Kevin Durant’s dunks lift Warriors to victory over Cavaliers in Game 1

OAKLAND - “KD didn’t settle,” Mike Brown, the Warriors’ acting head coach, said after Game 1 of the NBA Finals. “When he had the opportunity, he went downhill.”

NBA players love to go downhill, which is basketball-speak for driving straight at the basket, gravity as their guide. But the hill that Kevin Durant descended at Oracle Arena on Thursday night was no child’s toboggan run. It was the east side of the Sierras. Or maybe a cliff on the Sonoma Coast.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had no more chance of stopping him than bowling pins have of stopping a 14-pound ball, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Warriors beat them 113-91 in Game 1, an event that did not live up to the lofty hype we bestowed upon it.

It wasn’t just Durant who came at the Cavaliers. Andre Iguodala had dunks and JaVale McGee had dunks, and Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson got up-close bank shots. But Durant was emblematic of the Warriors’ aggressiveness, and it’s Durant who represents the biggest difference between this series and the 2016 NBA Finals, which - stop me if you’ve heard this one - Golden State lost to the Cavs after building a 3-1 lead.

There was a time when the Warriors lived and died at the 3-point line. It wasn’t like Curry couldn’t drive or Draymond Green couldn’t score inside. But those high-percentage shots were always mere accents to the long-distance rainbows that made the Warriors so fun to watch, and so difficult to defend.

In the 2016 playoffs, though, opponents figured out the only viable defensive strategy: get physical and crowd the Warriors at the 3-point line. Force them to drive and score inside.

Curry and his teammates were still formidable, of course. But when the treys weren’t falling, they became beatable. No one exploited that vulnerability like the Cavs last year. In Game 3 of the 2016 finals, the first game that Cleveland won, the Warriors scored a paltry 20 points in the paint. In Game 7, a contest that would haunt this team for nearly a year, the Warriors had 28 points in the paint.

Thursday, the number was 56, compared to the Cavaliers’ 30. At halftime the disparity was a one-sided 42-16.

Who took the Splash out of Splash Brothers and replaced it with a Splat?

Time and again, the Cavs fanned out to the arc and dared the Warriors to drive or pass inside. And they did.

“You could tell that their game plan was to take the three away,” Green said. “And when you do that, when they do that, you’ve got to drive the basketball. … You can’t just sit out there and say, ‘Oh, man, I’m going to get a three up because we want to shoot threes.’ You’ve just got to take what the defense gives you. And if that’s a lane to the rim, then you’ve got to take that lane and try to finish. And usually that will loosen their defense up some, and that’s when the threes will start coming.”

Which is a pretty good summation of the flow of Game 1. The Warriors were just 3 of 13 (23.1 percent) on 3-pointers in the first half, not the sort of output that made this team popular. In the second half they were 9 of 20 (45 percent). And the Cavaliers never had a chance.

At the postgame press conferences, the Cavs didn’t just sound respectful of their familiar foe. They sounded almost awed.

“The goal at hand which we want to accomplish is going to be definitely a tough one,” guard Kyrie Irving said.

Coach Tyronn Lue was even more pointed. “They’re the best I ever seen,” he said of the Warriors.

He might even have been serious.

And the biggest factor is Durant. Game 1 was the evidence. The Warriors set scoring records, posted the best regular-season record in NBA history and won a championship without him. But they fell short of a repeat last year. Durant is the component they felt would put them over the top again.

Like his new team, Durant made his fame on elegant shooting. Sunday he morphed into Darryl Dawkins. The most dunks Durant had ever recorded in a postseason game was four. He had six against the Cavs in the first half.

“One thing about K is he can get to the basket anytime he wants. He’s seven feet,” Green said. “So there’s usually never a bad shot that he takes, because he sees right over people.”

Durant was especially fearsome in transition in Game 1, and there was plenty of that going on. The Cavaliers had 12 turnovers in the first half (the Warriors had just one), and a lot of them resulted in the same amazing sight - Durant speeding downcourt with the ball and the Cleveland defenders fleeing him as if he had the Zika virus.

“I think KD got maybe three uncontested dunks because we had Steph in one corner and Klay in the other corner and KD was pushing the basketball,” Brown said. “… We feel like we should be able to attack on every single play. And our guys did that, but it was really important to get our guys to the corner to flatten out the defense and make them decide, are you going to leave the corner three-point shooter and stop the ball, or are you going to stay home?”

The Cavs stayed home, which is a pretty good metaphor for the challenge they presented in Oakland.

This series will almost certainly have some twists and turns. Remember, the Warriors won the first two games last year until things began to go haywire. But Sunday’s game had to be disconcerting for Lue and his players. They played a strategic card, the same one that won the pot for them last year, and the Warriors played a better one.

The Cavaliers might be able to make the Warriors labor for their 3-pointers. They might be able to stop Durant’s drives. But can they do both?

“We did a great job of covering the three-point line,” LeBron James said after Game 1, “but other than that they played a hell of a game.”

You might say the Cavs are going uphill at this point.

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