Warriors - Cavaliers Game Three: More Of The Year Of The Blowout

As much fun as tonight's game

Tonight in Cleveland, the Cavs did what the home teams have done far too often in these playoffs: absolutely trucked the road team in a game that wasn't all that much fun to watch. 30-point Cavs win, and we're now at 2-1 Warriors for the Finals.

It's hard to overstate just how poorly the Dubs played tonight. Draymond Green was invisible. Klay Thompson took an injury in the first half and had his worst game in a month. Stephen Curry was in foul trouble in the first half, finally got going way too late to really matter, and added fuel to the conspiracy fire that he's nursing and/or masking injuries. None of their benchies looked particularly inspiring, and they've given the Cavs exactly what they need to make this a long series.


As for the Cavs, Kyrie Irving and JR Smith showed up after not playing worth a damn in the first two games. Tristan Thompson played volleyball in the second quarter. Timofey Mozgov gave them decent minutes and punished the Warriors' small moments. They played dramatically better defense and got better calls from the refs. Their ball movement looked like a basketball team. Had this team showed up in the first two games, we might have had people enthused to watch hoop.

I should be happy, but I'll be honest with you.... it's hard to stay awake for blowout hoop. Especially when the games start and end late enough in the day that passing out is a real option. Cleveland wasn't good enough to turn this into a runaway in the first half, but they were in the second, mostly because LeBron James was finally his own damn dominant self, and that was that.

Game Five is Friday, and maybe the Dubs show up from the jump in this one, and we finally get a good game. In a playoff year when good games have been an intolerably low percentage of actually fun to watch hoop, we can only hope. And if you want to use this as Moar Proof that the Warriors aren't one of the best teams in NBA history, well, whatever. They sure pull the chutes faster than you'd expect from a great team...