5. Warriors bench vs Cavaliers bench
On paper, this is a one-sided battle. David Lee, Andre Iguodala, Leandro Barbosa, Shaun Livingston, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli can all come off the bench for Golden State and play key roles. Not to mention the Oracle Arena crowd who might as well sit on the roster as an extra man.
In contrast, JR Smith, James Jones and Matthew Dellavedova will be tasked with playing minutes and competing with them along with the likes of Shawn Marion and Kendrick Perkins.
The longer this series goes, you would have to favour Golden State to take charge as coach Blatt could be forced into playing his starters more minutes than he would like.
Having said that, they have still managed to get past both the Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks who had deeper teams, and so it will ultimately come down to getting key contributions from players at key times of games.
If they can do that, then the Warriors bench won’t be as influential as many expect. However, there is too much talent in their second unit not to ram home this advantage.
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