CLEVELAND — As he met with the media before the start of Thursday’s NBA Finals game, Steve Kerr had the air of a fellow who had something up his sleeve.
He was prodded by the gathered reporters, asked whether he intended to double-team LeBron James more. “Maybe, maybe,” he said. He was asked whether David Lee, who performed well late in Game 3, would appear more. “Yes, David will play,” he said. He was asked whether there would be a change in the starting five. “No,” Kerr said. “We’re going to start the same way.”
Two truths out of three ain’t bad. About that starting lineup?
“I lied,” Kerr admitted after the game.
Kerr bluffed deftly and instead played a surprise card — arguably the last in his hand — by making a lineup swap from center Andrew Bogut to wing Andre Iguodala in order to kickstart a stagnant Golden State offense. The result of Kerr’s trick play was the most Warriors-like game this team has put forth, and a 103-82 victory here at Quicken Loans Arena, evening the series at two games each and keeping the Warriors from a desperate NBA Finals situation.
If there was a reason Kerr and the Warriors held the advantage entering this series, it was the depth and length of his roster, the flexibility that comes with trusting your Top 10 rotation players. That became an even more acute advantage when Cleveland, already down Kevin Love to a shoulder injury, lost Kyrie Irving after Game 1.
But that has not worked out so simply for the Warriors against this Cavs bunch, and to win Game 4 Kerr had to dig deep. Iguodala had not started any of the 95 games in which he had appeared during the regular season and playoffs, and Lee had not been among those 10 rotation players in whom Kerr had trusted recently. Lee did not play in the first two Finals games.
Iguodala handled his addition to the starting group with gusto. He has been Golden State’s steadiest player throughout the series, and in Game 4 he was simply the Warriors’ best player. He scored 22 points and took advantage of frequent mismatches against Cleveland center Timofey Mozgov, going 4-for-9 from the free-throw line. Mozgov made the Warriors pay at the other end (28 points), but the small lineup forced the game to be played at Golden State’s pace, really for the first time all series.
The faster speed boosted the rest of the Warriors. Stephen Curry had 22 points, and the Harrison Barnes-Draymond Green combo, which struggled so badly in Game 3, bounced back to total 31 points on 10-for-20 shooting. The Warriors shot 46.8 percent from the field and made 40.0 percent from the 3-point line. After totaling 31 assists in the past two games, the offense had 24 assists in Game 4.
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Kerr made a couple of other changes, too. He scrapped the use of his deep bench and instead mostly relied only on Lee (15 minutes, 28 seconds) and Shaun Livingston (24:30) off the bench. Leandro Barbosa played 6:57, while Bogut only played 2:48.
Asked how Kerr broke the lineup change to him, Bogut said it was simple: "'You're not starting.' That was it," he said.
Kerr also used double-teams on LeBron James far more than we had seen in the first three games, which was not very often. James came into the game averaging 41.0 points on 35.7 shots per game, but as the Warriors sent two men at him, he sought to pass more, and looked very human for the first time in this series, with 20 points on 7-for-22 shooting. Outside of Mozgov, the rest of the Cavs struggled, and Cleveland shot a paltry 33.0 percent from the field.
So Kerr only mostly lied — and, heck, if you tell a minor fib in pursuit of an NBA championship, you can be forgiven. . Kerr did play Lee more, though, and he did double-team James more. He told the truth there. But the biggest card he played was the Iguodala move into the starting group. And that was a top-notch bluff.
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