The Cleveland Cavaliers are 8-0 in the NBA playoffs and have met very little resistance from the Indiana Pacers and Toronto Raptors. The resistance has been so minimal, in fact, that Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green hasn’t been interested in watching any of Cleveland’s games.
In fact, Green (per Anthony Slater of The Mercury News), called the Cavs’ games “boring,” elaborating on that label.
“When you watch Cleveland play, you only watching one side of good basketball,” Green said. “That’s kind of weak. I like watching a good game, not even necessarily that it’s going to be a close game. I like to watch teams playing good basketball. When you watch them, you watch one team playing good basketball and everybody else just…do something. I don’t know what that something is.”
In the interest of fairness, it needs to be mentioned that Golden State is 7-0 in the postseason entering Monday’s Game 4 against the Utah Jazz.
When that was mentioned, the Warriors star drew a distinction between his team’s dominance and Cleveland’s, saying, “But Utah is still playing good basketball. …Regardless if they win or not, I think we’re a better team, but at the same time, they still play a good brand of basketball.”
Objectively, the Jazz are playing better basketball than the Raptors did. But if you’re looking for competitive, exciting basketball games, Green’s comments fall into the “distinction without a difference” label.
Golden State has beaten Utah by an average of better than 11 points a game. Even that has been cosmetically close, with late runs in Games 1 and 2 drawing the Jazz closer on the scoreboard than they actually were in the games. In fact, Utah didn’t even hold a lead in the series until late in the second quarter of Game 3.
Factoring in a 4-0 sweep against the Portland Trail Blazers, the Warriors have a margin of victory of better than 15 points in the postseason. That’s certainly not enthralling to non-Warriors fans.
Thanks to a largely competitive first round series against the Pacers, the Cavaliers average margin of victory is less than seven points per game in the playoffs, though they won their games against the Raptors by better than 15 points a contest.
Barring an unforeseen set of circumstances, it sure looks like the Cavs and Warriors will meet in the NBA Finals for the third year in a row.