by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Cleveland Cavaliers are a strong and powerful club and to be able to beat the Cavs it will take a lot of physical exertion. You heard the Golden State Warriors Andrew Bogut make some comments after this series against the Houston Rockets that Memphis was exhausting. Their physical in play and they grind on you.

That’s why they call Memphis the Grindhouse, Houston is a different kind of physical Bogut said Dwight Howard of the Rockets in so many words was a dirty player and that’s not an exclusive opinion of Bogut that’s pretty much a league wide opinion. Howard has amazing talent but when he gets a little bit frustrated and gets a little bit upset he gets dirty.

We saw that when Howard did that open had fist at Bogut and we saw that with a number of technical fouls in this last series. Had this series continued into game six to Houston Howard would have been suspended for game six because he got his seventh flagrant or technical foul that is an automatic one game suspension.

So since the Rockets lost the series Howard will be suspended for game one of next year’s regular season. The bottom line is that physical play really takes a toll on the Warriors. You saw it with Steph Curry going head over heels on the Rockets Trevor Ariza landing on his head in a very scary moment in game four.

That was a pretty scary moment, Curry was bruised up and you could see in the following game five he was not as explosive or aggressive as he had been in the past. That didn’t change the fact that he didn’t play a great game he definitely changed his style a little bit because of the pain. Of course in game five Klay Thompson got kneed in the head for an awful, awful injury.

Thompson suffered a concussion and a laceration to his ear he’s the one who really needs that week off between the conference and NBA Finals. The NBA has a protocol for concussions that everybody has to follow and Thompson has to follow it now. Most people let alone basketball players recover from a concussion within ten days.

David Zizmor does Warriors commentary each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to his podcast below