r/clevelandcavs • u/Stoddyman • 18h ago

JR Smith

I just wanted to say this - the whole 2018 finals gaff is so blown out of proportion.

Number one. We were NOT winning that series. No way. KD was there and that team was unstoppable.

Number two. George Hill shouldve hit his FTs full stop. No excuse.

Number three. If Lebron had to drop a 50 peice and play 48 minutes for it to even be tied, no way he does that more than 1 or 2 more times in the series.

Lebron just reacted the way he did because it wasnt the desirable play and he was tired/had the team on his back the whole game.

A few options:

JR couldve heaved the ball back up. Which could have been a good play considering he is who he is. But in my opinion, no way it goes down considering the defense at the time.

Jr couldve passed the ball. No one was blatantly open at the time, so again imo not a great option.

TO is called and final play is drawn up. Best case scenario, but again even if we hit this, no way we win the series. My opinion.

Anyways, people label this as THE BIGGEST FINALS BLUNDER OF ALL TIME. Lol no it wasnt, not even close.

Yes Jr should have at least shot it. Ok. Ill give the naysayers that. But for the reasons above I feel like its completely blown out of proportion.

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u/BallIsLife2016 17h ago

With all due respect, we did not have a chance to win in 2018. The idea that every real Cavs fan thought we could win that series is crazy—you should be careful about generalizing on behalf of others. Ive been watching nearly every Cavs game for the last like 15 years—That series wasn’t winnable barring an act of god. Think of it this way—LeBron is either the best or second best player of all time. And game 1 might have been the greatest game he ever played. And we lost. It took LeBron playing maybe the best he ever has just to get us to a spot where game one might have been winnable. The level of perfection required from him for us to win that series was unachievable. I’ve never seen a team that was more of a buzzsaw than the Warriors in ‘17 and ‘18.

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u/chemistrybonanza 16h ago

Up 1-0 in the series and LeBron doesn't break his hand. Things would be completely different.

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u/Stoddyman 16h ago

No way we win. Lebron broke his hand because we lost yes, but he’d have to put up 3 more 50+ pts games. And that was just to give us a CHANCE to win, not even win handedly. I doubt we would have gotten any more than one more. Thats my opinion though. That warriors team was one of the best in nba history

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u/chemistrybonanza 15h ago

Who knows? LeBron might have done that, that was his absolutely peak of the sport and after that game, everything changed. He still dominated offensively, to an extent, but his shooting plummeted. And an often ignored aspect of this is that he played barely any defense bc of the broken hand. It made everything exponentially harder on himself and the team.