OAKLAND – One of the most overlooked developments of the NBA Finals Game 1 romp was how differently the Warriors utilized Andre Iguodala on defense and how little he actually guarded LeBron James.
In the previous two meetings in the championship series with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Iguodala’s primary role was to be James’ defensive shadow for pretty much every minute both men were on the floor. Since LeBron played a lot of minutes, so did Andre – a 37.1-minute average in the 2015 series in which he was Finals MVP and 34.1 minutes last year.
But Iguodala played just 24 minutes in this year’s series opener and only got matched against James one-on-one a handful of times.