After an impressive start to the 2015 NBA Finals, Matthew Dellavedova was all anyone wanted to talk about and the Golden State Warriors hated every minute of it. So far in this series, Dellavedova set a career playoff-high with 20 points in Game 3, helped the Cleveland Cavaliers secure a victory in Game 2 by grabbing a pivotal offensive board and knocking down two clutch free throws with 10 seconds remaining, and SportsCenter showed how he was able to defensively stop Stephen Curry. According to Chris Haynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Warriors were "pissed off" and "irked" with all the Dellavedova attention by the media, especially with this whole idea that the Cavaliers point guard was "locking down" Curry.
"People have lit a fire under Steph, which is good thing," Andrew Bogut told NEOMG. "It's something that you don't want to do. It worked out well. We know Delly is a great defender, but we know he's not a Curry stopper." Steph's teammate Harrison Barnes uttered the same belief, saying, "From the sense of where it's 'Oh, he's locking up Steph' or 'he's shutting him down' or 'he's killing him.' Stuff like that."
In Game 4, Curry had his way, offensively, en route to a team-leading 22 points in the Warriors' 103-82 victory. Was Delly's struggles to stop the league MVP a sign of things to come for the remainder of the series or just a bad game? You know, something we've chalked up for Steph at least once in these Finals as well. We will find out in a couple of hours.
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[via Eye On Basketball]
