Game 4 goes to Golden State

photo via espn.com

After many questions were raised about the way the Warriors were playing Lebron James, coach Steve Kerr made some adjustments. It began with his starting lineup, he decided to go smaller by replacing Andrew Bogut with Andre Igudala, who had a monster game with 22 points and 8 rebounds. He was the primary defender on LeBron, 20 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists. He held his own with the assistance of lots of double teams, which was another Kerr adjustment. Timofey Mosgov had a career high 28 points with 10 boards, Tristen Thompson chipped in 12 points and 13 rebounds. In the previous 3 games they only double teamed James 15 times on the 270+ touches. It worked, James was "held" 20 points, 12 boards, and 8 assists. 

photo via espn.com

Kerr adjustments were pretty telling. Only playing Bogut for 3 mins, but he got his money's worth in those 3 minutes, with 3 fouls and had a hard foul on James, which lead the whole city of Cleveland to collectively held their breathe for a few minutes after he launched himself into a courtside camera. The resulting damaged was quite a gash, that was eventually glued, on the side of his head. Another key adjustment of Kerr's was just playing 7 guys in this game, minus the subs during garbage time. The key player I thought was David Lee who brings even more offense to a talented Warrior team. He's not the best defender but he held his own. Stephen Curry had a decent game with 22 points and 6 assists, Draymond Green added 17 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.

It now becomes a 3 game series with games 5 & 7 in Oakland. I think everyone has been entertained with this matchup, since this is one of the most watched finals ever, with crazy rating numbers for all the games up to this point. 

Game 4 Highlights

Game 5 is Sunday night at 7pm on ABC.

NBA Finals Preview

Courtesy of NBA.com via Instagram

We have quite a match-up for the NBA Finals, Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden State Warriors. The best player of the era, LeBron James vs the best player of the year, Stephen Curry. Both players can dominate a game in their own way. LeBron can force double teams and looks to find the open man, while Curry forces you to step a few steps farther away from the basket since you have to respect his deep shot, which then opens up the lane and other alleyways for teammates.

This is also about the coaches. This is the first time in Finals history that 2 first year head coaches are facing each other. As for how the public sees both coaches is about as different as it gets. Steve Kerr was the most wanted coach going into the off-season last year and everyone thought he was going to follow Phil Jackson to New York. Instead he took his 5 championship rings as a player, multiple years of experience in the front office and his exposure to the public as a TNT basketball color commentator. It also helped hitting a few jumpers for MJ, help make it easier to remember. Now going into the Finals, everyone has been singing his praises for molding this team and getting way more out of it then his predecessor, Mark Jackson, did.

As for David Platt on the other hand, has been fighting criticism ever since he was hired. Widely an unknown going into this year, since he coached the 2013-2014 season in Israel. Other than that, the only other way anyone knew him was from coaching the Russian national team in the 2012 London Olympics. After some bonehead coaching moves and dumb sound bites during interviews with the press, many believe he will be fired even if they win the championship.

No matter won eventually wins this series, we all I'm sure are hoping for an exciting challenge for both superstars and teams. I don't think anyone is expecting a quick series like what we got in both conference finals, but at least we all got the match-up, most of us wanted.

My prediction: Cavs in 7 games

Coverage begins at 8pm on ABC

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