Lebron had no angle on the Rozier dunk and Rozier had too much of a head start. Would’ve been an And 1 unless he completely mauled him intentionally. No big deal there.

Lebron not trying on defense doesn’t work when you’re playing against super tryhards who execute well like Boston and him dumping it to plumbers like JR Smith on offense late in the shot clock results in a 10% look instead of a 40% look when you dump it to Kyrie.

Marcus Smart is completely owning the Cavs and Lue is a ******. Smart shouldn’t be hard to defend in the PnR. Go under every screen and stay in front of him. Somehow Lue hasn’t figured this out.

I agree Lebron shoulders a lot of the blame here. His teammates are plumbers who can’t make open shots but I certainly understand their frustration when Lebron stands in the corner doing nothing on defense then rolls his eyes at you when you get beat on a drive or rebound. The team defense is garbage thanks to Lue and the team body language/attitude is garbage thanks to Lebron.

Clarkson was a DNP. LeBron fans now blaming guys who weren't even on the court.

I’m not sure why there is so much debate about whether KD was ring-chasing, wanted to get away from Russ, or wanted to play on a team that passes the ball.

I’m sure he went to the Warriors for all those reasons.

Yeah nothing wrong with what KD did. There wasn't anything wrong with what LeBron did either when he went to Miami. What he did wrong there was force Bosh and Wade to play like scrubs so they could FIT IN to his megalomaniac world and allow him to still get his precious stats. They should have won 4 titled and they were a Kawhi Leonard FT away from winning 1. And that's on Bron.

lebron has some pretty bad options. maybe if he didnt pillage (either by forcing desperate trades or pushing kyrie out of town) every asset the cavs had, he could have played another year there and see what opens up. cavs weren't quite present day philly/boston tier of assets, but they were the next level. ppl forget that

Are you always this bad across all threads?

Rozier was LONG GONE.

He could have at least tried. Didn't even jump bc wanted to stay far away from a photo being taken where it could look like he was being dunked on.

There was no downside to trying to contest it.

He's made blocks when the guy was "long gone" plenty of times.

He's the GOAT afterall, no?

The non chase down block on rosier wasn't even a bottom 10 defensive play from lebron last night. He was waiting for rosier to lay the ball up, rosier correctly dunked it

Yeah there were a few wide open Boston 3's where he was just standing around and completely refused to rotate

Have never seen anything like that even from him

Celts aren't getting away with any kind of physical pressure defense against Woyaz. Katie might even shoot 100 phantom touch FTs in the series, so BRAD better have another trick ready to go.

I love preemptive grousing about riggage before a series even starts.

LOL at thinking that the NBA would rig a series against the Celtics. A return to glory for an underdog Celtics team would be a great story for the league.

Warriors sweeping Boston would be nut worst result for the NBA.

As opposed to them sweeping Cavs? Not sure what the difference is.

Nothing really feels that bad when it's 100% expected. That said, even if Boston gets predictably swept in the finals, what they've done this year is still one of the greatest stories in NBA history. Kinda reminds me of the Knicks unexpected run in 99.

NBA obviously prefers Warriors/Cavs and we'll see that very clearly over the next two games.


Warriors are going to destroy either of them it ultimately makes no difference.

Celtics will win one and be competitive in the rest. Cavs would get blown out in every game.

The finals sucked last year w/ Kyrie on the Cavs and now he isn't, it would be a quick series and I really don't think it has near the intrigue that people think. Casual fans are over GS/Cavs in their current forms at this point. Celts/GS would be able to do similar ratings and probably has a better chance to stretch into like 6 games given how good the Celts are at home.

And then you have the storyline for next year "Celtics lost but didn't have Hayward/Kyrie" (or whoever they get this offseason) and it is a collision course type matchup next year, whereas the Cavs are breaking up even if they make the finals so who cares.

lol, it's all loose balls and just awful to watch imo.

My late father coached high school girls ball and thus watched the WNBA. I was forced to watch many-a-game.

WNBA is as bad or worse to watch as NCAA men. Not even kidding.

LeBron is bigger ratings than Boston. People either love him or hate him but they do watch him.

Warriors obviously would be very likely to beat the Cavs or Celtics, but the Celtics definitely would have more equity than the Cavs in a series against the Warriors.

If Cavs had been playing the Warriors last night, with that complete lack of effort on the defensive end, they would have been outscored by 30 pts in the second half.

I just think with how bad of series it would be that those ratings would go down fast. Going into last years finals there was intrigue because the Cavs still had Kyrie and were the defending champs.

LeBron vs the Warriors was a thing when Cavs were +Kyrie and GS was -Durant. It just isn't anymore.

Anyone who hates this Boston team isn’t doing it right, but this isn’t the 1980 Olympic hockey team. There is more talent on this team that most people appreciated before the season. Jaylen Brown is pretty clearly on the path to being a top 15 player at worst. If they all stay, Kyrie, Hayward, Brown, Tatum, and Al are probably a better top five than any team in the league has other that GS and maybe Houston.

And guys like Smart and Rozier look to be Iggy-level complementary pieces.

Was the Knicks run in '99 that unexpected? They got Sprewell and Camby in the offseason and were expected to be a fav in the east (they may have been the preseason favs after those moves, not sure) and then they just had a terrible lockout-shortened year but them beating the Heat and Pacers in the playoffs weren't considered big upsets or some hugely improbable run.

The next year they made it back to the western conference finals and lost to the Pacers.


Most unexpected postseason run? hmm....'11 Mavs?

Nuggs in '09 after the AI/Billups trade was kinda unexpected. This was still pre-analytics so a lot of people were like they dealt AI for Billups? ehh...And the west was loaded the year before and Nuggs were an afterthought.

Bro, they were the 8th seed.

Function of lockout yr, guys being out of shape for 3 months tho. They weren't a real 8th seed at all in the East.