Inside the NBA reached for the brooms early on Saturday night, and Draymond Green did most of the diagnosing. The Golden State Warriors forward, joining the desk for a Knicks-Cavaliers post-mortem after New York's 121-108 win in Cleveland, said the Cavs' Game 3 disaster — and the 3-0 series hole that came with it — was less about scheme than about a missing voice in the room.
"No intensity, no defensive effort," Green said, watching Knicks highlights roll. "Every Knick starter in double figures, and they just dominate. But nobody from Cleveland is stepping up. There's no leadership. Who's walking in that locker room saying what you have to do, what we need to do?"
Kenny Smith had the obvious answer queued up. "Well, I got the answer for that question," Smith said. "That'd be LeBron James. That'd be it."
The panel laughed, but the underlying point landed. Cleveland surrendered 37 points in the first quarter, were never really in the game after the break, and watched Donovan Mitchell and James Harden — the two players being paid to drag them through nights like this — fail to bring the Knicks' defence under any real pressure. Charles Barkley, predictably, brought the broom out before the box score was final.
Green returned to the leadership thread when asked to compare the two teams. "That's a connected group," he said of the Knicks. "They're connected on both sides of the floor. You see guys settled into their roles. It looks so easy. You're playing through Karl-Anthony Towns, the game looks easy for everyone else. On the defensive end, I've never seen Karl-Anthony Towns defend and be as engaged as he is on the defensive end. And what we've seen for years and this year — him get these dumb fouls — he's not even doing that anymore. So I love the focus level and the connectedness of that group."
Kenny Smith joined that thread to praise Mikal Bridges' 11-of-15 night and Landry Shamet's 14 points off the bench: "We're always going to talk about Cat and Jalen Brunson, but Mikal Bridges, then you got Sham coming off the bench getting 14 points. I have to agree with Draymond. The Knicks are very well connected."
When Anunoby joined the desk from Cleveland, Charles Barkley pressed him on exactly the thing Green had identified — the locker-room voice. There was room for complacency at 3-0, Barkley pointed out. Who was going to stop the Knicks from easing up? Anunoby refused to put a name on it.
"It's collective. It's all of us speaking," Anunoby said. "We've been in the playoffs before. Some of us have been in the finals before. Just experience and knowing the series isn't over. Keeping our foot on their necks and just trying to win the game."
Asked whether the Game 1 collapse — Cleveland led by 22 in the second half before losing in overtime — was still affecting the Cavs three games later, Anunoby was careful not to gloat. "No, I don't think so. I think every game's a new game. They've been competitive every game. They're a great team. They're well coached. So I don't think it affected them at all."
Pushed on whether the momentum had carried over for the Knicks instead, Anunoby allowed the smallest concession. "I mean, I guess you could say momentum maybe carried over a little bit. But we just try to play the right way every game. We play till the end every game."
Kenny Smith summed up the Cavs' broader problem with one sentence on how Cleveland chose to handle Josh Hart, the Knicks' notional non-shooter who has been killing them for two games. "One of the mistakes that Cleveland also made — they had the good game plan, but make the mistake. They said, 'Okay, we're going to make others beat us.' And they banked on the fact thinking that Hart was a non-shooter."
Hart isn't a non-shooter anymore. Neither are the Knicks.
