Cleveland Cavaliers: 5 keys to beating the Warriors in the 2017 NBA Finals

3. Exploit Curry on defense

Much like the Warriors will try to create mismatches by involving Love in pick-and-roll action, so too will the Cavaliers try to exploit Stephen Curry on the defensive end.

As ESPN‘s Zach Lowe detailed in his NBA Finals primer, Cleveland bullied the two-time MVP in last year’s championship series by constantly sending his man to screen for LeBron and capitalizing on the ensuing mismatches.

Switching Curry onto the King leaves him vastly outsized and outmuscled. Doubling LeBron allows him to pick apart the defense with his pinpoint precision on his laser passes. Even when Curry and LeBron’s defender contain the screen well, running Steph through all those screens took a toll on his energy levels.

Curry wasn’t 100 percent in last year’s Finals, which won’t be the case this time around. He’ll also be playing with a chip on his shoulder, not to mention with less pressure on him without two consecutive MVPs and a 73-win season adding extra expectation to the whole matchup.

However, if the Cavs can run Curry down on the defensive end — especially since the Dubs would be wise to put Klay Thompson on Kyrie Irving from the get-go — and if he’s running all over the place on the offensive end, fatigue could be a real factor here, once again giving a possible edge to Kyrie.

In last year’s Finals, Irving unexpectedly outplayed the league MVP, averaging 27.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.1 steals per game on .468/.405/.939 shooting splits to Curry’s 22.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 0.9 steals per game on .403/.400/.929 shooting splits.

Curry hasn’t been as bad in the Finals as social media would lead you to believe, but if the Cavaliers can exploit him on the defensive end and shake his confidence a little bit, Kyrie Irving could very easily outplay him again and give Cleveland yet another monumental advantage.