Why the 2017 NBA Finals Might Not Save These Playoffs

The main through-line of the 2017 NBA Playoffs has been complaining. Complaining about refs, about injuries that altered the course of several series, and especially about all the damn blowouts.

Many of those complaints are justified: heading into the Cleveland Cavaliers' series-clinching win over the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, there had been more playoff games decided by 15 or more points (25 out of 73 total games) than games that were within three points at any time during the final three minutes of regulation or overtime (23). There also have been more than twice as many sweeps this postseason (five) as seven-game battles (two).

Unsurprisingly, all five of those sweeps were doled out by the defending champion Cavaliers or the out-for-revenge Golden State Warriors. The two teams have been on a collision course all season, and we all pretty much knew that to be the case since last July, when LeBron James & Co. snatched away the Warriors' presumptive 73-win-season-capping title. That's a large part of the reason these entire playoffs have felt more than a bit perfunctory.

Riding beneath the wave of blowout-related complaints, though, has been a sincere hope: that we're about to watch an epic Finals rubber match that redeems what came before. But personally, I have doubts.

We all know that Cleveland's defense has been a disaster for the better part of 2017. The Cavs ranked 25th in the NBA in defensive efficiency after January 1, and 29th after the All-Star break. That's unacceptable. Things have improved a bit in the postseason, but Cleveland's ability to get stops still hasn't been nearly consistent enough.

The Cavs allowed the Indiana Pacers to score 111.0 points per 100 possessions and completed their sweep with a total margin of victory of only 16 points. After clamping down during their second-round series against the Toronto Raptors (100.9 points per 100), and for the first two games against Boston (94.9), they backslid in Games 3 and 4, even as the Celtics played without their lead offensive engine in Isaiah Thomas. The C's smoked the Cavs for 112.3 points per 100 possessions in those two games, with Boston storming to a double-digit comeback in Game 3 before allowing the reverse to happen in Game 4—a game the Cavs practically sleepwalked through before finally taking over.

One thing that's been consistent through each round is Cleveland giving up far too many open looks. Heading into Game 5 against Boston, they yielded an average of 22.7 threes per game that NBA.com categorizes as "open" or "wide-open" (meaning that the closest defender is at least four feet away). That number shot up to 27.1 per game during the first four games against the Celtics. Cleveland has lucked out in that its opponents have connected on only 36.4 percent of their open or wide-open threes during the playoffs. The Warriors are shooting 39.8 percent on those looks during the playoffs so far, and that's low for them.

You may be able to count on Lance Stephenson or C.J. Miles or DeMarre Carroll or Cory Joseph or Marcus Smart or Jae Crowder bricking the occasional open trey when you leave them open on the weak side because you had to send a double at Paul George or DeMar DeRozan or Thomas. But if you do the same to get the ball out of Steph Curry or Kevin Durant's hands, Klay Thompson is not likely to oblige you with that many misses.

Thompson struggled through much of the Western Conference portion of the playoffs, but the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs forced him to put the ball on the ground before shooting because they made timely rotations and ran him off the line. The Cavaliers haven't been consistent enough in their defensive movement to be confident that they can do the same.

Instead, Cleveland has been prone to bouts of miscommunication, with J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert the main culprits. That was never more apparent than on Avery Bradley's game-winner in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Meanwhile, Kyrie Irving has not shown the level of engagement he reached during last year's Finals, and has often reverted to his bad habit of dying on screens at the point of attack. The Cavs also have struggled as a team with the split action that's a Golden State staple. The Celtics ran it to death during the first half of Game 4.

Cleveland has been able to lock in for portions of games or series in order to neutralize their mistakes and inconsistencies, but that's not going to work against these Warriors. Up to now, James has been able to take a break on the defensive side of the floor, at least relatively speaking (though admittedly, that might be part of the reason the Cavs weren't 100 percent locked in all the time).

James spent much of the first three rounds guarding Stephenson, Miles, Carroll, Norman Powell, Crowder, Jaylen Brown, and Smart rather than, say, George, DeRozan, or Thomas. He's going to spend much of the Finals locking horns with one of Durant, Klay, or Draymond Green. Quite the step up. James has always risen to the challenge, but his teammates will have to rise right along with him.

The Warriors, meanwhile, already had one of the five-best offenses ever a year ago, and now they have Durant, the second-best player in the league and arguably the best scorer of his generation. Every issue Golden State had offensively during last year's Finals is seemingly solved by KD's presence on the roster. The pick-and-roll gets smothered and you have to swing the ball to a shooter? That shooter is no longer Harrison Barnes; it's KD. Somebody other than Steph needs to create off the dribble? Get it to KD. Need to slow it down and get a bucket in the post? KD.

The Warriors were a nearly unstoppable offensive team last season, but this group is on an entirely different level. If you have a sleepy five minutes of defense against them, the game might be over by the time you figure things out. This is not a Finals where the Cavs can work out the kinks during the first couple games before locking down the rest of the way. They have to be on-point, all the time, right from the jump. Nothing we've seen from them over the last five months indicates that they're capable of suddenly flipping that switch. So far, their current run is somewhat reminiscent of the one made by a 2014 Miami Heat squad that, much like this Cavs team, was coming off a miracle NBA Finals victory over the same opponent it was set to face in a rematch.

The 2013 Heat snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when Ray Allen made one of the greatest shots in NBA history to push the series to a decisive Game 7. The Cavs did the same last year after Green hit James in the little LeBrons and Bogut got injured the next game. That defending champion Heat team, like these Cavs, supported their Big Three with an aging crew of veterans who seemingly lost a step or two defensively from the previous year. Those Heat, like these Cavs, didn't consistently lock in defensively on their way to their Finals rematch.

The 2014 playoffs weren't the drag this year's were, but the expectation then, as now, was that we were in store for an epic rematch of what had been an epic series the year before. If the 2017 Cavaliers want to avoid the fate that befell the final iteration of the LeBron Era Heat, they'll have to reach a level of defense we haven't seen from them in quite some time. This Cleveland team has done the seemingly impossible before, so we can't say it's a guarantee they don't have it in them again. But it looks far less likely this time around.

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