Cavs player has 'no doubt' they'd be up 3-0 if Kyrie Irving was still on the team
The Cleveland Cavaliers have been close-but-no-cigar in two of the three games so far in the NBA Finals, losing in overtime on the road in Game 1 and leading with three minutes left before falling 110-102 in Wednesday’s Game 3.
But in a seven-game series, all two close losses out of three games means is that the Cavs could be going fishing after Friday night’s Game 4, as the Warriors can complete the sweep with another win at Quicken Loans Arena.
The whole thing has the Cavs’ team unity under no small bit of threat.
Besides the obvious — J.R. Smith hasn’t got a friend in “The Land” after forgetting the score in Game 1 and earning the scapegoat brush — it seems that some on the team think that the Shaq-and-Kobe-like antagonism between LeBron James and Kyrie Irving is the reason Cleveland isn’t winning the series this year.
Jason Lloyd of The Athletic reports that an anonymous Cavs player asserted that he had “no doubt” the Cavs would be up 3-0 if Irving were still on the team.
His reasoning? Golden State was without Andre Iguodala’s veteran leadership for the first two games, and the Warriors are complacent after winning two titles in the last three years.
Indeed, the Cavs themselves have been a much weaker team this season, needing referee assistance in Game 5 in the first round just to get past the Indiana Pacers, then needing LeBron to pull out his superhuman powers to beat Boston in a road Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Finals.
And bringing it full circle, if the Celtics had Irving, they wouldn’t have had to watch Terry Rozier build a house of bricks in that pivotal would-be series-clinching game.
Would Cleveland be up 3-0 if they had Irving in the Finals? Unlikely; they got blown out in Game 2 toward the end, after all, and lost by 19.
But substituting Irving in for George Hill would, all other things being equal, have won them Game 1 for sure, and with Stephen Curry’s game a hot mess in Game 3, Irving would have been able to leverage the frustration Curry suffered and take Steph out behind the woodshed.
Hill, starting at point guard, had five points, two rebounds and four assists in 27 minutes. While Rodney Hood put up 15 points in his time on the floor, if Irving were in there, he might very well have gone off for 30, which would’ve been enough to swing Game 3.
So Cleveland surely would be up 2-1 and with home court seized away from their opponent and the Warriors scrambling to try to win Game 4 and keep control of the series.
But, on the other hand, let’s not assign too much to the chaos-butterfly nature of basketball; switching one player for another has a ton of knock-on effects in terms of team defense, focus of the other team’s players and all of that.
Last year, the Cavs had Irving, stormed through the Eastern Conference playoffs 12-1, and then managed to accomplish only a “gentleman’s sweep,” playing spoiler to the Warriors’ attempt to become the first team since the playoffs went to 16 teams from each conference to run the table and win out in the playoffs.
It’s possible Golden State just has Cleveland’s number, because while the Cavs are LeBron James and the Canton Charge, the Warriors are two MVPs and two other All-Stars in the starting lineup; three, in fact, if they start Iguodala, who was an All-Star in 2012.
So yes, Cleveland would be making this series a lot more competitive if Kyrie Irving were still on their team.
But up 3-0? If wishes were horses, Cleveland could equip a whole city full of literal cavaliers.
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