Barber: Warriors make LeBron James work in 122-103 win

OAKLAND - LeBron James wore his suit-shorts to the post-game podium again on Sunday night, but it was another fashion accessory that interested me: his red eye. The left half of his left eye was bright red where it should have been snowy white. It'll be all the rage in Milan next year, just you watch.

LeBron's red eye was a product of Game 1 of the NBA Finals (and specifically, of inadvertent manual contact by Warriors power forward Draymond Green). But it was much more appropriate to Game 2.

James' team lost Game 1, but it took an extra five minutes of action and a few gift-wrapped presents - from Cleveland's George Hill and J.R. Smith, and from the officiating crew - to make that happen. For James personally, Game 1 was a waltz. He scored 51 points, the most in an NBA Finals game in 25 years. Game 2? It was a poke in the eye.

I mean, James' stat line was nice and shiny in Game 2. He had 29 points, 13 assists and nine rebounds in nearly 44 minutes - numbers that anyone would be proud of. But this was no minuet. James worked for everything he got on Sunday. Worked like a fiend. And the added effort had a direct result on his team. The Warriors never trailed in Game 2, going wire to wire and pulling away in the fourth quarter for a 122-103 win.

After the game, I ambushed Ron Adams, the Warriors assistant coach who has a league-wide reputation as a defensive savant. Adams said he wasn't entirely surprised by his team's inability to be much more than a speed bump for James in Game 1.

“The first game is really dicey,” Adams said. “So we come off a really tough series (against Houston), they come off of a really tough series (against Boston). We're playing a real meat grinder of a team. Then all of a sudden we switch gears and we're playing Cleveland. It was like we had forgotten how much force this guy plays with.”

James plays with enough force that he might well be measured on the Saffir-Simpson scale, like hurricanes.

And if the Warriors had forgotten that for even a minute, Game 1 was their reminder. James was a Category 5 in that one. He frequently encountered little or no resistance as he ran past defenders at the 3-point line. By the time one of the Warriors helped out, LeBron was usually hitting 50 miles per hour and pulling a debris trail of leaves and sheets of newspaper. He had dunk after dunk after dunk.

So the goal coming into Game 2 was rather obvious: Make things harder for the best player on the planet.

“I think I mentioned (Saturday) that he was very comfortable in Game 1,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of James. “I thought we at least made him somewhat uncomfortable at times (in Game 2). I mean, you've got to do your best. You've got to pressure him. You've got to know he's going to end up with 30 points and a triple-double and all that stuff, because he's that good. But we just made things a little more difficult for him tonight.”

Here's how Stephen Curry put it: “We watched the film, and obviously from Game 1, LeBron had an amazing night. But a lot of it was just a lack of kind of sense of urgency early in possessions to try to just be physical.”

The personnel matchups didn't change all that much from Thursday to Sunday. It was still a lot of Kevin Durant in front of James, and some Draymond Green, and some JaVale McGee and Klay Thompson, then whomever happened to get switched onto the guy after a screen was set. But the Warriors attacked James with renewed purpose and aggression.

At times, Green picked up James in the backcourt, while the latter was just starting to dribble downhill. Green didn't get any clean steals from it. I'm not sure he even tried. It was all about making “The King” expend some effort. And when James crossed halfcourt, the Warriors frequently hit him with a double-team.

“I mean, he definitely had a more-than-decent game,” Green said. “He played really well. But you've got to make things as tough as you can on him. He's already a great player, and then you give him the easy things and he's just getting into a rhythm and he's dialing everything up. At that point there is really nothing you can do. From the start of the game, we played with more force. Over the course of the game, I think it helped us a lot.”

You bet it did. Getting into James, rather than allowing him to get into the defense, served three purposes. One, it simply made him expend more energy. Two, it affected his rhythm; as Kerr said, it made him the slightest bit uncomfortable. James had 10 points and one turnover in the first quarter; he had 19 points and four turnovers over the next three.

The third purpose of attacking James early in the shot clock, and maybe the most important one, was to encourage him to give up the ball to one of his teammates. James is a nearly unstoppable scorer, but he is also a brilliant and willing passer. He usually makes the right play. The Warriors wanted “the right play” to be a pass, not a shot.

“It can have that effect,” Adams acknowledged. “The thing with LeBron is he adjusts so well to anything. I thought tonight's game, we did a good job.”

Getting the ball out of James' hands is generally a good idea, because the Cavaliers' other hands are not championship-caliber. Sorry if that offends you, George Hill Fan Club, but they're not. In Game 1, James had taken 32.3 percent of his team's shots; in Game 2, he took 22.2 percent. The Warriors like that statistical trend.

This time, the Warriors forced the rest of the Cavaliers to take on more of the burden. Hill and Kevin Love picked up some of the slack. But the streaky J.R. Smith hit 2 of 9 shots and scored five points in 31 minutes. Jeff Green made 2 of 7 and scored six points. Kyle Korver, Cleveland's designated marksman off the bench, missed all three of his field-goal attempts and finished with one point. Jordan Clarkson continued to be a non-factor.

The Warriors know they can't shut down LeBron James. But they can harass and pressure him, and slow him down just a tad. In this series, that's enough.

“I think I only got tired once tonight,” James said bravely after the game. “So, I mean, they doubled me a few times when I caught the ball in the post, something they didn't do in Game 1. So I got off the ball, trusted my teammates. But as far as working harder, I think I got tired once.”

OK, LeBron, but be honest. It was for the entire second half.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Twitter: @Skinny_Post.