Game one of the 2017 NBA finals were Thursday night; the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 113-91 and there are three reasons why this occurred.
#1. Turnovers
If someone said LeBron James lead his team in turnovers with eight, no one would believe it. However, that is exactly what happened in game one of the 2017 NBA finals. LeBron James had eight turnovers while looking overwhelmed, unbalanced, making sloppy passes and not prepared to play. Along with LeBron’s eight, the rest of the Cavaliers owned twelve more.
Twenty team turnovers total. How remarkable and embarrassing is that? In all honesty the Cleveland Cavaliers deserved to lose and deserved to be blown out. Cleveland looked sloppy on both sides of the ball giving up easy fast break points and dunks from unnecessary turnovers. This is the main and most important reason why they lost this game. Turnovers against this great Golden State Warriors team are so crucial especially turnovers that lead to fast breaks and easy buckets. This team is so good at passing and sharing the ball that you can not give them anymore opportunities to score more points.
While Cleveland had twenty turnovers, Golden State only had four total turnovers (two from Curry and two from Green). Because of this Cleveland had close to no fast break points which gave Golden State an easier chance to have tremendous lock down defense each and very Cleveland possession.
#2. Kevin Durant and Steph Curry
The Golden State Warriors were fantastic even with Klay Thompson and Draymond Green not contributing on the offensive side of the ball points wise. Kevin Durant had a grand total of 38 points, (14-26 FG) 8 rebounds and 8 assists. Those numbers right there are phenomenal and he completely took control of the game and road it right to the finish and made sure he finished off the Cavaliers by dropping a few desecrating three pointers late in the game. Durant was not alone though, Steph Curry (28 points, 6 rebounds and 10 assists) was just as good and contributed to the blowout victory even with a slow start. Curry came alive in the third quarter and dropped a total of six three pointers during the length of the game and Cleveland had no answers. He outplayed his point guard counterpart Kyrie Irving for the majority of the second half. He got his teammates more involved than Irving did and looked like the Steph Curry everyone is used to seeing.
The Cavaliers need to do better job at containing at least one of these players and not allow the Warriors to get into the lane and score easy buckets (fast break dunks by Durant).
#3. Bench Play
Coming into the 2016-2017 NBA season knowing that the Warriors gave up a lot to obtain Kevin Durant including some of their key bench players, many believed the Warriors would not be as great as they were last year when winning 73 games. Also, before the finals even started most people would have said that Cleveland had the better bench and that the Warriors bench would be a liability and could be a reason why they would drop some games. However, in tonight’s game they were a key factor in the win. When Curry and Durant were not on the floor, they held their ground by playing astounding defense against the Cavaliers and made sure LeBron or anyone else could not get hot and start knocking down big buckets. They outplayed Cleveland’s bench with 24 points to Cleveland’s 21 but the Warriors bench field goal percentage was much better and more efficient (10-23, 43% FG) to Cleveland’s (6-24 25% FG).
Of course there could be more reasons why the Warriors gave the Cavaliers a good beating in game 1. However, these key mistakes by Cleveland need to be addressed and acted on quickly or else this series will be a short one and the Larry O’Brien trophy will be heading back to the bay area in Oakland very soon.
