OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Cleveland Cavaliers have found their formula. Shorten the available time by walking into the offense and milking the clock, running down so much time that at one point they had back-to-back 24-second violations. Shrink the floor by getting back on defense and turning this into a half-court game, then contesting every pass and shot. And, oh yeah, win the game.
After leaving that last little detail off the list in Game 1 and even at the end of regulation in Game 2, the Cavaliers have drawn even with the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals with a 95-93 win.
More than that, they are dictating the terms of this series. It's not being decided by rainbow 3-pointers or high-flying alley-oops. It's being decided in the in-between spaces and down on the ground, where Matthew Dellavedova was diving for loose balls. It's being decided with the old-school arts of defense and rebounding, which is how the Cavaliers won Game 2 despite shooting 32.2 percent.
"If you're looking for us to play sexy, cute basketball, that's not us right now," LeBron James said. "Everything is tough. We're going to come in with an aggressive mindset defensively and offensively.
"It has to be that for the rest of the series, no matter how many games it takes."
Or no matter how many shots LeBron misses. After making seven of his first 13 in Game 2 he missed 17 of his last 21 attempts, including a driving layup contested by three Warriors at the end of regulation. But if this isn't LeBron at his most efficient it's him at his most effective, producing a monster stat line of 39 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists. He was the combination scorer/facilitator the Warriors feared most.
The Warriors were much happier when he scored 44 points with only six assists in Game 1. But that masked the fact that he was again only one shot away from winning it. LeBron scoffed at the narrative that the Warriors' defensive plan was letting him get his points, using his time at the podium in the first day off to say, "You don't 'let me' have 40, I go get 40." So he had to come back after his 39 points in Game 2 and smirk, "Once again, I was knocking on the 40 door again. So they let me score 40 again."
Now the Warriors can't even claim to have a defensive scheme that worked, however it's spun. They couldn't speed up the game with their smaller lineup because Cavaliers center Timofey Mozgov was pounding them for points inside and Tristan Thompson was grabbing 14 rebounds.
And the Warriors failed to turn the game into a shooting contest. Klay Thompson went off for 34 points, but his 14 field goals represented 42 percent of the team's total. Stephen Curry was off for most of the night, shooting 5-for-23 from the field and 2-for-15 from 3-point range.
The Warriors' ball movement disappeared. They average more than 300 passes per game; they had slightly more than 200 passes in Game 2, even with the extra five minutes.
In eight quarters of regulation the Warriors have held the lead for only 26 minutes, 51 seconds. And this was at Oracle Arena, where the Warriors were better than anyone else in any other building this season.
"They've done something that maybe has taken us out of our rhythm, and we have to figure out what that is specifically," Curry said. "But I think we're still confident. We still believe that we're going to win the series."
Sometimes the Warriors can be too confident, so trusting in their ability to erase any deficit with a barrage of 3-pointers that they get too loose. And one attribute they almost never display is ruthlessness. They don't pound on weakened opponents, which is why it's no surprise they didn't win the first game they played after the Cavaliers lost Kyrie Irving for the season with a fractured kneecap.
The Warriors are resilient though. They've rallied again and again, including from an 11-point deficit in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter to force overtime. They almost stole this game.
But they shouldn't have to steal games at home. Especially against a Cavaliers team without Irving and Kevin Love. On Saturday they kept saying that they needed to maintain their edge and take the Cavs seriously despite their weakened state, but nothing in their play Sunday indicated they did so. The Cavs played only 2½ players from their bench (J.R. Smith, James Jones and six minutes' worth of Mike Miller) and they still outscored the Warriors reserves 21-17. The Cavaliers also owned the boards, outrebounding Golden State 55-45.
The Cavaliers are controlling the series and even the narrative.
"We're undermanned," LeBron said during a masterful postgame news conference, the only one among the six men who went to the podium to produce a transcript that required a stapler. "I mean, we're without two All-Stars, and I don't know any other team in this league that would be able to do that, to be able to be without two All-Stars on their team and compete the way we compete and be a force. So the guys are taking that very personal."
LeBron has some personal stakes he's using, alluding to "some other motivation that I won't talk about right now," but it's clear what winning these NBA Finals under these circumstances would mean for his place in the history of the game.
We'll see if he can maintain this effort now with only one day off between each of the next two games. But they also will play the first NBA Finals game in Cleveland with the Cavs on even footing in the series, before a fan base starving for a championship, with LeBron already calling on them to outdo the Oracle loudness levels.
So far he has been only one shot short of getting everything he wants out of these Finals, because the Cavs started getting everything on their terms.