AUBURN HILLS, MICH.: When the Cavaliers needed a basket to win a championship in Game 7 last June, J.R. Smith set the screen that took defensive whiz Klay Thompson away from defending Kyrie Irving. In the Golden State Warriors’ switch-everything defensive scheme, Steph Curry was guarding Irving when he hit the biggest shot in Cavs history.
Yet given a similar scenario in the Cavs’ Christmas Day victory against those same Warriors, Irving elected to keep Thompson on him. Cavs coach Tyronn Lue acknowledged Iman Shumpert’s screen in the backcourt was supposed to switch Shaun Livingston onto Irving, but this time Irving essentially rejected the screen and allowed Thompson to stay on him.
Thompson defended Irving’s game-winning shot perfectly Sunday, but it didn’t matter. Irving’s turnaround jumper from near the elbow gave the Cavs the stunning come-from-behind victory.
So were the two plays related? Did Irving taking the screen in Game 7 to get away from Thompson have anything to do with rejecting it on Christmas? Irving insists they were not. In fact, he began answering before the entire question was even asked.
“No. Nope. Don’t even do it,” Irving said. “Like I said, it was just two competitors going at it.”
Irving offered a similar explanation after the game Sunday and refused to delve any deeper after the Cavs lost to the Pistons on Monday. Irving has now gotten the better of the Warriors twice in six months.
The next time these teams will get a piece of each other is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in about three weeks.
In the meantime, the Cavs will try to solve some of the world’s biggest riddles, such as why they can’t seem to win when LeBron James sits. They’re 0-3 without James in the lineup this season and 4-18 in the past three seasons.
“I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the blame on me and Kev [Love] and how we can’t win without Bron,” Irving said.
Two All-Stars should be enough to beat the Pistons, even on the second night of a back to back. But the Cavs rely on James so heavily most nights that when he isn’t in there, it almost feels like a right-handed batter swinging around and batting left-handed for one night.
James resting, particularly with Smith already out injured, forces Lue to start juggling his rotation. Guys like Mike Dunleavy, Kay Felder and James Jones have received their biggest minutes lately on nights James has rested. But since they don’t play much otherwise, their rhythm with some of the other regulars seems disjointed. Even the other regulars don’t have their same rhythm, as evidenced by Monday’s season-high 22 turnovers.
“We still have enough talent to win, that goes without saying,” Love said. “But take the best player in the world off your team, he just means so much to us. His usage is so high in what we do with both units that whether it’s the starting unit or the second unit, you take him away from our team and we lose a lot, naturally.”
Of course, this only becomes an issue if James is injured to the point that he’s missing playoff games. In which case, the Cavs might be doomed anyway. For now, Lue isn’t concerned about the record without him. A better measuring stick is how the Cavs perform when he is out on the floor and when Irving is hitting difficult jumpers in the face of the Warriors’ best players.
“We expect to have LeBron [in the postseason],” Love said with a wry smile. “I think we should be winning games without him. We are capable. … We’ll all pick each other up, knock on wood, we’ll have Swish [Smith] back and have everybody back [in the playoffs] and playing well.”
Jason Lloyd can be reached at jlloyd@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Cavs blog at www.ohio.com/cavs. Follow him on Twitter www.twitter.com/JasonLloydABJ.