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OAKLAND — Plenty of factors differentiate last year’s Game 5 and this year’s Game 5. Draymond Green isn’t suspended, Kevin Durant lives in the Bay Area, these Warriors are healthier in totality.

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Warriors at No. 2: Breaking down how LaMelo Ball’s passing genius would fit Golden State But among the factors that remain the same: Kyrie Irving is a nightmare for the Warriors to corral and quite possibly the biggest barometer for how these Finals games play out.

LeBron James is going to be LeBron James. Win or lose against the Warriors, he’s often fantastic regardless. But when Irving, his streaky co-star, is backing up LeBron’s mega numbers with his own, the Cavaliers either win it or are in it until the end. When he doesn’t, the Warriors run away.

So among the many possible Monday night formulas that lead to a Warriors title: Slow Kyrie Irving, raise the trophy. Don’t and this series gets scary.

Go back and trace his Finals last year. In the first two games in Oracle, both Warrior blowout wins, Irving did very little: 7-of-22 shooting in Game 1, 5-of-14 shooting in Game 2, just 36 points total in 71 minutes. Then the series returned to Cleveland and Irving rediscovered his groove: 12-of-25 in a Game 3 win, 14-of-28 in a narrow Game 4 loss, 64 points total in 80 minutes.

Gathered at home, that scoring momentum followed him to Oracle where, in that crucial series-altering Game 5, Irving delivered the most important performance of his career to this point: 41 points on 17-of-24 shooting.

To this moment, this year’s Finals have played out similarly for Irving. He was relatively quiet the first two games — again both Warrior runaway wins — scoring 24 and 19 points on a combined 18-of-45 shooting. But upon returning to Cleveland, he’s erupted: 38 points on 16-of-29 in Game 3 and 40 points on 15-of-27 in Game 4.

Now Game 5 arrives with Irving and the Cavaliers looking to duplicate last year, while the Warriors attempt to alter that parallel course, in part, by morphing Kyrie back into an inefficient volume shooter.

But it’s not simple. He has a unique game. More than most scorers, his effectiveness is based less on the defense he’s facing and more on whether his rare ability to make contested shots on slithery drives from strange angles is working on that particular night.

In the past two games, Irving hit 64 percent of shots when a defender was within four feet, per NBA.com/Stats. In the first two games, he shot 39 percent on similarly contested looks.

“It’s just who he is,” Ron Adams, the Warriors’ defensive guru, said. “He can make tough shots. I don’t know if there’s anyone better in the league at that. But we have to manage him better.”

How? It starts from 3. Irving is a capable long-range shooter, but not an overly accurate or potent one. He’s 38 percent from deep in his career, 40 percent this season and only averages 2.5 makes from 3 per game.

But in Game 3, he got loose for a playoff career-high seven 3s on the Warriors. Prior to that, Irving had never even made six in a playoff game. He only made five combined in the first three games of the series.

“How all of a sudden does a guy get seven 3s who has been hitting 3s occasionally?” Adams asked. “Well, he was hot. But there’s always a counterbalancing thing. How was your defense? How was your pressure?”

Uncharacteristically bad, both Adams and Steve Kerr said. They weren’t physical and active enough on the ball and got lost off it, either caught napping entirely or too slow to react to ensuing danger, like here, when Kyrie squirted for a 3 because of a Shaun Livingston and Kevin Durant breakdown.

“If he’s getting 39 points off 2s, we can live with that,” Klay Thompson said. “But when he’s extending the floor and hitting those threes, it widens the whole floor for everybody.”

Slice those open deep looks away and you slice a chunk of his points off the board. But the Warriors can’t just be entirely comfortable with what he’s done against them from 2-point land the past two games (24-of-37).

There are the indefensible, well-defended looks, where Klay Thompson forces him into a tough look, gets a hand up and he makes it anyway. Like this first quarter baseline fadeaway in Game 4. These are fine for the Warriors.

But then there are the far too easy lanes to the rim, coming with little help on the back-side, leading to layups that don’t even take much creativity from Irving. Like this one from the second quarter of Game 4, when Irving zips right by Thompson and Draymond Green is too late in his rotation.

“The ones where he’s in space and has time to knife through the defense, get in the paint, those are the ones you want to try to take away,” Steph Curry said. “He’s got to the basket a little too much to our liking.”

The Warriors will keep Klay Thompson as Irving’s primary defender. Hitched to his side much of the series, Thompson — who Kerr referred to as a tireless ‘yellow lab’ defender — has done a mostly sturdy job. But early foul trouble sapped him of some ability to remain physical in Game 4. He must avoid that Monday night.

But if he does need a tag-team partner, perhaps more Andre Iguodala on Irving would be a wise choice. He’s done decent in small doses this series, including this Game 1 possession.

Some have suggested the Warriors double-team him. But that’s far easier in a high-traffic pick-and-roll situation, which the Cavaliers haven’t done a ton with Irving. “It’s hard to take the ball out of his hands,” Adams said. “Because a lot of the scoring isn’t coming off ball screens. It’s going 1-on-1.”

It’s not easy to stop Irving in those situations. But it’s not easy to win an NBA title either. If the Warriors can do one on Monday night, it’ll go a long way in helping them do the other.