2015 nba finals: golden state warriors of oakland versus the cleveland cavaliers of cleveland

xxp what do you mean exactly?

(asking bc this idea intrigues and horrifies me)

Don't forget that the curry klay iggy lee bogut starting 5 was the best (or one of the best) starting 5 in the nba last year. I'm all for it

bogut seems... injured

if u were choking for five straight days u'd prob end up injured too

tru cld be a throat injury

Greens got a back prob since that fall trying block lebron whatever game that was but not sure boguts hurt. Just needs to pull his head out of his ass.

its good that he has been sent to the hospital and hopefully he will die imo

― lag∞n, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 11:17 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

strongly agree

this thread is pretty hilarious all around over the past few days, with this as the peak so far:

I'm aware they're playing badly. psychology has to be a part of it at this point, like what physical explanation for a team this good to fall prey to a team that isn't objectively playing "well" other than I guess defensively

― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 8:37 PM

"what explanation is there for this team playing so poorly other than the other team is doing a great job of stopping their offense?"

sure ok

i acknowledged that and also made room for the possibility that they might be kind of shook, which sucks

when a horribly taken shot goes in can you not say that it was poorly taken (like almost every shot matthew dellavedova has taken) or does it going in objectively make it good somehow i think there's still room for criticism

and frustration - that a style that shouldn't in a vacuum work in 2015's NBA but is working, and one that should work (and did all season and most of the playoffs) and isn't

this is sort of what i was talking about earlier https://twitter.com/sherwoodstrauss/status/608656995823046656

this klay jumper in particular https://twitter.com/sherwoodstrauss/status/608668130957750272

how are they drawing barely any fouls other than a touch of #homecookin?

during the playoffs, but especially during the finals, the refs change what's usually a foul during the season into just 'contact'. this has always bugged me.

klay had a few shots where he pump faked, shifted his feet, then decided to take an off-balance shot anyway. it was infuriating

sorry i don't mean to be a shit, but sloth your take throughout this thread has essentially been "the Warriors are great why do they look so terrible, Delly is terrible why is he hitting shots?" and all I'm saying is the Cavs are locked in on defense and despite the media narrative around Delly, he is (and has been all season) a contributing member of one of the best teams in the NBA. the guy can play. don't let Stephen A. Smith's disbelief fool you into thinking like the Cavs hired some homeless guy off the street to come in, drop 20 and shut down the MVP.

i *get* that Steph >>> Delly and the Warriors >>> Cavs. truly. but this is not smoke and mirrors. this is the best player in the world and a scrappy bunch of professional athletes (plus J.R. Smith, ha) playing their asses off and causing big problems for a VERY good but very young team that up to this point has simply floated thru the process to get to this point in a league where it has been proven time and time again that you have to overcome adversity to break thru and win a title.

that said, it'll be fucking shocking / amazing if the Cavs finish this off.

and i hope they do

delly was godawful most of this season, did emerge in the hawks series and i mostly assumed that was bc of how crippled the hawks were but hey maybe not, now he's done what he's done especially defensively, he strangled steph in game 2 i'm not denying this, that doesn't mean i can stop myself from saying WHAT THE FUCK bc what the warriors do is a style i appreciate and think will/should redefine the NBA

i'm honestly not in the anti-lebron crowd and if he pulls off a series win with what he has behind him thats an undeniable achievement and i like kyrie a ton, wish he was in the series, it would def temper my annoyance at the one way ticket to ISOville shit if there was a real shooter on the floor besides JR and delly, mozgov has been for real, etc.

motion for a 25-post daily limit for slothrop on ILH

klay had a few shots where he pump faked, shifted his feet, then decided to take an off-balance shot anyway. it was infuriating

― k3vin k., Wednesday, June 10, 2015 12:34 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah noticed that

i *get* that Steph >>> Delly and the Warriors >>> Cavs. truly. but this is not smoke and mirrors. this is the best player in the world and a scrappy bunch of professional athletes (plus J.R. Smith, ha) playing their asses off and causing big problems for a VERY good but very young team that up to this point has simply floated thru the process to get to this point in a league where it has been proven time and time again that you have to overcome adversity to break thru and win a title.

― alpine static, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 12:41 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is part of it but i dont think it really makes sense without understanding the element that the dubs are just playing bad too, i mean u can tell yr argument is incomplete by how much of it is balanced on the word "scrappy" in the middle there

This is reminding me a lot of that Mavs/Heat finals, Mavs were just Dirk and Chandler + a bunch of dudes that didn't seem to belong on a finals roster, at least not at that stage in their careers, but they just seemed to counter what the Heat were doing so well and Miami had no clue how to respond to it

this cavs team is like that allen iverson finals team except lebron can do more than AI

cavs are not as good at defense as ppl are giving them credit for

I remember a mjax bit where they were praising delly's d and one of the clips they showed was literally delly and curry fucking standing there at the tip of the arc.

but i mean ppl are prob also not considering how much credit theyre giving the cavs for the warriors offensive struggles, its like the greatest defensive performance ever if its all them doing it

their major (one, possibly) defensive accomplishment has been slowing down curry but that's had a huge ripple effect on the other starters

James Jones was also a non factor during the regular season but right now he's coming in, hitting his threes. He's a hacker on D but he can't play a lot of minutes anyway.

Warriors haven't exactly floated through the playoffs, their playoff W/L record notwithstanding. Only a handful of blowouts, and the rest of the games were all decided within 10 points.

PS I hate this game, someone comfort me.

feel like in general warriors have only truly fired on all cylinders maybe 3 times in this playoff run, something i could def chalk up to youth/inexperience

Ethan J. Skolnick ‏@EthanJSkolnick 14 minutes ago
LeBron watched Chopped, not game film, to decompress last night at 2am

leee and cad otm. dubs only had one game where they clicked for 3+ quarters.

klay and curry missed a lot of shots at the beginning that were wide open off great screens. Just be like that sometimes

Warriors haven't exactly floated through the playoffs

they won their series 4-0, 4-2, 4-1 and avoided the Spurs and Clippers, is my point.

i think dova has taken really good shots overall. he's just not that good of a shooter so he clanked a few he's taking what the warriors are giving him without hesitating (unlike DPOY MIP MAX CONTRACT draymond). that fast break pass to lebro was pin point perfect i thought klay would get that no problem. so many run killing plays by the dova and the cavs

Delly's jumper makes LeBron's look smooth

and yeah, that alley-oop to LeBron was super high degree of difficulty...that play was moving so fast I didn't think there was any way LBJ could finish it

klay had that thing measured up too. he kinda hesitated so he could get his legs to go get the ball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTw2i7k7ZLQ
klay shoulda made that layup on the other end tho.

how many minutes have the warriors lead in this series?

lebro wiping out currys legs with no call.

if the cavs somehow come away with this, this is the play i will remember from this series i'm pretty sure

― Clay, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 4:01 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100% I literally jumped up and said what you can't slide tackle a ballhandler!

It was nice that the real Steph finally showed up but I still feel like everyone but klay (maybe) and iggy is just still wondering why their regular shits not working and haven't quite gotten up to full intensity yet, better happen next game

Meantime Lebron is in like utter maximum overdrive, he should probably spend three weeks in the hot tub after this series

My bet is that his secret motivation is that he is opting out and going to re-sign with Miami for the minimum and he hopes to just leave Cleveland with the one ring

windhorst is thinking that his 'secret motivation' is being 3rd in the mvp race. basically proving that he's better than curry, which, well, yeah, but he wasn't for a full season. whatever it is its working.

he hopes to just leave Cleveland with the one ring

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/KissBeforeDying.JPG

without understanding the element that the dubs are just playing bad too,

not really an actual response to someone trying to give their take on why they're playing bad

like them being young and not having gone thru adversity and now facing some on the biggest stage is at least an attempt to explain it rather than just *shrug* they're playing badly.

maybe if steph cuts down a bit on his lazy behind the back passes to nobody

so many things but yeah thats a big part, every single player besides iggy is playing subpar

at this point in their bball lives, curry may be too nice and klay too meek to shake it off and assert themselves/believe in themselves. I think they will at some point but it may take awhile and may not be during this series. whereas lebron (and others) has been thru enough shit that he's able to make that "wait no fuck this, I'm the shit and I'm taking this thing" mental turnaround quicker.

curry's beaten-ass face is definitely one of the saddest i've ever seen in an NBA game