Anything the New-Look Cavaliers Can Do, Golden State Can Do Better

This article is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NBA Playoffs coverage.

Having blitzed through the first two rounds of the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Cleveland Cavaliers are heavy favorites to return to the NBA Finals. But have they shown anything that suggests they have a better chance of winning a title—particularly if they find themselves in an expected rematch against the Golden State Warriors?

In short, yes. And at the same time, not really.

First things first: technically speaking, Cleveland has to beat the Toronto Raptors to reach the Finals, just as Golden State has to outlast the Oklahoma City Thunder. The latter is likely, provided reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Steph Curry can remain healthy. The former is highly probable as well, given that the Raptors in the postseason have hardly resembled the squad that looked like a legitimate Eastern Conference contender as recently as March, especially if Jonas Valanciunas's ankle injury leaves Bismack Biyombo the only Raptor battling Tristan Thompson on the defensive glass.

As such, it's not totally premature to take a closer look at the Cavs, and how they match up with the defending champions. At first glance, things look to be much improved. Unlike last year, which saw LeBron James drag a beat-up Cleveland squad to a pair of Finals victories via slow-it-down, pound-the-paint iso ball, the Cavs now have a healthy Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving.

Not surprisingly, Cleveland has—perhaps for the first time—started to look like the offensive juggernaut that NBA observers widely expected when James, Love, and Irving first joined forces. In fact, you could say that the Cavs look a bit like the Warriors.

Cleveland is taking and making three-pointers at a historic rate: through eight playoff games, the Cavs have made 134 three-pointers, the 34th most ever by a team in the postseason. Coach Ty Lue has Cleveland playing some small ball, with Love at center and James at power forward. The Cavs even have their own (super-small sample size) lineup of death, centered on a Love-Channing Frye frontcourt duo, that put up a thermonuclear 132 points per 100 possessions against the Atlanta Hawks.

In short, Cleveland's offense has come a long way from its dismal 2015 Finals performance, which saw the Cavs bully and wheeze their way to a 99.6 offensive rating and a 43.6 effective field goal percentage, with James as their only real catalyst for creating opportunities.

That's the good news. The bad news? Playing more like Golden State might not be Cleveland's best option for beating them. Yes, last year's Finals were an eyesore, but the LeBron-centric offense that the Cavs were forced to play helped limit the Warriors' offensive output, primarily by reducing transition opportunities— one benefit of an offense with no movement is that the players without the ball can at least be stationed in areas of the floor allowing for quick recovery to the defensive end.

The Cavs' new, more free-flowing approach threatens to inject more pace. Couple that with Irving and Love's status as, um, not exactly lockdown defenders, and Cleveland could be playing into the Warriors' hands. Besides, does a unit featuring Love and Channing Frye have any chance of guarding Golden State's base lineup, let alone the various death lineup iterations featuring Draymond Green at center? (Hint: probably not.)

Everything the newish-look Cavs can do, Golden State can do better, and that's the fundamental problem for Cleveland. To wit: in the two regular-season meetings between the teams this year, attempts by Cleveland to gain an advantage by getting Love the ball in the post versus Green were completely ineffectual, while on the other end … well, it wasn't ideal.

That particular matchup reflects the bigger picture. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, Cleveland dared Detroit and Atlanta to beat them from outside; against Curry and Klay Thompson, who already is tied for 20th in made threes in a single postseason, that strategy would be suicidal. On the flip side, the Cavs' own torrid three-point shooting almost certainly isn't sustainable on a percentage basis, particularly when Golden State has league's best defense at closing out on shooters and preventing catch-and-shoot three point looks.

— Seth Partnow (@SethPartnow)May 4, 2016

Can Cleveland learn anything from the Portland Trail Blazers about how to crack the Warriors' defensive code? Perhaps. But what the Cavs will really need is someone like Iman Shumpert duplicating Al-Farouq Aminu's unexpected run of accuracy—which is more of a hope than a concrete plan. Curry showed a little bit of vulnerability when isolated defensively on C.J. McCollum, but Golden State can simply switch Klay Thompson (or Shaun Livingston, or Andre Iguodala) onto Irving if the Cavs point guard starts to cook. At that point, a Cleveland offense based on having the likes of J.R. Smith or Matthew Dellavedova attack Curry probably will end badly.

If the Cavs continue to produce on offense and make the kind of shots they've been getting through the first two rounds of the playoffs, they can beat the Warriors. But doing that against a locked-in Golden State defense is probably too much to ask.