"The Warriors are going to kill the Cavs without two of their big three."

"There's no question the Warriors have the advantage from beyond the arc in this series."

Does this sound familiar? If you watched the regular season at all, I understand why. You were probably saying this before the NBA Finals got underway this past week...and rightfully so.

According to our numbers, the Warriors came into the Finals as big favorites over the Cavs still aren't favored to win it all, by our calculations. However, they have impressively narrowed the gap to nearly 50-50 after taking Games 2 and 3 without LeBron's two main sidekicks.

How have they done it?

The Cavs' success comes down to a number of reasons -- LeBron being LeBron, great team defense, and the tenacious (not dirty) and terrific individual defense of none other than basketball-reference.com, have an average three-point attempt rate (3PAr) of 36.9%. The Cavaliers, on the other hand, have tallied just 79 attempts and possess an average 3PAr of 30.2%.

The Cavs' appreciation of quality over quantity has given them a three percent edge, 34.2% to 31.2%, in three-point shooting percentage on the series. More importantly, Cleveland has shot 37.5% to Golden State's 29% over the Cavaliers' two wins, and have made just two fewer threes than their counterparts on 21 fewer attempts.

Once again, the Warriors are living and dying by the three. They'll need to be a little more efficient in doing so if they want to win this series though.