The Cleveland Cavaliers problem lies beyond just Kyrie Irving being out for the series as reported Friday evening. Cleveland simply does not have the firepower or depth to take down the Golden State Warriors, who I picked to win in 5 games before the injury to Irving. Cleveland has gotten the benefit of playing in the Eastern Conference, where teams aren't nearly as strong as they are in the West. If I had the top six teams in the West go up against the Cavaliers, I would have to pick the Western team to win.
Folks, the Western Conference is simply that much better than the East. The Chicago Bulls, which pulled out 50 wins in the regular season would probably have struggled against a Pelicans team that featured Eric Gordon, an injured Jrue Holiday, Tyreke Evans, Asik, and of course, Anthony Davis; and those Bulls were the toughest challenge that the Cavaliers had to face going into the finals.
Let's look at how the two teams played:
The Cavaliers had an almost flawless game. Lebron James scored 44, Mozgov had 16, Irving had a solid game all around, and Tristan Thompson had a great game on the boards. How much more can you expect from Iman Shumpert consistently really? The only thing Cavs fans can point to is that J.R. Smith can go off after having a poor game one... but in reality he's just not a consistent player. Now that Irving is out, Dellavedova isn't going to fill in the shoes completely or even get close to that level of production. LeBron is going to have to score 40+ a night and J.R. 25+.... in addition to the rest of the team scoring 40 points+ a game in addition to playing lights out defense in order for the Cavs to have a chance in this series.
The Warriors had a good game. Curry had 26 points on some good shooting numbers, but the rest of the guys really didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Thompson shot 4-15 to go for 21 points, Barnes got 11 points shooting 4-9, and Green had 12 shooting 4-13... The only player that you say played exceptionally well in extended minutes was Andre Iguodala who scored 15 pointson 6-8 shooting. In other words, the Warriors just played an above average game for themselves on Thursday night... They didn't do anything out of the ordinary. They had a cold streak to start the game from the long layoff most likely, but clearly outmatched the Cavaliers in every way possible (sans LeBron James) the rest of the way.
Cleveland is going to have the pull a miracle to win this one, and if they do, it might finally be time for even the biggest LeBron skeptics to put him in the category of one of the all time greats, up with Kobe, Magic, Kareem, Jordan, Duncan, Shaq, and Russell, and above Bird, Wilt, Oscar Robertson, and many of the other great players who have never been in the greatest of all time discussion.
