Klay Thompson requested a private meeting with Steve Kerr about the state of the Warriors' offense in December.
Golden State's offense lost some of its rhythm following an injury that month to Stephen Curry.
Thompson has typically been the lowest maintenance of the Warriors' stars.
Thompson left the meeting satisfied.
The NBA Finals MVP has often also been the player to have the highest PER in the series, but there have been a number of years during the Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James era where that hasn't been the case.
- Finals MVP in parentheses
1991: Michael Jordan: 34.1 (Michael Jordan)
1992: Michael Jordan: 27.1 (Michael Jordan)
1993: Michael Jordan: 31.7 (Michael Jordan)
1994: Hakeem Olajuwon: 25.6 (Hakeem Olajuwon)
1995: Hakeem Olajuwon: 25.7 (Hakeem Olajuwon)
1996: Shawn Kemp: 27.5 (Michael Jordan)
1997: Michael Jordan: 29.3 (Michael Jordan)
1998: Michael Jordan: 28.7 (Michael Jordan)
1999: Tim Duncan: 28.0 (Tim Duncan)
2000: Shaquille O’Neal: 36.6 (Shaquille O’Neal)
2001: Shaquille O’Neal: 33.8 (Shaquille O’Neal)
2002: Shaquille O’Neal: 38.5 (Shaquille O’Neal)
2003: Tim Duncan: 30.4 (Tim Duncan)
2004: Chauncey Billups: 29.3 (Chauncey Billups)
2005: Chauncey Billups: 24.4 (Tim Duncan)
2006: Dwyane Wade: 30.5 (Dwyane Wade)
2007: Tony Parker: 25.4 (Tony Parker)
2008: Ray Allen: 20.6 (Paul Pierce)
2009: Kobe Bryant: 28.7 (Kobe Bryant)
2010: Pau Gasol: 25.3 (Kobe Bryant)
2011: Dwyane Wade: 32.6 (Dirk Nowitzki)
2012: Mike Miller: 33.7 (LeBron James)
2013: LeBron James: 29.2 (LeBron James)
2014: LeBron James: 32.6 (Kawhi Leonard)
2015: LeBron James: 27.5 (Andre Iguodala)
2016: LeBron James: 33.4 (LeBron James)
2017: Kevin Durant: 32.6 (Kevin Durant)
2018: Kevin Durant: 31.1 (Kevin Durant)
The Cleveland Cavaliers will give minutes to Rodney Hood in Game 3 of The Finals.
Hood has fallen out of the Cavaliers' rotation during the playoffs.
Hood is one of the Cavaliers' best individual scorers and also has the length to defend multiple positions on defense in their switching scheme.
Hood will be a restricted free agent this offseason.
The Rockets had a basic rule for defending Stephen Curry in which they didn't allow anyone to help onto him when Clint Capela was matched up against him on a switch. The Rockets were prepared to live with Curry converting contested layups because open three-pointers would kill them, according to Jeff Bzdelik.
"It's like you're in a boat with three holes in the bottom," Bzdelik says of defending Golden State, "and you only have two pegs to plug them. You just have to keep moving the pegs around."
The Rockets practiced how and when to help off Golden State's non-shooters and had rules for specific situations.
The Cavaliers are attempting to follow a similar strategy but with inferior personnel.
During his press conference before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Adam Silver was asked about whether the league might consider reducing the 82-game schedule to avoid injuries.
"In terms of the 82-game season and injuries, just a few of the examples you gave," said Silver. "Obviously, Kawhi Leonard hardly played this season. It’s an injury from last year. I don’t really know much about his injury other than he played very few games this year, so it’s hard to tie that injury to an 82-game season. Of course, Kristaps Porzingis was lost fairly early in the season, so it’s also hard to tie that to the length of the season.
"So what our data shows right now, it’s a little bit like driving. Of course, if you drive more miles, you’re more likely to get into an accident. So if you play 82 games instead of 62 games, of course you play more basketball and you’re more likely to get injured.
"But we’re not finding, with all the analytics we’re doing, a correlation between the 70th game you play necessarily making it your — becoming more injury-prone than you are in the 30th game.
"As I said before, where we do see a correlation is lack of rest. That’s why we added a week to the schedule. We’ve dramatically reduced back-to-backs and other things we’ve done to create more space in our schedule.
"82 isn’t a magic number. And there is, of course, a financial component for the league and the players of playing a full 82-game season. But we continue to look at other ideas. Whether we have a midseason tournament and reduce the number of games in the regular season, that’s something we could look at. I think our playoff format is working pretty well.
"But life changes, society changes, entertainment options are constantly changing as well. So we’ll continue to look at it from a business standpoint.
"But I do mean this most importantly, and we talk to the Players Association a lot about this, if we had any data, hard data suggesting that a season that was 75 games or 72 games instead of 82 games would reduce injuries other than just playing fewer games, we’d be taking a hard look at shortening our season. We just don’t have that data right now."
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