CLEVELAND – The Cavaliers came home for the Finals, one defeat away from the 0-3 deficit that no team ever has overcome in any NBA playoff series. Their opponents, the Warriors, are spoken about in terms of dynasty.
“We look forward to the challenge. It’s a very tall task,” LeBron James said about Golden State on the eve of Wednesday’s Game 3. “A very tough challenge, as I mentioned before the series even started, going against these guys, going against this team.”
And by all appearances, the task got taller, the challenge got tougher because the guys James was facing figured to get better as Andre Iguodala, who had missed the previous six games — the last four of the Western Conference finals against Houston and the first two of the Finals — with a left leg bone bruise, was back in the rotation.
“There’s a good chance he’ll play,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said at the morning shoot-around. “I don’t know how many minutes he’ll be able to play, but he’s been feeling pretty good the last two days. Made a lot of improvement from where he was, so it’s all leaning in the right direction.”
Kerr said Iguodala, whose left leg was heavily bandaged at practice, did everything at the shoot-around and the team workout Tuesday, “but you don’t do a whole lot at this point of the season.”
Still, he can do enough to make life miserable for the Cavs. Iguodala, the MVP of the 2015 Finals, is a ferocious defender who hounds James as much as any human can hound James. He also is a terrifically smart player.
“Andre helps us in every regard. He’s one of the smartest players in the league. He handles the ball for us a lot on offense, he’s a great decision maker and he’s an excellent defender, so it can only help us,” Kerr said.
Because first and foremost, he is a do-everything sort of player.
“We talk about his versatility all the time. We talk about the ways that he can fill holes defensively and offensively for us, especially against teams we have such familiarity with,” said Stephen Curry, who was coming off his historic 33-point Game 2 that contained a Finals record nine 3-pointers.
“He’s such a high-IQ type of guy that he’ll most likely find himself in the right place at the right time and help our rotation get back to what we’re consistently used to.”
Yeah, familiarity is nice.
“Just for him, just as a person, to be healthy and be able to play in The Finals, I think that would mean a lot to him and give us an emotional boost as well,” Curry said, aiming for the intangible stuff beyond the 7.9 points and .479 shooting he provided in the playoffs before his injury.
So the Cavs were no doubt just thrilled to hear the 6-foot-6, 14th-season veteran out of Arizona was ready to return.
The Warriors, naturally, accept any weapon in their quest to make James mortal. Being down two games tends to bring out the desperation in folks. And little on earth is as dangerous as a desperate LeBron James.
“He’s pretty much dangerous every night, but (down in a series) we know the force he’s going to bring and the pressure he’s going to put on us, and we have to be able to withstand that,” Kerr said.
“We have to try our best to avoid fouling, which we didn’t do a very good job of in Game 2. We committed 25 fouls to their 15, so we’ve got to do an even better job on their home floor. We have to do a much better job of not reaching, boxing out early, not committing silly fouls to allow them to get going.”
The Cavs, before the venue switched, boiled the job down to its simplest terms: protect home the way the Warriors did.
“We’ve been very persistent and very resilient throughout this whole season,” James said. “We have an opportunity to come home and protect home, as Golden State has done.”
But the Warriors didn’t have to do it against four All-Stars, now re-armed with Iguodala.
