NBA Finals : Why the Cavs Won Game 3

        Less than five hours before Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavalier and Golden State Warriors, Kevin Love was ruled out of the game, and that is when the sports community wrote off the Cavs. However, some people, including myself, thought the series would take a twist with K-Love out. Love has never been praised for his defense, and the slacking offense wouldn't take much a hit without him. Richard Jefferson, the veteran stepped in to change the dynamic and provide some defense and leadership. 

Last night I saw three things the Cavs did differently that won them in the game, which they were not doing in the first two games.

1. JR Smith was hitting his shots

In games one and two, Smith was 3-9 from the field, including 2-7 from 3 point. Yesterday, Smith was 7 of 13 from the field, and piling on 5 three pointers on 10 attempts. The way you beat the Warriors is to combat their shooting spree's with your own. Portland did that and so did Oklahoma City, even though both of them lost the overall series. If the Cavs can continue their hot streak from downtown, allowing JR Smith and Kyrie Irving to light up the scoreboard with three's of their own, this series can and will become much more competitive.

2. They moved the ball more

Games One and Two features many offensive possessions where LeBron James would dribble the air out of the ball for 15 seconds and then begin to create his own offense. That created a trend where other players, like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love would do the same, and it became a game of individuality. The lack of ball movement prompted more defensive attention on the ball handler, and that's why Kyrie, Lebron and Love had bad games, therefore resulting in the loss. HOWEVER, last night it was totally different. They looked for the open shots, found players cutting to the basket, and their ball movement opened up the court, so the 3 point shots were more high percentage. When a team can spread the floor and force the Warriors to scramble on defense that is when the victories flow in. Not allowing a double team to form on LeBron, or any ball carrier allows more high percentage shots to come in.

3. Defense was in their vocabulary

In the first two games it seemed as if the Cavaliers did not know the meaning of the word defense. Cleveland played complacently and allowed the Warriors to stomp all over them. The aggressiveness shown by the invigorated Cav's turned defense into offense, scoring 34 points off turnovers. Matthew Dellavedova played tremendously on Steph Curry, not allowing him any space, similar to what Oklahoma City did early on in the Western Conference Finals. Obviously shutting down Curry and Thompson is an increasingly hard task. However if Cleveland can continue to chip away at their production, I think a 2-0 comeback will become more and more plausible as the series progresses.

I hope Tyron Lue realizes how successful his team was last night. His starting lineup without Kevin Love was much more rounded out. If I had one piece of advice it would be this. Allow K-Love to become the 6th man. Bring him off the bench with Mozgov as a replacement for the Jefferson-Thompson 4-5 combo, and allow K-Love to spread the floor on offense with his outside range, and hopefully the shortened minutes will prompt him to be more aggressive on defense.