Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the past few days, you know the Golden State Warriors have dominated the first two games of the 2016 NBA Finals to take a 2-0 lead as the series shifts east. Also assuming your lack of under-a-rock residence, you’ve probably heard everyone from so-called experts to armchair GMs say LeBron James doesn’t have enough help for this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers team to come back in this series. Put simply, that’s hogwash.

Let’s just spill all the beans up front: The Warriors are undoubtedly the better team in this series (and we knew that before it started), but the Cavs are more talented than they’ve looked through two games. However, they’re missing arguably the most critical element necessary to be competitive in this series: brains.

No, that’s not to suggest that LeBron, his teammates and/or his coach are unintelligent human beings. But they are out of their league in the basketball IQ department in this series, especially on the bench.

Again, laying it out all there: Steve Kerr is one of the best coaches in the NBA and he has arguably the best roster from top to bottom. In addition to that, Tyronn Lue isn’t a good pro basketball coach, but who can blame him? The guy took over in the middle of the season unprepared for an organization that’s run by its most notable player. In short, he’s in over his head.

Kerr’s Warriors came into this series with a plan, which is what any intelligent coach and team would do in the playoffs, but especially the Finals.

Lue’s team didn’t.

Well, the Cavs’ “plan” was/is to play their game, which means do whatever LeBron wants when he feels like it. But as we saw in Game 1, that can only muster them a run to get back in the game in the third quarter, but it can’t sustain them down the stretch. Then in Game 2, we saw more of Kerr’s coaching superiority over Lue when Golden State made a handful of subtle adjustments to prevent such a third-quarter run and it resulted in a worse route than before.

But guys like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love aren’t suddenly “not enough help” for LeBron to win a title; they simply need help from someone older and wiser to beat a team like the Warriors in a best-of-seven series.

Over the past week and a half, the term “LeBron is their coach” has been worn out almost more than the “LeBron doesn’t have enough help” rubbish. That’s a huge problem. No matter how much God-given talent he has, LeBron can’t coach and play because he needs good coaching just as much as any other player on the floor, including guys like Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, etc.

Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are the two players to which LeBron is most often compared and neither of those players won a title without Phil Jackson, who many deem as the greatest NBA coach of all time. Players of that caliber come with egos, but both of them had enough sense to let Jackson coach them and their teammates, and they reaped the rewards because of it.

The Cavs’ lack of that kind of direction is evident on nearly every possession in this series, but especially those on which LeBron brings the ball up and essentially plays point guard. Yes, he’s the best passer on the floor, but his teammates don’t know how to – or won’t – support him in that role by making cuts to the basket and screening each other to get open. And of course, LeBron can’t – or won’t – tell them to because he’s not a coach. And Lue won’t because he’s not ready for this yet.

This results in isolation after isolation, plays that sometimes result in successful drives to the hoop for LeBron, but more often result in turnovers, either by steals, blocked shots or traveling violations as we saw in Game 2. The Warriors know how to slow LeBron down when he drives in the halfcourt game because Kerr taught them, and that’s been a huge difference in this series thus far.

Now, on the few plays when LeBron has penetrated the defense from an area away from the top of the key and then finished at the rim or passed out to a wide open shooter, the result has been mostly positive with three-point shots or other open looks for him and his teammates. But the Warriors have done a tremendous job defending his drives on iso plays because they know what’s coming. Likewise, Irving, Love and company have been spectators on these plays, just watching and hoping LeBron carries them while also failing to get in position for offensive rebounds.

Lue isn’t going to make any adjustments to fix these things because he doesn’t yet know how. So if the Cavs have any hope of making this a series with two home games coming up, LeBron and his teammates are going to have to figure out how to make their games complement each other. The fundamental changes described above aren’t overly difficult, but the tweaks and subtle adjustments made by Kerr can’t be matched without a competent coach on Cleveland’s bench. And as long as LeBron is basically dictating that position in the organization, the result will be continuous empty trips to the Finals.

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