by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Cleveland Cavaliers entering Sunday’s game are still absorbing the tough blow of losing Kyrie Irving for the rest of the series, they have LeBron James but when you get to this part of the season and your in the NBA Finals it’s tough to do it with just one guy. LeBron is one of the rare players in the history of the NBA to pull out a victory in the NBA Finals all by himself.

It’s near impossible to do that four more times in a best of seven series to ask LeBron to do all the scoring, provide all of the defense and offense. The thing about Irving is he’s an All-Star. The Cavs have Kevin Love but he’s been out for several games and it depends on what the offense is doing and when he’s in there with LeBron that’s a much more dynamic offense.

Irving is a point guard he has a great handle and he has tremendous ball control and it takes someone to get the ball to LeBron with a better position to do a little bit better. Irving is not a pure point guard he’s kind of a hybrid between than your typical point Nevertheless your talking about one of he premier players in the NBA Irving is almost 23 years old.

Irving’s tremendous three point shooter he’s probably the best three point shooter so losing him definitely hurts them and in that category. He’s a threat to drive, he’s quick playmaker and he’s a very exciting player. In watching the first game of the series you saw when Kyrie was in there Cleveland became a much more difficult offensive team.

The Warriors had a struggle with that on the other hand for the most part the Cavs had to force feed the ball to LeBron and he scored on isolation plays. The Warriors defense was able to survive even with Irving in there. Nevertheless without Irving that’s difficult and the Cavs right now have a very thin bench. When you take away one of their main scoring threats it becomes incredibly difficult for that offense.

LeBron can drop 40 all he wants (he dropped 44 on Thursday night) if he doesn’t have anyone else helping him it’s going to be really tough in Cleveland and it’s unfortunate for the Cavs that they lost a player as talented as Irving especially at this stage of the season. Cleveland has had more than it’s share of bad luck over the years and in every sport and frankly without having Kyrie around its a huge blow.

David Zizmor does commentary each week on the NBA Finals for http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to the podcast below