Warriors Roll In Game One

It took about a week to get going with the NBA Finals, but they finally arrived Thursday night, and boy were we in for a treat in the opener. Here we sat thinking that this might be a close series to start, considering that we had mostly blowouts in most of the playoffs. Not exactly the case. Game one turned into what most of the rest of the playoffs had become, routes. Kevin Durant paced all scorers with 38 points as the Warriors walked away with a 113-91 victory to jump out to the early lead in the series.

Golden State dominated the first half, or at least outplayed the Cavs in the first half of the game, but only managed to come away with an eight point lead entering the break. That was about as close as the Cavs would get. Golden State opened up the 2nd half with a 13-0 run and never really looked back. From that opening 2nd half run on, the Cavs struggled to keep pace offensively, and failed to launch any serious comeback attempt for the rest of the night. One of the biggest reasons that the Warriors were able to handle their business on this night was Kevin Durant, who played like a man possesed. In his first Finals game since losing to the Heat in 2012 as a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Durant finished with 38 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, including a wide variety of nasty dunks. Meanwhile, Stephen Curry, his partner in crime, scored 28 points on 6-of-11 3-pointers to go along with a game-high 10 assists.

Seeing those two guys play together and be able to do what they did was a thing of beauty. From Kevin Durant going coast to coast on his dunk early and Steph Curry using an inside-out escape dribble and knocking down a pull-up 3-pointer from the wing, the two of them were FEELING it in the opener. When you have two of the best players in the game today on the same team and both of them are in a groove, in some way, shape or form, you know your team is in for a good night.

The Cavs were led by LeBron James, who had 28 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists, but also committed eight turnovers. Kyrie Irving had 24 points for the Cavs, while Kevin Love finished with 15 points and 21 rebounds. The name of the game in this contest was turnovers. Cleveland was a mess in that regards, coughing the ball up twenty times over the course of four quarters. That can't happen in the playoffs, let alone game one of the finals. By comparison, Golden State turned the ball over only four times.The Cavs were sloppy and didn't do a good enough job pressuring the Warriors' ball-handlers and getting in the passing lane. The four turnovers tied the record for the fewest from a team in NBA Finals history, while the turnover margin was the largest in the last 30 Finals. It's not good when LeBron by himself has twice as many turnovers as the other team.

High scoring games have been the name of the game so far in these playoffs. It seems like teams are having trouble playing defense. Just look at some of either the blowouts or blown leads that teams have had in games so far this season. Is it so much to say that we wanna see some competative basketball, even more so at this time of the year when the games are suppose to be the best were going to get all year long? Cleveland better stop with the butterfingers in game two tomorrow night and actually hold onto the basketball if they want to be able to attempt keep pace with the Warriors in this series. That's why its a best of seven series.