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The Cavs lost by 33 points to the Warriors at Oracle Arena on Sunday in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. They were crushed, kicked, slapped, dominated, annihilated, disheartened, embarrassed, and darn near given up for dead. Their hopes were down and so were they, by the count of 2-zip, to the defending champions, looking for all the world as though they had no answers to the problems Golden State presented them.

So what did they do?

They found their answers. They came back to beat the Warriors by 30 on Wednesday night in Cleveland. It was indicative of what's been happening in these NBA playoffs. Nineteen times in this particular postseason, games have been won — and lost — by 25 or more points. That's both remarkable and a record.

It's also not all that much fun to watch.

Whatever happened to the dramatic one- or two-point game?

It seems as though teams, even teams as historically great as Golden State, figure if they're going to get beat, they might as well do it up big. It happened twice in the Warriors' Western Conference finals against the Thunder, when they got run by huge margins, and still came back to win the thing.

Once upon a time, when a team put up lame playoff efforts, it was easy to draw a conclusion about them being dogs. Not anymore. Now, they are in temporary disarray, is all. Dogs that might yet have not just their day, but enough of them to win a title.

Turns out, the Cleveland Cavaliers aren't dogs, and they aren't dead, yet.

They're only partly dead or maybe even mostly dead.

But they did the burying in Game 3.

What had become an impossible chore for them — and a bore for everybody else — suddenly looked less overwhelming. Any requiem being chanted or played was a bit premature. Their competitive souls are not yet lost, and neither are their chances for a championship. Those previous losses, as lopsided as a Kim Kardashian double gainer, meant nothing.

And somewhere in all of that is a lesson: You can lose by 48 points in the first two games, lose by more points than any other Finals team ever has in the initial set — and have no reason to give in or give up.

Even, in this case, if all those impressive stats rolled up by the Cavs through the first three rounds — the 107-points-per-game average, the stiff defense, the hitting of 202 of 465 3-pointers, the dominant rebounding, the mere two defeats against Eastern competition — had seemed diminished, compromised by weak East-is-least opposition.

The West was where everything got real.

No less than New York Knicks president Phil Jackson condemned the Eastern Conference the other day, when he was asked about his beloved and beleaguered triangle offense, an attack that dragged his team to a 32-50 record this past season. He predicted the offense would catapult the Knicks into the playoffs next year.

"Why not?" he said. "I don't know what's so great about what's out there in the East."

Which is to say, "We might not be any good, but … pppffww … everything else in our conference stinks, too."

After Games 1 and 2, nobody was arguing.

It seemed there were three teams in the West that were better than the Cavs — the Warriors, the Spurs, and the Thunder. At least OKC gave Golden State a challenge, leading 3-1 before losing in seven games.

And then, Wednesday's Game 3 happened.

The Cavs realized they had made a tactical error. They had tried to out-Golden State Golden State. No team gets up and down the floor like the Warriors. No team shoots from deep like the Warriors. No team plays better small ball than the Warriors. No team thrives in chaos like the Warriors.

This time, the Cavs punked Golden State. Asked what the drastic difference was for his team, Ty Lue pointed directly to the physicality with which it played. And he was right. Pumped with new energy, the Cavs played rawboned, knocking the Warriors around, setting tough screens, hitting the boards hard, out-rebounding the visitors by 20. They also hit shots, near and far, making 52 percent overall, 48 percent from deep.

It was a classic example, one preached by coaches since the first tip of the first game ever played: Work hard on defense, rebound, and shots will drop at the other end.

So much of the free flow the Warriors had played with in the first two games, moving the ball and picking and rolling, getting favorable individual matchups, was nowhere in sight. It had been stolen, swiped away by the Cavs, who were led by LeBron's 32 points, 11 boards and six assists, and Kyrie Irving's 30 points and eight assists, and a bunch of help from others.

By game's end, it was the Warriors who looked down in the mouth and defeated. Suddenly, the notion of the Cavs playing out of their league was a compliment, not a criticism.

On the other hand, if the postseason's trend continues, all of this could flip on Friday night. And if it does, it's likely to be a lopsided flip at that.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.