By all appearances...the Cavs should win every game by 25 points. But there's a part of me clinging to the idea that Casey is controlling the tempo and style of these games and that's why they're so ugly. It's like watching basketball played in mud. Is it possible that this works against the Cavs? Probably wishful thinking. I get the sense that there's around a 75% chance of convincing sweep and 25% chance that the Raps actually frustrate them with team defence. If the latter happens....then it's STILL probably around 3 to 1 odds that the Cavs win. So all in all...around a 10% chance of an upset.
Not having Val kinda kills us. He's performed really good against Tristan in the past. High ankle sprain could be months nevermind weeks. I would assume he's a no-go for the entire series which means our back-court is gonna have to do all the scoring.
I was under the assumption that Delavadova was a good defender? His D seemed pretty good in the playoff run last year. But I'm hearing the pundits say the opposite and that the Cav's biggest weakness is aggregate back-court defence? That works for us....especially in the absence of Val.
The other thing....Carroll is probably in the top 5 defenders in the league playing one on one against Lebron. Refs can control the game by calling fouls against Carroll....but even then, we have James Johnson on the bench who just happens to play pretty good (relatively speaking of course) against James too. We're kinda designed to ATTEMPT to defend James in that way.
I haven't seen much of Jr Smith v Derozan.....Both Derozan and Lowry have to heavily outscore their matchups to have any chance at all. I think Lowry can beat Irving....but it's gotta be by ALOT.