The first three games of the series were epic. The last three were pretty underwhelming for me, and game 6 was the worst one by far. It reminded me of some of those Clippers/Rockets games earlier in the playoffs where one team won only because both couldn't lose. Sloppy, terrible basketball from both teams. Kudos to Iggy though for stepping up to the plate. He's the one guy who wanted to win the most this series and he came through consistently for GS. How a 33% career three point shooter suddenly shot 40% in the Finals on 35 attempts is a mystery to me. I kept expecting him to come back down to earth, but he kept taking them and making them. He made more threes (14) than Lebron James (13) or Klay Thompson (12). Sure Steph Curry made 25 of them but that was on a Kobe'esque 65 attempts. And he competed on defense more than any other player on the floor. Well deserved Finals MVP for him.
As good as Lebron was statistically in this series, I still can't shake the impression that he doesn't want the ball when it counts. He spent far too much of this game hanging around the perimeter watching his teammates try to create shots. His defense was a joke. And that's not something I say lightly -- he's one of the top 5 best perimeter defenders in the league when he wants to be. Tonight, he had no interest in playing defense which is tantamount to giving up. Maybe he just didn't have the strength left after playing nearly every single minute of the series. He set such a high standard in those first 3 games, almost single-handidly willing the Cavs to a series lead over a far more talented (not to mention better coached) team that it was particularly disappointing when he reverted to pre-Miami Lebron in this game and constantly deferred responsibility to everyone else with uncharacteristically lazy passes and disengaged defensive effort. Otherwordly performance leads to otherwordly expectations. I was rooting for him to make history. Instead he took less free throws and settled for more threes than any other game of the series. The Lebron from games 1-3 wins this game easily, GS just wasn't very sharp. Five straight Finals appearances is still an achievement on it's own though and he'll probably be back representing the East again next year.
Small ball is smart basketball if it wins. It won tonight because Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov couldn't punish GS's mini front-line. Any team with a decent big would have eaten that Barnes/Green frontcourt for breakfast. Anybody trying to tell me NBA 3.0 (ie duck and chuck) is the wave of the future because GS won the series doesn't understand what they're watching in my opinion. Cleveland was a problem for GS when they had two players who could create their own shot. Once Kyrie went down, GS could key their entire defense on stopping Lebron and they wore him down (46 minutes a night over 6 games helped). That is a well-constructed team where everybody knows their role and nobody has to do too much. Depth and balance is no secret, it's been a staple of every championship team. It's not NBA 3.0 position-less nonsense, it's versatility and a willingness to make adjustments. Small ball worked against this hobbled Cleveland team in this series, it wouldn't have worked against Houston or Memphis. The ability to go big or go small as the situation demanded is what carried them through the playoffs (oh and a little bit of injury related good luck).