Cleveland – San Antonio Series — Youth vs. Experience

The NBA Finals features two teams with many similarities. First, you have teacher Greg Popovich and his student, Mike Brown, former assistant under Pop in San Antonio. Brown and Cleveland General Manager Danny Ferry, who was an executive with San Antonio before landing in Ohio, have tried to mold the Cavs in the shape of the Spurs.

Defense is the name of the game for both teams with the Spurs ranking second in the league in defensive efficiency with the Cavs not far behind at fourth. Offensive efficiency is where San Antonio has a significant edge over Cleveland.Cleveland has been on a great against the spread run going 38-15-1 ATS in their last 54 games overall. Break it down to road games and they are 21-6-1 ATS in their last 28 away from home.  Cleveland has the capability of winning this series. They beat the Spurs in their two games during the regular season. Cleveland has improved since those two games with the improvement and increased playing time of guards Sasha Pavlovic and Daniel Gibson. In the two previous match-ups, Pavlovic and Gibson together only totaled a little more than 14 minutes playing time.

The key is whether Lebron James continues to be aggressive driving to the rim and drawing fouls, especially on Tim Duncan. Driving into the lane towards a waiting Duncan is more challenging than what James faced against Detroit. One of the best defenders in the league is Bruce Bowen, six-time NBA All-Defensive team member. Take a guess what Cav he will be defending?

James did have 19 and 35 points in the two Spurs games. The odds of Lebron continuing to hit so many long jumpers as he did against Detroit are slim but hitting a high percentage on his drives is very probable. James is averaging 26 points and eight rebounds in the playoffs and doing very well against double-teams as evidenced by an exceptional 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

I believe the Spurs will try to take advantage of the speed and quickness of Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker by attacking the basket. There they will confronted by the best flop artist in the NBA, Anderson Varejao, who led the league in drawing offensive fouls this year. Cleveland might play Daniel Gibson on Parker more than foot-injured Larry Hughes or Eric Snow, both of which will have trouble keeping up with the waterbug Parker.

Cav Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas is foul-prone and fouled out of one of the previous match-ups against the Spurs. Drew Gooden has beefed up considerably since his days at Kansas and Duncan shouldn’t be able to outmuscle him. Regardless of who is on him, Duncan will get his points with his nice mix of baskets inside and bank-shot jumpers.

The Detroit series showed Cleveland’s tremendous resiliency. They get down by 7 or 8 but they hang in there. The Cavs were very poised especially compared to the Pistons. The Cavs are showing very good ball movement and I liked the way the Cavs defended the Pistons pick and roll so hard, really jumping out on the dribbler. It will be interesting to see if San Antonio will be as successful running their pick and roll offense as they were against Utah.

Perhaps the biggest advantage San Antonio has is their tremendous wealth of experience, not just in the Playoffs but especially in the Finals. Cleveland has enough big men to be aggressive in defending the below-average free-throw shooting Duncan. Duncan is hitting 64.8% of his charity shots and only made 15 of his 27 attempts in his two games against Cleveland.

The Spurs have the ability to play half-court offense or run like Phoenix. Cleveland is not as skilled running and can have offensive droughts. The possibility of Cleveland being “just happy to be here” does exist. Cleveland just won their biggest playoff series in almost 30 years. The Cavs have to be higher than Apollo 13 ever went and very well could have the same difficulty in coming back down to earth as the capsule did. James has turned out to be a strong leader and these skills will be severely tested in this series.

The Western Conference is vastly superior to the Eastern Conference winning 57.1% of their matchups this year, 257-193. Even on the road, the West showed well only finishing one game below .500. Cleveland was 12-3 at home versus the West and 7-8 on the road. San Antonio was 11-4 at home versus the East and 9-6 on the road.

While the Cavaliers improved as the season progressed, they just don’t have the offensive firepower that is needed to beat San Antonio in a seven-game series. As mentioned earlier, the Spurs are much more efficient offensively than the Cavs. They have multiple offensive weapons that can easily go for 25 points any given game. While Lebron is capable of anything, I don’t think we are going to see any of his teammates scoring more than 20 points in a game. If Bowen can do a good job defending Lebron, I don’t see Cleveland scoring 90 points or more in any one game.

Popovich is one of the best coaches in the league. Any moves Cleveland does to gain an edge will be countered well by Popovich. Pop the teacher is going to teach Brown the pupil a few new lessons. Having lost to the Cavs in both games this year, you can rest assured the disciplinarian Popovich won’t allow the Spurs to take Cleveland lightly.

While I do give Cleveland a fighting chance, especially if they can outright win one of the first two games, I believe the Spurs take the series in six games. A lack of big-time playoff experience, youth, and offensive deficiencies will do the Cavs in. But, it still will be fun to watch Lebron for a few more games this season.

**Note — Obviously I wrote this prior to the series starting.  However, I found this site today and I am impressed with the setup.  I thought I would add my recent article to it.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this series is going six games.  It’s a shame because I would like to see Lebron play a few more games.  

Jim Kruger can be found at http://www.livecappers.com