“Game 1 offered a specific reminder of last year’s championship bout: the Finals MVP wasn’t any of the three marquee names on the Warriors roster. On a night when Steph Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 20 points on 8-for-27 shooting, the Warriors bench more than made up the difference in Golden State’s 104–89 win over Cleveland. Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, and Leandro Barbosa scored 43 points on 18-for-24 shooting; Barbosa’s net rating for the game was comically high after a perfect 5-for-5, 11-points-in-11-minutes performance; the Warriors were dominant in the 26 minutes that Iguodala and Livingston shared the court — and those gaudy numbers still might understate the bench’s impact on the game.”
The extra effort to stop Curry and Thompson left easy buckets for the role players. It is looking bleak in Cleveland.