GM Survey has Cavs winning it all this year

[Sakkreth]

Agreed. It's no excuses for us, again..

[Bankaii]

You know the game has gone to shit when posters just bring up a possible collusion such as this in a nonchalant fashion like it's to be accepted as common place and perfectly acceptable.

A 40 year old grown man with the intelligence level of a 4 year old kid.
If you can't construct a decent argument go back to bed early grandpa.

[Spurs5Rings2014]

If the Spurs have luck on their side, and are fully healthy come playoff time... Duncan becomes a 6x champion

[Straight_Ballin]

A 40 year old grown man with the intelligence level of a 4 year old kid.
If you can't construct a decent argument go back to bed early grandpa.

^
Another mental midget who can't grasp the fact that Lebron James teaming with Anthony Davis would be collusion. Keep the laughs coming in at your expense.

[RedBlackAttack]

... they won in Game 1 despite Kyrie Irving playing for most of the game (by the time he was injured, the Warriors already had a comfortable lead in the waning minutes of overtime).

It was 102-98 with 2:22 left in overtime when Thompson's knee connected with Irving's, causing the kneecap to completely fracture. If that is a "comfortable" lead, then we've seen a lot of huge comebacks over the years.

The other thing is, that injury didn't just materialize out of thin air. Irving had been dealing with a mysterious knee injury since the middle of the Chicago series. They diagnosed it "tendinitis," because that is the blanket term any knee injury is given when a guy is having a problem with it. The only problem was, unlike tendinitis, it wasn't getting better with rest. He'd look OK for a quarter or two and then be a shell of himself suddenly. He went to multiple doctors around the world and none could pinpoint exactly what the issue was, so he was reassured of the tendinitis diagnosis.

It is pretty obvious in retrospect that he was dealing with a fractured kneecap all along, and it was just too small to be seen on MRI imagery or on an x-ray. Just type "fracture misdiagnosed as tendinitis" into Google and thousands of cases pop up. The inflammation in the knee can cloud small fractures, making them invisible on the imagery.

The injury in the first game of the Finals only worsened it to the point where it could be seen through the clouds of swelling for the first time. Irving was playing at around 80% for that entire game ... better than he had been against Atlanta (where he was at about 60%), but still far from his normal self. His usual burst was almost completely nonexistent.

... Albeit, Kevin Love was sidelined; but considering how badly he's been marginalized as the third wheel in this Cavaliers' offense, his impact was far from indispensable.

That is just silly. The Cavs were a far better, far more versatile team with Kevin Love on the roster. Look beyond the boxscores and at the team's advanced numbers with Love on/off the floor.

During the regular season with Love on the court, the Cavs were a ridiculous 112.7 ORtg and giving up 105.3. That's a difference of +7.4.

When he was off the court, their offensive rating was 107.9, with a defensive rating of 108.3 (-0.4).

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1/on-off/2015/

That is a huge differential and it shows that players matter in basketball whether they're putting up 25 shots or 15 shots. Love made our floor spacing awesome and, once Mozgov was brought over, his defense was not a problem (in fact, the numbers show the opposite).

The numbers were even more pronounced in the playoffs prior to his getting injured.




Look, the Warriors deserved to win a title. Part of winning it all is staying healthy and they were remarkable in that aspect. The Cavaliers were a tattered mess by the time the Finals rolled around. Even a guy like Iman Shumpert was a shell of himself in that series due to injury.

But, hey... that's all part of it. I'm just not going to sit here and pretend these injuries weren't a major factor in the outcome. That's silly.