Cleveland will meet Golden State in the 2015 NBA Finals. I didn’t just want to take a look at player-by-player match-ups since the only thing that gets me excited is who will/can/would like to guard LeBron James?
The Warriors appear to be confident that already have personnel with the abilities to stop the King James. Steve Kerr has given Draymond Green 6 more minutes (37 minutes / per game) in the postseason than in the regular season. So we can see that majority of the task will belong to Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala.
Real Plus-Minus (RPM) predicts you how much better a team played on offense and defense by taking into account teammates, opponents and additional factors.
1) Green is one the best defensive real plus minus (DRPM) players in the league, contributing a positive 5.24 points differential to Warrior’s defense.
2) Andre Iguodala has posted positive real plus minus stats. In the 2014-15 season, Iguodala’s average “point differential impact” on his team is +1.31; his +1.23 of +1.31 comes from defensive possessions and +0.08 net point differential on 100 offensive possessions.
Not including the Boston series, in the eastern conference finals and semifinals DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap, and Jimmy Butler have tried to guard LeBron but Cavs have lost only 2 games combined in the last 10 games.
Let’s send these numbers to cells of our brains and watch the most anticipated finals. It will be a great matchup on both ends of the floor that will leave great memories behind.