LeBron James' Energy Level Will Make or Break the NBA Finals

The Golden State Warriors may still lose these NBA Finals, as they did a year ago. Calamitous events that remain out of their hands are technically possible. Until some unforeseen basketball tragedy takes place, however, that seems highly unlikely.

Now up 1-0 in their third straight championship series and in the midst of a 13-game win streak, with two MVP winners and a transcendent finalist for Defensive Player of the Year onboard, Golden State is flat-out unfair. The Warriors just may be the greatest team in NBA history.

In Game 1 on Thursday, they made the Cleveland Cavaliers, owners of the best offense in playoff history, look worse than the Philadelphia 76ers. Kevin Durant and Steph Curry combined to score 66 points, and when interim head coach Mike Brown decided to sit them both for nearly five minutes at the start of the second quarter, the Warriors extended their lead by two.

Golden State's best lineup wasn't even deployed for a whole two minutes, and they still rolled along adjustment-free, leaving the rest of us to wonder if the day they're truly tested is a day that will never come. Durant and Curry don't need to be staggered, and Cleveland has provided the Warriors zero incentive to steer from their usual spread of split cuts and high pick-and-rolls into an iso-heavy attack that powers up their two best players like Clark Kent in a phone booth.

More important than all that: Golden State punched the turbo button in Game 1. They were lightning in transition and pranced in the open floor, gobbling up Cleveland's missed layups for fast-break fuel. If the rest of these Finals is played as quickly as Game 1 was, the Warriors will go 16-0. And that's both because and in spite of LeBron James.

James' ceiling is Cleveland's ceiling, and the only limit to both is his energy level. In order for him to be successful in this series, the tempo can't resemble a ping-pong match like it did on Thursday night.

In one illustrative sequence midway through the second quarter, Kevin Love snared an offensive rebound off Kyle Korver's missed three, quickly scanned the court, realized Curry was guarding him, and went to work. Draymond Green slid over to block Love's first try, so he went up again after gathering his own miss. That didn't fall either. A third tip? No dice.

Green finally corralled the rebound and handed the ball off to Curry, who whipped a 50-foot outlet pass to a streaking Shaun Livingston. With Korver backpedaling as the last line of defense, Livingston attacked the basket, found Durant creeping up the right side, and hit him for an easy dunk.

Even though these plays don't directly involve James, they function as steady jabs to his midsection—they sap his stamina and make him look human. During that very play, James raced the length of the floor and soared through the air to meet Livingston at the rim before he crash-landed near photographers along the baseline and sat up just in time to watch his man score.

During the 2015 Finals, the pace was 95.3 possessions per 48 minutes when James was on the floor. That dropped to 94.8 in last year's seven-game classic. With James in the game on Thursday night, the pace was 102.1. While James moved slightly faster and covered a bit more ground according to SportVU, most of his stats for physical exertion were right in line with his average this postseason. Still, it was clear that the game's breakneck speed had taken a toll by the third quarter.

James contested only five shots, down from his nine per game average in the postseason, and looked sluggish switching screens off the ball. After playing the first 14.5 minutes of the game without a break, and while primarily guarding Durant and Green, he took a few offensive possessions off, standing in the corner while Irving freelanced or Love tried to take advantage of a mismatch, but too little of this game was conducted in a half-court setting.

When James did have the ball, it was either an attempt to ram it down the Warriors' throats or command an inverted pick-and-roll, primarily using Curry's man to set the screen. According to Synergy Sports, just over 38 percent of James' possessions were pick-and-rolls in Game 1, after he averaged 22 percent in the playoffs. This isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but most of his eight turnovers emerged from this action—and since the Cavaliers can't guard the Warriors, they need to be perfect on offense to have any chance of winning.

While the Warriors don't necessarily have any cracks on defense for the Cavs to exploit, they are far less effective versus post-ups and isolations—action that, as a bonus, typically breeds fewer turnovers. But James essentially bailed on post-ups as a serious option after he barreled down Andre Iguodala with three barbaric collisions and a turnover in the second quarter. Deron Williams sent Ian Clark to the free-throw line ten seconds later and the next time James posted Iguodala up, he was dragged to the ground and drew a foul.

The Warriors are built for speed, and they exist to run off missed threes and layups. Heading into the Finals, Golden State's offensive possessions were about two seconds shorter than Cleveland's, per Inpredictable, whether it be after a made shot, turnover, or defensive rebound.

Matching up in transition against them is like trying to solve a Rubik's cube—you think you have one side down only to find out another got totally destroyed. There was another play early in the third quarter where, with his team down 15, James gathered a Klay Thompson miss and bowled straight at Durant in secondary transition. James crossed him over, met Zaza Pachulia at the rim, and missed an awkward, fading right-handed layup on the left side of the basket. Exactly seven seconds later, Durant kicked a pass out to Curry for a coffin-sealing three. Nearly a quarter of Golden State's points in Game 1 came like this.

Even on defense, the Warriors accelerated the pace. They pressed full-court to force drives and sagged back at a depth best described as "disrespectful" to bait Cleveland's shooters into pull-up jumpers or contested layups. It worked. Instead of switching every Kyrie Irving pick-and-roll, Green actually dropped back a few times—a high-risk, high-reward strategy knowing how deadly Irving can be, but also what a miss can lead to.

Tired LeBron is fatal for the Cavaliers. They have approximately a 0.0 percent chance to win four of the next six games without their best player operating at the peak of his powers for 40-plus minutes on both ends of the court. After watching Game 1, that sounds unlikely, but a few strategic changes and a regression to normality could help.

The Warriors will not turn the ball over just four times in Game 2. Tristan Thompson will have more sway in the paint and be more destructive on the offensive glass—the primary way to erase Golden State's fast-break opportunities. And James will not cough the ball up seven times in the first half. Expect more work to be done with his back to the basket, especially in small units when Durant is guarding him, so as to eliminate those long arms roaming on the weak side. As a team, the Cavs should favor patient, hero-ball situations, and be less inclined to jack up the first open shot they see (especially from players with "Shumpert" on the back of their jersey).

As dominant as Curry and Durant are individually, pace can make a real difference, and for Cleveland to have any shot at clawing back and making this a competitive series, they'll need to slow things down, take their time, and force the Warriors to beat them in the mud, where James has the physical tools to dominate.

Keep playing these games in fast-forward, though, and Cleveland has no shot.

Want to read more stories like this from VICE Sports? Subscribe to our daily newsletter.