It’s been a long week of analyzing the NBA – check out my various posts on Hashtag Basketball and BSN Denver – so I’m going to approach this with the same intensity the Warriors approached Game 3.

On Tuesday I wrote about three ways the Cavs could make this series interesting. It boiled down to playing bully ball, containing the Splash Brothers and jumping out to a big early lead. Not to toot my own horn but all three of these things happened and the Cavs blew out the Warriors 120-90. After losing by 33 in Game 2, the Cavs improbably turned the tables with a 63-point swing. This was great for the Cavs’ chances in the series, but awful for fans of NBA basketball. There’s nothing better than edge-of-your-seat fourth quarters in the playoffs and little worse than a 30-point blowout.

For whatever reason, and it’s been well-documented, this year’s playoffs have featured more blowouts than close games and it’s gotten very old at this point. I turned off Game 3 with five minutes left, choosing sleep over Ian Clark and Brandon Rush starring in garbage time. I don’t turn off NBA Finals games. This pattern needs to change, quickly.

Whether Steph Curry is hurt or not, he’s undeniably frustrated by the physicality teams are using to contain him. He can’t move anywhere on offense without a Cavalier shoving or grabbing him, and refs aren’t calling the fouls they called in the regular season. It’s thrown him off his game. Don’t count on the officials suddenly having a change of heart during Game 4 in Cleveland. So Steph either needs to rise above it, or Klay Thompson will need to pick up a massive chunk of the scoring load. Thompson was bad in Game 3 even before the flying knee from Timofey Mozgov, throwing up threes without his feet set, which always leads to bad misses. This team doesn’t have the same punch when it doesn’t consistently hit the three ball.

They also don’t strike fear in opponents when they’re not creating havoc on defense. For all the ink that the Warriors offense gets, it’s their defense that starts everything. So much of their identity and trademark scoring runs come from turnovers and opponent misses. Kyrie Irving and JR Smith were given more room to operate than in Games 1 and 2 and took advantage, kickstarting that enormous early lead. LeBron James finished the job, looking like the 2012 version of himself and finally knocking down jump shots.

Speaking of, if LeBron’s shot is back and it wasn’t just a one-game aberration, the Warriors could be in big trouble. So much of their approach to the King has been based on a total lack of respect for his jumper. Andre Iguodala will be forced to play him close at the 3-point line if he comes out hot in Game 4, opening up everything else the Cavs want to do on offense. Suddenly Smith, Irving, Kevin Love, even Iman Shumpert become exponentially more dangerous if the Warriors can’t sag off LeBron.

Ah, yes, I mentioned Kevin Love. It will be fascinating to see how Tyronn Lue uses Love if he’s all the way back from his concussion. There’s a cottage industry growing around Love hot takes and whether the Cavs are better off without him. It does seem that he can’t share the court with Irving in this series because that means 40 percent of the team’s defense is exploitable. Is it a coincidence that the Cavs played like a completely different and more intense team on the defensive end with Love out and Richard Jefferson starting? We should find out tonight, whether Love is back in the starting lineup or relegated to a bench role. If you’re the Warriors, I think you want him back as a starter, which says a lot about Love’s game in 2016.

There could be lineup intrigue on the other side, as Andrew Bogut was rendered completely useless on Wednesday against the smaller Cavs lineup. Steve Kerr could choose to start the Death Lineup with Iguodala from the opening tip, matching up Draymond Green with Tristan Thompson at center. Thompson played like a man possessed in Game 3, so that could put a lot of strain on Green trying to keep him off the glass. My bet is Kerr sticks with his normal starting five but has a quicker hook on Bogut if things start going south early.

Hopefully after three games, these teams have learned enough about one another that they make the kind of adjustments that will give us our first competitive game in this series. It would be a shame to see another blowout – in either direction – after we invest so much time and thought into two months of playoffs. Both teams took turns embarrassing themselves on national TV in the last two games.

So it’d be nice if the defending champs show up tonight. Just not all the way up – let’s keep this baby close.