CLEVELAND -- Earlier this season, I was having a conversation with a Western Conference scout about the potential perils of isolation offense, and he was quick to point out: "The playoffs are different. You have to have players that can create offense in the playoffs." The rationale behind this is simple: In the playoffs, the opponent-specific scouting ramps up exponentially, teams know one another's "systems" inside and out, and thus, by Game 3 of a series, there are no more major adjustments to be made, no more proverbial tricks up the sleeve. It's just players making plays. Or not.
Well, here we are in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
The players haven't changed.
So far, neither has this series.
As it stands, the Warriors are up 2-0 heading into Wednesday's tilt in Cleveland because, very simply, they have a better collection of talent and because that collection of talent has played at a level the Cavaliers, collectively, haven't been able to match. I state this rather obvious fact because, frankly, we're running out of things to say about this series. Running out of storylines to drum up. Is LeBron James a true leader for the way he handled J.R. Smith's Game 1 gaffe? Are the Warriors playing too much isolation ball?
"You guys keep asking the same questions," a clearly frustrated Cavs forward Jeff Green told a scrum of reporters on Tuesday, and he's right. It's not a knock on any reporter simply trying to do his or her job. People need their content. You can't just come out in an article or on TV and say: "Look, the Cavs have to play better, they have to make their shots, they have to win the rebounding battle, or else they're going to lose." You can't say that over and over for three days in between games because there's nothing particularly interesting about saying that.
Except that it's true.
In this series, there isn't an adjustment in the book that is going to change the fact that the Cavs have exactly two advantages vs. the Warriors: LeBron James and rebounding. Clearly there is no adjustment for LeBron. Yes, the Warriors, like every other team that has ever tried to defend him, have thrown different coverages at LeBron. They've doubled. They've showed and recovered. They've let him go one-on-one against Draymond Green and Kevin Durant and even Stephen Curry, who has legitimately held his own against the world's best.
Steve Kerr talked about making LeBron less comfortable in Game 2, getting into his space, and the Warriors did that. But that's not exactly an adjustment. That's just playing harder and with more purpose.
The same goes for the rebounding advantage the Cavs enjoy. Cleveland killed the Warriors on the offensive glass in Game 1 to the tune of 19-4. Along with LeBron scoring 51, it was the reason they nearly won that game. It helped them control the pace. It helped them finish with a 21-10 advantage in second-chance points. It provided them nine more shots than Golden State, which is vital for the simple fact that Cleveland cannot keep up with Golden State on a per-shot basis.
So now everyone wants to know how the Cavs can replicate these things, as if there's some magic formula. But there isn't. The Cavs will try to keep the pace down in Game 3 running pick-and-roll to get the matchup on LeBron they want, by being methodical in their actions and shooting late in the shot clock as often as possible, and by pounding the offensive glass -- all the same as they did in Game 1 and for stretches of Game 2.
Meanwhile, the Warriors will try to speed things up the same way they always try to speed things up -- by getting stops and taking off like bats out of hell. In this series, the Warriors are shooting 75 percent in transition with a 5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is to say what we already know: They're really good in transition. As Shaun Livingston pointed out on Tuesday, the Warriors can force their preferred pace even more by rushing the ball inbounds and running more on made baskets.
None of this is new. None of this is terribly complicated strategy.
Take what Draymond said about who will win the Game 3 rebounding battle.
"At the end of the day, it's all going to boil down to who wants the ball more," Green said. "Whoever wants the ball more is going to go get it. Obviously, every now and then the ball takes a bounce that's not in your favor, and that happens. But over the course of 48 minutes, if you want it more, you're going to go get the rebound more. So it just takes that mentality."
To some degree, this is deceiving. It's not all mentality. I'm pretty confident in saying the Cavs want to win, and are trying to win, as badly as the Warriors, but they haven't won a game in this series yet because the Warriors have better players. Well, the George Hill missed free throw and subsequent Smith brain freeze in Game 1 didn't help, but again, at this time of year, and certainly at this point of a series, it's about players making plays. Or players not making plays. And the simple truth is the Warriors, to the aforementioned scout's point, have more players capable of making plays.
That's not to say the Cavs can't win Game 3 or even sweep these two in Cleveland and send this thing back to Oakland tied 2-2 with a whole new feel, though that feels extremely unlikely. It's only to say there is no magic formula for this happening, no question that can be asked that will provide any answer other than what we already know: If the Cavs are going to win one game, let alone two or three games and in this series, LeBron is going to have to be brilliant (which we can pretty much count on), and at least two of the others Cavs are going to have to be really good (which we cannot count on).
We do know that Kevin Love and Hill and Smith and Kyle Korver and Jeff Green will get every chance to make an impact, because LeBron is going to set them up with shots. You can book that. Problem is, outside of LeBron and Hill, the Cavs are shooting barely 20 percent as a team from deep through the first two games. And most of those have been good looks. So in Game 3, they'll either make them, or they won't. How many different ways can you analyze that? Or any of this?
What we have here is a simple case of maybe the greatest player ever trying to take on maybe the greatest team ever. That was true in the first two games, it will be true in Game 3, and it will remain true for as long as this series lasts.
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