The Cavs Are Flawed, And The Warriors Are Taking Advantage

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

From the Annals of You Don't F'ing Say, we bring you the following update: The Cleveland Cavaliers are in big, big trouble.

Through two games, the Cavs are on pace to have the largest negative point differential in NBA Finals history. It's not hard to see why. On offense, they've predictable and inefficient; on defense, they're conceded far too many wide-open layups and uncontested three-pointers. Also they're playing the Golden State Warriors, one of if not the greatest teams in the history of the league. That doesn't help, either.

Worse still, the Warriors have yet to play their best basketball—two-time Most Valuable Player Steph Curry hasn't even had one of his signature games, where every off-balance, contested 25-footer somehow finds its way through the net. So, all told: not good.

Even though Cleveland will be playing at home in Wednesday night's Game 3, the team's situation is dire. The Cavs' issues aren't the types of problems that coach Ty Lue can solve by mixing up his lineups or running a few special sets. Cleveland's problems are deeply ingrained, reflecting shortcomings in both personnel and game-plan.

Let's take a closer look:

Defense has been a major problem for the Cavs all season, and one that I wrote about heading into Finals. It would be unrealistic to hope or expect Cleveland to morph into the 2008 Boston Celtics over the course of 48 hours; it might even be unrealistic to expect them to tighten up their defensive execution enough to jump from absolutely horrendous to merely bad. But if the Cavs are going to be at all competitive against one of the most dynamic offenses in league history, they'll have to make that last jump.

What has gone wrong for Cleveland? To start, they're generally unable to rotate and recover. So far in this series, the Cavs have barely managed to stick with the Warriors for a single read, let alone the dozen or so that it takes to keep up with such a clever and fast-moving opponent. Far too often, just one series of screens and cuts leads to a miscommunication on defense, and in turn a wide open shot at the rim or behind the arc.

JR Smith is Exhibit A—or maybe Patient Zero—of the Cavs' defensive inadequacies, and his play on the defensive end has been a perfect combination of poor focus, footwork, and execution. When Smith has given into his tendency to relax on defense, he has been mercilessly back cut for a layup or dunk. Unfortunately for Lue, Cleveland needs the threat of Smith's shooting to create space on offense; more unfortunately still, Smith has scored just eight points over 69 minutes in the Finals, which means he's not making up for his defensive lapses.

In what appears to be a miscalculation, the Cavs are switching almost everything on the perimeter. This is a problem mostly because they didn't hone that tactic throughout the regular season—it's hard to get good at that overnight—and moreover, it doesn't fit their personnel. Smith and fellow noted lousy defender Kyrie Irving are too small to handle Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala inside, and switching them onto bigger guys makes them susceptible to offensive rebounds and post ups.

Of course, Smith and Irving aren't the only ones giving up wide-open shots and missing rotations. The entire Cavs roster appears a step—and sometimes two steps—slow. They're even worse in transition, where guys routinely have been left left pointing at each another while a Warriors player sprints past, unchecked, for an easy layup. If excellence is a habit, it's one that Cleveland didn't spend enough time working on during the regular season. They just don't have the kind of defensive cohesion and attention to detail needed to slow Golden State, and that's tough to learn on the job, let alone in the NBA Finals.

If the Cavs are going to come back and win this series, they'll have to do so on offense. Heading into the Finals, Cleveland was scoring 1.17 points per possession in the postseason—far and away the best mark of all playoff teams, and even better than Golden State's 1.14 points per possession in this series.

Over the last two games, however, the Cavs have put up just 0.88 points per possession. Like their defense, their offense needs a major strategic overhaul, because their struggles to score against the long, athletic, versatile Warriors defense indicates that James' preferred offensive style may no longer pass muster against elite opponents.

During his previous stints in Miami and Cleveland, James has orchestrated his teams' half-court offenses like a quarterback going through progressions. He'll run one or two pick-and-rolls until he gets a switch that he likes, and then spread the floor, having his four teammates occupy spots around the arc or in the short corner. From there, the game is simple: attack the basket, and either finish at the rim or collapse the defense and kick the ball out for an open jumper.

This has worked very well for James, who has a unique blend of size, speed, and passing vision. He has made six straight Finals, won two titles, and has led some of the best offensive units in the league. Yet against San Antonio in the 2014 Finals and Golden State last year, this same strategy has flat-lined.

Both the Spurs and the Warriors have strong, athletic, quick-handed wings who can cover James one-on-one: Kawhi Leonard and Iguodala. Both have long, disciplined help defenders and tight rotations. Both teams went under screens on James, daring him to take pull-up jumpers.

More than that, LeBronball plays right into what the Spurs and Warriors do best. That stagnant style of spread pick-and-roll basketball allows James' opponents to make a single read on each possession: should I help on James, or should I stay put?

Look, even the best defensive teams break down at some point, whether it comes two, three, four, or ten reads and rotations into a possession. By allowing Golden State to make a single read and stick with it, Cleveland makes things too easy. Iguodala's one-on-one proficiency allows his help-side teammate to stick close to their perimeter match-ups a half-step longer—and because the Warriors have speed and length at all five positions, they can they can rotate and recover a half-step faster.

In the bigger NBA picture, this doesn't bode well for the Cavs. Teams are increasingly turning toward length at all five positions, the better to switch everything. The best counter to that is an offense that features rapid ball movement and the ability to attack from any position on the floor—exactly the kind of offense the Warriors have been building for the last two seasons. Curry is Golden State's best player, but in the Finals, he has been as much a decoy as an offensive initiator. James' spread pick-and-roll style has carried him a long way over his 13 NBA seasons, but the game always evolves even for its titans. James may need to adjust accordingly.

In terms of manageable adjustments, the Cavs can—and should—put the ball in Irving's hands for high screen-and-rolls. We haven't seen Cleveland try this a lot, so it's hard to gauge how successful it will be.

One of the Warriors' strengths is their ability to shrink the court when James has the ball, since the on-ball defender can play off him. Irving, on the other hand, is a threat to shoot off the dribble—and in several instances, that threat has forced Golden State to overextend its defense.

Making James the screener is the best option, since the Warriors can't allow him to catch the ball on the move. Sticking him in the short corner might be another option, especially when James is guarded by Iguodala—James has the size and strength to own the offensive glass, and create enough gravity inside to open up the painted area.

The Cavs could also use Smith as the ball-handler in pick-and-rolls, at least for a handful of possessions per game. In Game 2, he actually made some nice plays attacking his defender in isolation and on pick-and-roll.

One of the reasons Smith works as the ball-handler is that the Warriors seem to rotate more vigorously for Irving and James than for anyone else. When Smith or Matthew Dellavedova attack, Golden State is a step slower. James is an excellent off-ball cutter and Kyrie, Kevin Love, Channing Frye, and Iman Shumpert are all very reliable catch-and-shoot players. As unconventional as it would be to take the ball out of James and Irving's hands, convention isn't doing much for the Cavs right now. It might be worth a shot.

A note of caution: playing James off the ball will make Cleveland's shots much less predictable, which in turn will make their already-spotty transition defense much more chaotic. The Cavs can ill-afford to hand the Warriors more transition opportunities. On the other hand, desperate times call for desperate measures.

There isn't a whole lot to say about the Warriors. They haven't peaked in this series, and yet they're dominating on both ends of the floor. The Cavs have allowed them to get into their comfort zone, and no team plays better when they're allowed to get comfortable. This is most evident during Golden State's scoring runs. There's nothing more disheartening for a team than playing tough for most of a quarter, only to allow a 10-0 run in the final two minutes. The Warriors have found those openings, and they've made the most of them.

One of the keys to beating the Warriors is to make them pay for playing small by dominating the offensive glass. Oklahoma City was able to push Golden State to seven games in the Western Conference Finals largely because the Thunder had the inside size to hold rebounding position, and an absurd combination of perimeter athletes crashing every rebound like circus acrobats shot from a cannon.

Cleveland features offensive rebounding specialist Tristan Thompson, but he has been held in check on the glass—and when he does grab the rebound, he hasn't been able to convert on putbacks. In Game 2, the Warriors dominated the offensive glass, and many of their rebounds come as the result of poor communication on defense: two Cavs players would rotate out on the perimeter to challenge a shooter, leaving someone like Iguodala wide open under the rim for an easy putback.

Cleveland could go back to playing big, as it did last season, with Timofey Mozgov attacking every offensive rebound, but that adjustment will also clog the paint on offense, which probably would do as much harm as good.

The Cavs' strategy of making Green make plays has … not gone so well. How so? For starters, it has given Golden State's cockiest player enough confidence to take, and make, contested three-pointers. Green is as comfortable as he's ever been, and looks like a Finals MVP front-runner after two games. With a 2-0 series lead, its likely that confidence won't wane even if the Cavs decide to guard him more closely.

If Cleveland does elect to clamp down on Green, that means they won't be doubling Curry and Klay Thompson above the arc on pick-and-rolls. Given that the Cavs had trouble containing Toronto's Kyle Lowry in similar situations, that might be a suicidal defensive adjustment—and it shows how limited Lue's options are.

In most cases, it's foolish to count out a team that is only down 2-0 and has yet to play a home game. A pair of wins could put Cleveland right back in this series. Still, everything we've seen so far was so very predictable—dating back to last year, the Cavs have lost seven straight games to the Warriors, and now they likely will be without Kevin Love, who suffered a concussion in Game 2, for at least two games.

Cleveland is a flawed team with a flawed roster and an equally flawed plan of attack. Golden State is perfectly positioned to exploit those flaws. Simple adjustments probably won't be enough to swing the series in the time that's left. To have a chance, the Cavs will have to do everything right, and still hope for a lot of luck. It won't be any easier than it sounds.

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