The Golden State warriors entered Wednesday night's Game 3 in complete control of their NBA Finals series with the Cleveland Cavaliers after winning Games 1 and 2 by 48 points combined. Cleveland punched right back with a 120-90 Game 3 victory, and now, with a pivotal Game 4 set for Friday night in Cleveland, this series gets all the more interesting.
Warriors forward Draymond Green — who scored just 6 points on 2-of-8 shooting (7 rebounds, 7 assists) on Wednesday — said that effort, or lack thereof, was the main reason for such a drastic turnaround.
"They came out and played like a team with a sense of desperation, like their season was on the line. And we came out and played like everything was peaches and cream," Green told reporters. " ... I don’t think really they had any adjustments that they made X and O-wise. They outplayed us. That was the only adjustment. For us, there’s no adjustment. Don’t get outplayed. So we’ve got to be better with that come Friday. We got bullied. We can’t get bullied, so that falls on me."
The Warriors allowed just 89 points in Game 1 and 77 points in Game 2, and the Cavaliers failed to shoot over 40% from the field in either of those contests. In Game 3, Cleveland shot 52.7% and won the rebounding battle, 35-24.
"If you don’t compete, you can’t defend at the level that we defended at for the first two games of the series," Green said. "We’ve got to compete and take care of every problem we’ve got out there."
On Wednesday, those problems were in full effect, as three Cavaliers players (LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and J.R. Smith) scored 20-plus points.
"It's gonna take more than an effort like that to win a Finals game against a great team, obviously," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said.
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