The Great Aussie Hope(Dellavedova) and the Resilience of the Cavs
“Delly! Delly!”. This is a chant that has echoed through Cleveland over the past few days and probably won’t stop anytime soon. Mathew Dellavedova is the feel good story of the Finals. The underdog, on the underdog team, out there competing with the MVP of the league. Everyone knows that he has been counted out his whole life, and now on the game’s biggest stage he is displaying why he deserves to be here.
This is a guy who literally left it all on the court. He had to go to the hospital for exhaustion! This man had nothing left in the tank, he gave it all to his team. He runs through screens like a crazed dog and denies every pass to Curry. Dellavedova could score 0 points and still be praised in Cleveland because of his shut down defense on Stephen Curry. Delly has set up shop in Steph’s mind.
When Steph closes his eyes at night, he probably sees Delly’s face haunting him. Delly is like that younger kid at the pickup game. It seems like he doesn’t really belong so you take him lightly. Then he starts playing great defense, diving for loose balls, and out hustling everyone. Your buddies are looking at you like “Are you really letting him lock you down?”. His team starts praising him and then it happens. You start to question yourself. That’s exactly what Delly is doing with Steph; he’s in his head.
Steph is becoming hesitant with his shot and is making poor decisions. It doesn’t help that whenever he turns on ESPN all he hears is how Delly is locking him down. Now do I think Delly will keep Steph cold for the rest of the series? No way at some point the guy who has completely torched every defense in the league is going to show up with fire in his eyes.
Curry has got off Dellavedova only on few occasions
Still facts are facts and they show that Steph has only scored on Dellavedova a few times. Dellavedova can’t get enough credit, this is an undrafted free agent, from a small school, and not to mention he is from Australia. He was not supposed to be here, in the running for one of the most important players in the Finals. This is the narrative for the Cavs right now. A team written off when most of their best players went down with injuries, to now being in a spot that no one saw coming.
LeBron perfectly described the new Cavs persona “It’s not cute at all… Everything is tough. We’re going to come in with an aggressive mindset defensively and offensively”. The Cavs are playing gritty basketball just like the dark horse star Delly does. Delly’s spirit resembles that of the whole Cavs right now. The team and the city with a chip on their shoulders doing whatever it takes to win. Even Mike Miller dove for the ball last game. Mike Miller! The effort and the hustle is remarkable from the Cavs and it might earn them a championship. They fight for the boards and switch lethally off of screens. Everyone has stepped on the defensive end and the Cavs look to be the better defensive team in the series. James Jones pick up press on Curry is a deadly combination with Dellavedova’s off ball denials. The Cavs do the dirty work, which in turn makes it seem like they want it more than the Warriors.