Complete 2016 NBA Finals Matchup Breakdown and Prediction

It’s deja vu for the NBA Finals.

After throttling the rest of the Eastern Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers are within four victories of their first-ever title. Again. And after narrowly escaping the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Golden State Warriors are on the verge of epic champagne showers. Again.

All of those regular-season and playoff games later, we’re here, back where last year ended. The Cavaliers are healthier, the defending champion Warriors are better. But the stakes are the same.

Might the outcome be different?

 

Backcourt

Cleveland Starters: Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith

Golden State Starters: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson

With all due respect to the Cavaliers, Kyrie Irving and postseason J.R. Smith, the Warriors deploy the best starting backcourt in basketball, and it’s not even close.

Irving and Smith, to their credit, make for a lethal offensive combination, one with the long-distance acumen necessary to rival the flame-throwing of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Both of Cleveland’s guards are shooting better than 45 percent from downtown overall (that is not a typo) and sinking more than 50 percent of their catch-and-shoot triples (also not a typo). 

But their matchups during the Eastern Conference playoffs never once came close to a duo like Curry and Thompson. Those two are draining three-pointers with comparable efficiency while shooting a significantly higher volume, and they both won’t be as easy to manipulate off switches and drive-and-kicks on the defensive side.

Take a look at how the backcourts compare from beyond the arc on both ends of the floor:

Neither Irving nor Smith, who ranks as a defensive bright spot during these playoffs, balances his sweet shooting with suffocating three-point prevention. The Cavaliers cannot cover up for both of them without sacrificing elsewhere.

Slotting Iman Shumpert next to Smith while using LeBron James as the de facto point guard offers more defensive potential, but the offense won’t look the same without Irving. Tethering James to either one of Curry or Thompson, though feasible, limits the time he can spend on Draymond Green—godspeed, Kevin Love/Tristan Thompson—and forces Cleveland to stash Irving on someone like Harrison Barnes.

The Cavaliers are best suited to hoping Irving and Smith don’t get exploited too much on their own. They can send timely traps and pray Curry continues his roller-coaster postseason—his shooting percentage inside eight feet of the basket (52.6) has plummeted relative to the regular season (62.5), and he’s putting down just 25 percent of his treys in tight and very tight spaces.

But banking on Curry to remain human is dangerous. He can still shift the outcome of a game during one minutes-long burst and has come on when it matters most, shooting 63.6 percent from the field during the final five minutes of games in which Golden State is ahead or behind by no more than five points.

Oh! And his partner in crime is an All-Star who can function as a No. 1 scorer when Curry isn’t a breathing incendiary device.

Unless the mothership abruptly calls Curry home, the Cavaliers’ backcourt is in for a tough NBA Finals.

Advantage: Warriors

 

Frontcourt

Cleveland Starters: LeBron James, Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson

Golden State Starters: Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut

Golden State’s frontcourt should pose a bigger threat to Cleveland’s platoon, but Green is shrinking on offense at the most inopportune time.

He shot just 35.4 percent overall and 20.8 percent from three-point land during the Western Conference Finals. The Warriors’ turnover rate jumped with him on the floor, their offensive rating improved without him and he posted the worst net rating among all their (usual) starters.

Even their defensive efficiency took a hit when he played. And while he made up for it in Games 6 and 7, limiting Oklahoma City Thunder shooters to 34.2 percent, the Warriors just aren’t the same team when he isn’t drawing attention away from Curry on offense. 

Barnes, meanwhile, is a certified wild card. He disappears for games at a time on offense and isn’t providing the same defensive punch when rolling as part of Golden State’s “Death Squad.” He didn’t attempt more than nine shots in a single game against the Thunder, and head coach Steve Kerr yanked him from the starting lineup in Game 7 in favor of Andre Iguodala.

Andrew Bogut still brings the heat as a paint protector. Opponents are shooting 13.8 percent below their postseason average inside 10 feet of the basket when going up against him, and no one will soon forget his 15-point, 14-rebound, two-block effort during Game 5 of the conference finals. But it’s impossible to count on him as a difference-maker, especially knowing how often the Warriors turn to undersized lineups that feature Green at center.

Plus, you know, the Cavaliers have James.

LBJ’s 24.6 points, 8.6 rebounds, seven assists and 2.2 steals per playoff contest only tell part of the story. He is once again …

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