatever information you want from this comparative spreadsheet I made.  My bottom line: In the Finals, LeBron is hitting deep jumpers off the dribble at a rate much higher than in the regular season or the first three rounds of the playoffs.

LeBron’s 2015-2016 Shooting Splits

In Klay Thompson‘s post-game remarks, he candidly hoped LeBron wasn’t making outside shots in game 7.  It’s almost like a black swan event for the Warriors.  In Game 6, LeBron added another wrinkle to the LeIso.  After working to get the favorable matchup, he sized up his prey, signal his willingness to attack, and as soon as the paint pack rushed to figure out the appropriate line of defense, he’d squirt a little lob to Tristan Thompson, who elevated at the exact moment the likes of Green, Ezeli, or others were thinking about how to best plant roots right outside the restricted area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzzs5Rwpp4#t=5m32s

So LeBron and the Cavs have broken the Warriors’ defensive schemes, as evidenced by their average offensive rating of 120 over the last four games as opposed to 91 in the first two.  Who knew the catalyst would be good ol’ fashioned LeIso?  I guess Kevin Pelton did.

https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/743866859280179200

The second response that has stuck with me is the collective ¯_(ツ)_/¯ of the fans, bloggers, and pundits alike.  Zach Lowe, a self-deprecating Sherlock Holmes of sorts when it comes to the solving NBA mysteries offered an irresolute “I have no idea” when asked to predict the outcome of Game 7.  This is the guy that weaves epic tales on big-man-post-counters and weakside-down-screens using 35 eight-second youtube clips and 10,000 words.  HE has no idea what to think.  After games 3, 4, and 5, Brian Windhorst could be heard on various radio shows proclaiming “I can’t get a read on this series.”  Mark Stein aggregated the punditry perfectly

Game 7 … 48 hours from now. And nobody — no matter how convincing they sound — has a clue what's going to happen. A beautiful thing!

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) June 18, 2016

And how could they?  Let me make a list for you (and this is just off the top of my head).

–Shaun Livingston was 11/14 combined in games 1 and 2 of the Finals after going 10/11 in the two regular season games.  So his 2015-2016 resume against the Cavs was a comical 21/25.  Since then, he’s 9 of 24.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlyMkmKA–E#t=1m20s

-Since starting 20/39 through the first four games, Harrison Barnes is 2/22 and 1/14 from 3 with many being wide open. Barnes went from “max player?” at points in the series to “unplayable” in Game 6, getting torched on defense to boot.

-After being a total train wreck defensively for his entire career and certainly in the 2015-2016 regular season, Kyrie Irving, he of fly-paper screens, uninspired transition effort, and league-worst pick and roll synergy stats, that Kyrie Irving…is playing above average (sometimes bordering on good) defense in the NBA Finals.  From our own Ben Werth:

His defensive pressure and connectivity running through screens were consistently better than I have ever seen from him. I was for trading Kyrie for the past few years. His big scoring outbursts didn’t really change my opinion. His defensive performance in this game and for parts of this series has me rethinking my position.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOu9T8mNdho#t=1m16s

-After logging a staggering ZERO minutes together in the regular season, the Cavs best lineup of the playoffs was Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert, LeBron, Richard Jefferson, and Channing Frye.  In fact, prior to the Finals, that was the best lineup of all the playoff teams, with a plus/minus per game of PLUS 40!  Frye had the best net rating of any player in the entire playoffs through the first 3 rounds.  Now?  Frye is DNPing and Delly is getting passed over for Mo Williams (who has been miserable all season and is shooting 28% in the playoffs with more turnovers (9) than field goals (7) and just 3 assists) and Dahntay Jones.  While Richard Jefferson, who has been absurdly outstanding even in the Finals is ceding minutes to Iman Shumpert and Kevin Love who have, frankly, been awful.  I have no idea.

-The 4th best playoff lineup was the Warriors starting lineup, with a plus/minus of Plus 20 per game.  In the Finals?  MINUS 30!

-The Warriors won the final 3 games of the 2015 Finals, both regular season matchups against the Cavs, and smothered the Wine and Gold en route to blowout victories in Games 1 and 2 of these Finals.  During that 7-game winning streak, the Warriors outscored the Cavs by 126 points.  But in the past 4 games, the Cavs are 3-1 and have outscored the Warriors by 49.

-Kyrie Irving has been better than Steph Curry in the Finals.  Recall, Stephen Curry had arguably the greatest regular season in NBA history and Kyrie had a Real Plus Minus below Elfrid Payton.

-How’s this: Anderson Varejao has played 33 minutes in the Finals.  Channing Frye has played 33 minutes in the Finals.  Varejao has 6 points, 6 offensive rebounds, and 5 assists.  Channing Frye has 2 points, 2 rebounds, and 5 fouls.  Can you imagine predicting on June 1st that Anderson Varejao would be more valuable than Channing Frye?

-After being down 3-1, the Cavs did something that hasn’t been done in 50 years: they won the next two to force a game 7.

-The Warriors “Death Lineup”, the outlier to end all outliers, outscored opponents by 46.3 points per game in the regular season.  In the first three rounds of the playoffs it saw little burn with Curry hobbled and it was non-impactful against the Thunder.  Through three rounds the “Death Lineup” had a plus/minus of -0.7 per game in 72 minutes.  In the finals?  -4.7 per game in 41 minutes.

No one knows what to make of Game 7.  Obviously, the Warriors – winners of 73 games, owners of the cheat code player and cheat code lineup, residents of the most favorable home court in the NBA – are the favorites.  They haven’t lost three straight games since 2014.  But the theme of this series has been: the past has not informed the present in any way.  The Cavs were blown off the floor in Games 1 and 2 and neither of the Splash brothers made much of an impact.  They’ve been splashier ever since, yet the Cavs are 3-1.  Go figure.  LeBron and Kyrie became the first teammates to score 40+ in the same Finals game and it was on mostly contested shots.  Seemingly unsustainable, right?  Kyrie dropped 20 in the 1st half of game 6 and LeBron made tougher shots in Game 6 than Game 5 and shot a higher percentage.  All six games have featured garbage time.

There’s nothing to left to theorize.  This entire season boils down to one game.  Both teams have scored 610 points in the Finals.  We have no definite evidence and merely a few unconvincing clues of what may come next.  Nothing left to do but watch how it plays out. As Sherlock Holmes once said:

“I make a point of never having any prejudices, and of following docilely where fact may lead me.“