It was fun while it
lasted. The Cleveland Cavaliers might as well pack up, jump in the shuttle bus
and head directly for San Francisco International Airport.
Not after Game 2 on
Sunday, but now. Immediately. Pronto.
And once they arrive at
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, they should rush home, relax, make a
sandwich and then pack again.
From there, I'd advise
them to jump in their Mercedes and bust a quick U-turn back to the airport to
catch their flight to some attractive vacation destination.
I hear Brazil, Hawaii
and Jamaica are great this time of year.
Because judging by the
overwhelming majority of the media contingent assembled in the Bay Area for the
2015 NBA Finals between the Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, Cleveland
doesn't have a shot in hell to win this series.
I've been hearing
Warriors in five or six. I've even heard a few pick the Warriors in a sweep.
Very few have picked the Cavaliers.
And according to
numberFire, a sports analytics website that uses mathematical techniques to
predict sporting outcomes, the Warriors have a 78.8 percent chance of claiming
the Larry O'Brien Trophy in five games.
Look, I have no rooting
interest in the results of these games and I can definitely see why the
Warriors, the team with the best regular-season record, are the favorites.
They're an exciting, deep, electric team that features Stephen Curry, arguably
the best shooter to ever shoot a basketball. Plus, they have homecourt
advantage. Oracle Arena is a tough venue to play at.
I get it.
But has anybody noticed
that LeBron James, the best player in the game, plays for the Cavaliers? Has
anybody noticed the mood he's been in as of late? This guy is seriously focused
and fixated on capturing that title for Cleveland and his legacy. You can count
on one finger the number of times he's cracked a smile in the last few weeks.
That's not like him.
"It's a switch
that I have during the postseason," James said. "The regular season
is so long, being intense and stone‑faced
during the regular season, it's too long. There are too many games, too many
road trips, and it can make the game very stale. But during the postseason I
understand it's a different season, and it's a different approach. This is how
I approach it."
Winning a championship
for Cleveland would be the highest honor of James' career.
Has anybody seen how
dialed in he is on both ends of the floor? Has anybody else witnessed how he
has carried his team to victory after victory despite losing power forward
Kevin Love in the first round, and while his point guard Kyrie Irving has been
virtually playing on one leg for two-and-a-half series?
Should the Warriors be
the favorites? Absolutely. Overwhelming favorites? I can't go there.
"People are going
to kind of put their own opinion on who is the underdog or what team is better
or anything like that," Irving said. "It's just about being prepared
as much as we can going into Game 1 and getting the job done."
Just when you thought
the Cavaliers were goners, they withstood the adversity of the given situation.
When Love went down, there was no way they could endure the punishment the
Chicago Bulls would instill. There was no way they would survive that lethal
frontcourt. Also, J.R. Smith missed the first two games due to a suspension.
We saw what happened.
When Irving was forced
to miss a couple of games in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta
Hawks, it was viewed as the Hawks' golden opportunity to make the series
interesting. That series? Interesting?
We [painfully] saw what
happened.
And now it's the mighty
Warriors' turn, the team that's supposed to take the Cavaliers down. They're
the team that's going to put a halt to all this "All-In" madness.
They're going to show the Cavaliers that there's a vast difference between the
Eastern Conference and the Western Conference.
That's exactly why the
games are played and decided on the court. The Cavaliers are used to being
counted out and it has worked out for them so far.
We'll see what happens.
The series starts tonight.
By Chris Haynes,
Northeast Ohio Media Group
"All I can
guarantee is that we're going to play hard," said James. "We're going
to give everything that we've got in these two games."
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