All the pressure squarely on Golden State
It’s a bet large swaths of gamblers would have made with confidence as this NBA season began. And as last season began. And probably the season before that, too.
It’s Warriors-Cavaliers in their record fourth straight final — a modern inevitability on the order of death, taxes and multiple burner accounts. So much for the romantic notion that these NBA playoffs would be, um, unpredictable.
“It may not be as suspenseful as a lot of people want it to be or as dramafilled,” Kevin Durant, the Warriors all-star, was telling reporters in Oakland on Wednesday. “But that’s what you’ve got movies and music for.”
In other words: If you’re looking for plot twists and surprise endings, odds are you could probably make better use of your screen time than watching the best-of-seven series to decide the NBA champion. To some eyes, it seems awfully obvious what’s about to happen beginning Thursday night at Oracle Arena. The Warriors, with their all-starstacked lineup, are heavy favourites to win their third ring in four years (and their second straight since Durant’s free-agent arrival made them a courttilting superteam). The Cavaliers, meanwhile, are 13-to-2 underdogs to be the surprise winner — the secondbiggest long shot in the past 30-some finals, surpassed only by Allen Iverson’s Philadelphia 76ers in 2001.
So the common-sense, stick-to-thefacts prediction — Warriors in five — cribs from that 2001 series. Those Shaq-
“(The NBA final) may not be as suspenseful as a lot of people want it to be or as drama-filled.” WARRIORS’ KEVIN DURANT
Kobe Lakers, like these Warriors, came into that series as the defending champion and undisputed juggernaut. It took a 48-point night by Iverson to secure Philly its only win and avoid the sweep. Surely LeBron James will be good enough for one of those gunsblazing masterpieces.
So yeah, Warriors in five would be the safe selection.
Pure logic suggests the Cavaliers can’t possible hang here, not with a supporting cast led by a still-possibly concussed Kevin Love and a gaggle of laughably inconsistent misfits.
Then again, maybe that’s why they’re more dangerous than the oddsmakers would have you believe. James, who’s been playing under a massive burden of expectation since teenagehood, finds himself in a rare no-lose moment. He can fail to carry his team to a title and still come out a hero; carrying his barren team to the final has already been widely viewed as one of the great accomplishments of his career. And as for the rest of the Cavaliers — nobody’s expecting much. Any significant contribution will be seen as a pleasant surprise. So the pressure, on Cleveland’s end, is as insignificant as it gets on such a big stage.
The Warriors, for their part, can’t say the same. And for all their obvious firepower, they’ve looked vulnerable in recent days.
They trailed by double digits at halftime of both Games 6 and 7 of the Western final.
If not for Houston’s historic Game 7 brickfest, it’d be easy enough to imagine Golden State currently on vacation.
The Warriors can’t expect Cleveland’s James to wilt like Houston’s James (Harden). And as much as Love’s availability is a question mark, the status of Warriors forward Andre Iguodala injury is a bigger concern.
It was announced Wednesday Iguodala will miss Game 1 with the bone bruise on his left knee that kept him out of the final four games in the Western final. That’s significant because Iguodala would likely be Kerr’s primary option to guard James, a role the swingman rode to a championship-series MVP in 2015.
And while the Warriors clearly have other options to defend Cleveland’s No. 23 — Draymond Green could do it, as could Durant, to name two — neither rings perfect. Green, after all, is at his best when he’s emboldened as a roving help defender. Durant, if he’s devoting that kind of energy to the defensive end, might not be as lethal with the ball in his hands.
If Durant’s off, then it’s often down to the state of Steph Curry’s jump shot, which is directly tied to Curry’s notoriously fragile health. One roll of an ankle, one tweak of a knee, and the series gets a lot more interesting. When you think back to how discombobulated the Warriors looked at times against the Rockets — “splintered,” is the word Kerr used to describe his team at its worst moments of the Western final — it’s not impossible to imagine James finding a way to keep his team in closer contact with the Warriors than Game 1’s 13point Vegas spread would suggest is possible.
He’s done it before, albeit before Durant was in the picture. The Cavaliers were underdogs to the Warriors in 2015, when Love missed the entire series to an injury and Kyrie Irving was lost for the duration after a Game 1 knee tweak. Cleveland’s secondleading scorer after James in that series was Timofey Mozgov. Amazingly, James still made it a six-game affair. And Kerr spent part of Wednesday making the case that James is even better now, particularly as a jump shooter.
“He’s shooting fadeaway threes from 30 feet to close games out,” Kerr told reporters. “The shooting is what has really gotten better in the last few years.”
The shooting will need to be dead-eye, the Warriors will need to be splintered to the point of disintegration. But if you’re inclined to back historic underdogs, there’s something to be said for having the NBA’s alpha dog on your side. As the old hounds say, mind you: Don’t bet more than you want to win.