Davies: One game can change everything
You wanted adversity? You've got it.
Those that wanted to see the Cavaliers with their backs against the wall in the playoffs should've been more careful with what they wished for.
Coming off of a blowout loss to the Warriors in Game 1 of the Finals, Cleveland was handed another whooping by Golden State at the raucous Oracle Arena to fall behind 2-0 in the series.
Game 1 can be classified as three good quarters of basketball and a fourth-quarter letdown.
Sunday? One and a half good quarters of basketball and a complete implosion thereafter.
Through 96 minutes of play, the offense has looked nothing like it has during the entire postseason. It's overanxious. It's rushed. It's forced.
Throw in the fact that LeBron James and the rest of the Cavs seemingly have their hands lathered with crisco and it's not a pleasant sight.
The defense hasn't been much better, either. Confusion on switches off pick and rolls, backdoor cuts for easy buckets and allowing Golden State's bigs to crash the offensive glass have pretty much summed up the first two games in Oakland.
To make matter's worse, the Warriors have won back-to-back by a combined 52 points -- and they haven't even gotten much out of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
Who's been doing the damage? Shaun Livingston. Leandro Barbosa. Harrison Barnes. Draymond Green. And ESPECIALLY Andre Iguodala, who just might be in LeBron's head as much as Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich were in 2014.
In witnessing the beating the Cavs took on the road to start these Finals, the chances seem slim and the odds looks as bleak as they ever have. There's no debating that.
But I can recall a series similar to the start of this one, and it ended about a week and a half ago at the Air Canada Centre.
Now, before I get called out on this, just hear me out and let me point out a few similarities -- because it's not all the same.
Entering the Eastern Conference finals, the Raptors weren't given a snowball's chance in hell to win, heck, even compete with Cleveland in that series. Through the first two games, Toronto was completely overwhelmed by a superior team on its home floor. Flustered, out of sync, shooting poorly.
Then the series went to Canada, where the Raptors came out with a much more poised and collected demeanor about them in both Game 3 and Game 4. Most believed they would pull out one for their fans, but they managed to win two straight and make things much more interesting than anticipated.
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Spencer joins Jon Bozeka on 1480 WHBC in Canton to break down the series thus far.
The end result didn't go in their favor, obviously, and it might be reaching a bit -- but what I'm getting at is that a series can drastically change with one win. That's on the road, at home, wherever.
Each game in the Finals should be treated as its own entity, because one is never going to be the exactly like the other.
We can even rewind to one year ago, when the LeBron-led Cavs shocked the Warriors in overtime of Game 2 to even things up at one apiece. Cleveland proceeded to win the following game to go up 2-1 and it started to look like Golden State had no idea how to answer.
But we all know what happened from there -- Steve Kerr found the aptly-named "death lineup" and that was all she wrote. The Cavs had no answer.
I'm not saying that Tyronn Lue's got something up his sleeve or LeBron will all of a sudden be able to magically get the basket with ease when this series returns to Quicken Loans Arena.
What I do believe, though, is how quickly the momentum can swing with one adjustment or a few tweaks. A deafening, supportive crowd can go a long way, too.
So don't sulk. Don't be "woe is me" fan. Be encouraging. Be confident.
The Cavs will have their chance to right the ship on Wednesday night. They'll have a choice: Accept defeat or take the challenge and leave it all out on the court. I'm going to assume we'll see the latter in Game 3.
If they do manage to win, maybe a little bit of the conviction we saw in the first three rounds will be re-instilled into them.
If they don't? Well, to state the obvious: It'll take more than a miracle to beat a 73-win team four consecutive times.
But while things don't look so great right now, remember: a series isn't truly a series until both teams have played at home.
