The caffeine has been consumed, the game has been rewatched, and we are ready to rock here on a controversial classic game one of the 2018 NBA files it and Danny, you had a big place that you wanted to start talking about this game.

There are a series of different angles that we can use, but for me the overarching takeaway is that the Warriors are really fortunate to come away with a win in this game and I mean that for a lot of reasons.

The obvious ones of course, George Hale missing the free throw, J.R. Smith, you know, bungling the response after he got that offensive rebound.

Those are certainly parts of this, but they are not the whole thing and I think one big one that should not be lost in the shuffle is Clay Thompson in the first quarter went down with it looks like a really bad knee injury like in person on my first thought was he's out for the finals.

When I saw it live before any replays that was the first thing I thought he came back in played I believe 30 minutes and then Cleveland support players were getting wide open looks from LeBron.

Generally, these were capable three point shooters and they just couldn't hit a shot. And so while the Warriors did many things well that were, you know, there are positives out of this and reasons that they won this game outside of Cleveland failing to have all of those things happen and LeBron be just super human to come away with a win in that game is fortunate.

Start with Clay, I think what saved him it looked like was the fact that his leg didn't actually get caught under J.R. And that as he kind of got twisted down he was able to get his foot out from underneath him.

I think that saved him from anything where it's not being called a left lateral leg contusion and it's not up near the knee it's a little bit lower so not similar to Andre Gritollas and Thompson came back in and basically played I think 39 of the remaining 41 minutes of the game.

The three pointers was another thing especially you know in the first half the Warriors defense was awful there letting LeBron James go right to the room a number of times it will talk more about how it is that LeBron is able to be so good but this was not the Warriors defense that we've seen at times on LeBron in the past we said that we LeBron would have easier going than he did against Boston in the preview that certainly was the case in this game with Andre Gritollas out.

But the biggest stat of the game to me was that Cleveland shot only three out of 17 on three pointers off of passes from LeBron James and I guess what LeBron James usually doesn't pass to unless you're wide open so that is just a really really ugly number Kevin love in particular head a nice game on two pointers he was actually eight out of 12 on two pointers he usually shoots poorly on two pointers against the Warriors he had 21 points but he was one out of eight from three and I thought he had some very good.

Very good looks especially in the first half that just did not go down Jeff Green also one out of six he missed a huge corner three late in the game as well green maybe not someone that you expect to hit that many shots.

Jerry Smith had some chances also it was and when you throw out LeBron's three for seven and he had some pretty ridiculous ones in that third quarter the rest of the cows were seven out of 30 overall from three which was considering that the vast majority of those were catching shoot looks that is a very very ugly performance.

Yeah one other part of it I just want to make sure we mentioned this early so we don't forget it another big swing in this game that won't get talked about enough is George Hills foul trouble so he was definitely their best option of point guard considering the only other guy that tightly played and he got caught a couple times I thought that most of his fouls were preventable and the last one is this really tough situation happened a couple of different times in this game where a guy had his kind of had his hand in the cookie jar didn't ask for a

foul actually commit the foul but the ref you know it looks like a foul so the ref called it so sure that fifth foul was a tough call I would have that was the one where Katie the first father the overtime where Katie was was I sewing him to cross the lane I think it was yeah that sounds right to me but yeah so you know that's a tough call happens that officiating the NBA is very difficult but I will but George Hill because him being in foul trouble forced Lou to go to some other options one of those being Jordan Carleton who was absolutely a

bismill in the first half and rough overall yeah I will actually say that Clarkson did okay defensively he had a couple of couple of steals he had a steal as a help defender that was quite nice on the yeah yeah you had that one he had one in transition only tried to throw it over his

had a track back pretty nicely but also a master struggle with him only two for nine although he was amazingly somehow plus eight those kids were plus

minus might have been a little bit misleading and he had some real just bad decisions and you know he can't he can't make the good shots that he gets and he's been taking a lot of bad ones as well the other thing that really struck me

about the things we were talking about the big themes was once again the amount of switching and we thought well Cleveland they're never going to switch if it's Kevin love right if

Kevin love doesn't play and he was ruled in early in the day if he doesn't play then maybe they'll switch everything right they'll have a bunch of

like size guys of Tristan at center they can do that instead they did switch everything even when love was involved and actually the stats were not that bad when

love either defended as the big in a pick and roll which basically meant that he was switching out you know I went back and watched all the plays

or just what was a straight switch they only scored 11 points in 12 possessions on them now that's all half court so that's not a great number in

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