When the Golden State Warriors came back from a 3-1 deficit to win the Western Conference Finals, it had much larger ramifications than just a second straight NBA Finals berth.
No, against a team that often put three 7-footers on the court at the same time, the Warriors scored a win for smallball as well.
The Warriors have been the standard-bearers of the NBA's pace-and-space revolution that started with the Seven-Seconds-or-Less Suns, moved to the LeBron James-led, positionless Miami Heat, only for that team to be overtaken by the inside-out 2014 San Antonio Spurs.
Over the past two years, Golden State has taken pace-and-space to the next level, assimilating the aforementioned teams' transformative tenets with prolific 3-point shooting.
The NBA has been, and will always be a copycat league. This year, more than half-dozen teams tried to copy the Warriors' style — some to far more success than others. One of those teams was the Cleveland Cavaliers, who fired coach David Blatt before the All-Star Game in an effort to move to a more up-tempo style of offense under Tyronn Lue.
It took the Cavaliers a while, but during the Eastern Conference playoffs, they made huge strides with both their ball and man movement on offense. They joined the revolution.
Sure enough, the Cavaliers enter the Finals with a 12-2 playoff record — they are peaking at the exact right time, using four- and five-out sets to overwhelm the competition.
But for all the positives the Cavs are showing, they are not the Warriors, and they haven't faced competition in the same class as Golden State this postseason, either.
Ultimately, it's a mystery of how the new-look Cavs will perform against the NBA's elite franchise. But from what we do know, the breakdown doesn't look favorable for Cleveland.
History is both an inadequate and telling indicator: The Warriors won the two regular-season matchups by an average margin of 20 points, but you could argue those games were against the old version of the Cavaliers.
These new Cavs are willing to run with the Warriors — go punch-for-punch with the team that won 73 regular-season games.
That said, an older version of the Cavs — the Cavs that showed up in the NBA Finals last year — might stand a better chance against this Warriors' team.
Because if these Cavaliers want to run with the Warriors, they'll lose that footrace almost every time.
The Oklahoma City Thunder posed a massive problem to the Warriors because of their size, incredible athleticism (especially at the point-guard spot), and defensive length and intensity.
The Cavaliers can boast only one of those qualities — athleticism — but most of that comes from two players: Kyrie Irving and LeBron.
When the Thunder went up 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals, it was in large part because of the tremendous play at the center position. Steven Adams became a two-way star, Enes Kanter was playing strong defense (by his standards) and the "small" option, Serge Ibaka, was not only dominating defensively (as usual), he was hitting 3-pointers like he was Klay Thompson.
Andrew Bogut, Festus Ezeli, and Anderson Varejao couldn't keep up with Oklahoma City's big men. The Warriors found success playing smallball — with Draymond Green at center — against the big lineups of the Thunder, but coach Steve Kerr couldn't justify playing 30 minutes of that exhausting style, especially against a team that big. It'd wear down Green — the team's linchpin — too much. Beyond that, the rebound battle was too important, so the Warriors played a suboptimal lineup for roughly 30 minutes a game, hoping Bogut or Ezeli could give them a solid, two-way performance.
They won't have to do that against Cleveland.
The Cavs have played only one true center in these playoffs, and while Tristan Thompson is an exceptional offensive rebounder, it's fair to say he's hardly an offensive threat. For that much-needed offense at the center position, the Cavs have been playing Channing Frye and Kevin Love as stretch 5s.
Playing small centers is a move that plays directly into the Warriors' wheelhouse.
The Warriors will likely put the defensively susceptible Love in the pick-and-roll wash regardless of what position he's playing, but having him at the 5 eliminates having a true rim protector on help-side defense. The Warriors play the two-man game as well as anyone in the league, and unless LeBron can be everywhere on the court for 48 minutes a game (it's not totally out of the question), they'll be able to score at will with Love playing center.
The Cavs have been best this postseason with Frye at the 5, and that will cause the Warriors a few problems. Ultimately, they can choose to stay big at the 5 and play a de-facto zone defense with Bogut or Ezeli in the middle — letting the Cavs play five-out while the Warriors grab every available rebound — or they could match the smallball for extended periods at a time, much like they did in the final three games of last year's NBA Finals, playing Green, James Michael McAdoo, or even Harrison Barnes at center.
Last year, the Warriors used smallball to speed up the pace of the game and take the Cavs' second-best player — Timofey Mozgov — off the court. Mozgov has been out of favor for the Cavs since Lue took over, and it's unlikely he'll be used in the Finals.
But by playing Frye (or Love) as the primary backup 5, Cleveland is giving Golden State exactly what it wants — increased pace — at no expense.
And the Cavs don't have much of a choice but to stick with what got them to the Finals — a deliberate slowing down of pace could make the Cavs revert to a one or no-pass offense.
It's foolhardy to count out LeBron — arguably the most versatile player in the history of the game — and how Cleveland will play against elite competition is still a mystery, but if the Cavs don't have another trick up their sleeves ahead of Thursday's Game 1, they're set up to be schooled, firsthand, by the masters of smallball.
