Duke Blue Devils: Irving Has Woken
Former Duke Blue Devils guard Kyrie Irving has played better every game in the NBA Finals and may have peaked in Game 5.
So let’s see if we can figure out Duke Blue Devils guard Kyrie Irving. He started out the series with two games that were meh, but he still scored twenty-six points in the first game. Without shooting well. At that time I suggested that he had to respond and play better. Then he went for thirty in Game 3 and thirty-four in Game 4. They won one of those and lost one of those.
Then he goes for forty-one in Game 5 to extend the series at the same time that LeBron James goes for a similar number of points (and the best all around game of the series). It is magical right? Why is Kyrie coming into his own against the reigning NBA MVP right in front of us? As you can imagine there are several reasons.
- LeBron James
Face it, Irving plays with the best player of the current millennium. The Warriors learned in the last series how dangerous LeBron James is and they developed their defense to slow him down. One can see that that works from Game 4 where Kyrie scored thirty-four points and it did not mean very much. As a result James gets the best defensive matchups – Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green (a bit part of Harrison Barnes).
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Irving would be living in a much different series if he had Iguodala on him. That would most likely have been the Warriors’ answer if Iguodala was not locked on the best player in the series right now. The defense begrudgingly let’s Irving have his right now. The good thing for Irving is he is taking more and more of it each game.
This is not one of those ‘prove yourself against the best’ rants although you could argue that Irving has outperformed Curry in the series. This is a note of the player who is covering Irving in these games. The guy who, lacking a gold medal, took himself out of the Olympics. Curry has a questionable knee and a bum shoulder right now. It’s not hard to believe that his defense is lacking. Russell Westbrook might wonder if it was ever there.
James and Irving have effectively taken Kevin Love out of the series. Two points for the California kid last night. This is important because if LeBron does not feel an obligation to find the Love the ball, then he won’t do it. So Love’s looks are down as Irving’s looks go up. Right now you can’t argue with that and you might be joining the bandwagon of Love being traded.
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- Shooting
Irving’s percentage is finally where we wanted it back in game 1. There was some criticism of Irving’s thirty four points on twenty-eight shots in Game 4 but he did shoot 50% in that game. His percentage has risen in each game of the Finals, but it would be hard to beat the 70% he shot last night. His three point shooting was negligible in Games 1 and 2, okay but not great in Games 3 and 4, and lights out last night.
This may be an argument for Irving getting used to playing in the Finals and not being as uncomfortable with it as he started out.
The final thing to note about Irving’s production is that is not coming from the foul line. Since Game 1, Irving has barely seen the line.
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So Irving has clearly and finally adjusted within the series. That should bode well for Games 6 and 7. The only problem with that is the Warriors get Draymond Green back and much of what went wrong in Game 5 had to do with not having Green. Green’s absence limited the defense on LeBron, allowed the Cavs to stifle Harrison Barnes, and took a pick-and-roll element out of play. So we’ll see if the Dynamic Duo can pull it off starting Thursday.