Third time’s no charm
This could have been different
The NBA Finals will, indeed, begin this evening, and this is good, because we were beginning to think the Celtics would play their first summer league game before the Warriors and Cavaliers got down to business.
It has taken us 220 days from the regular-season tipoff to get to the matchup everyone knew was coming. There are, to put it mildly, no surprise guests at this dinner. The same teams have been showing up for this last supper now three straight years.
Yet that fact belies just how fragile is the hold on the championship trophy. And let us state now that if you don’t like columns based on hypothetical meanderings, it’s probably best that you turn the page now.
But if you’d like a title prediction before you possibly go — and having somehow managed to pick all three Celtics playoff series on the nose, why wouldn’t you? — we’re taking Goliath State in five and a half games, because we can’t decide between five or six. You never truly know how these things will play out, but if each team plays to their maximum efficiency, the Warriors will win.
That, of course, doesn’t mean the LeBrons are without a chance. This same theory had the Dubs beating the Cavs last year, too, and that didn’t prevent State from squandering a 3-1 Finals lead.
Which brings us to the speculative sequence that has been running around our alleged brain for the last several months. On several occasions, we ran it by people in the game and found that it wasn’t as crazy as we’d thought possible.
So let’s go back to Game 7 of last year’s finale. The Warriors have whiffed badly on two chances to end the series, and now they’re in a tight one. And Cleveland is still sticking tight to Steph Curry, not falling off to help or play passing lanes when he’s away from the ball and not afraid to run a big out at him, most notably Kevin Love.
Curry is having shooting issues from the outside, but, with the same determination that made him an MVP, he tries to fire his way out of it and winds up going 4-for14 on 3-pointers in Game 7. He didn’t get to the free throw line at all while the Warriors were winning the first two games, but those were freewheeling wins of 15 and 33 points. But in the deciding game, Curry went to the line just once.
But what if he had made the Cavs pay for their outside attention? In a close game like that, if he gives an eyebrow fake and drives, there’s a far better than average chance he scores or is fouled and makes the free throws. Or if the Cavaliers defense collapses on him, he lays the ball down to a teammate to dunk or throws it out for a wideopen look.
Maybe Kyrie Irving is never in a position to hit his game-winner. And think of what changes if Golden State wins its second consecutive championship:
• The LeBron James narrative is far different than now. While he’d still be viewed as one of the greatest to ever play the game, a number of people would say he’d only been able to win a title when he’d been part of the prefab planetary alignment in Miami.
• Kevin Durant probably doesn’t come to a team that’s won it all two years in a row. Maybe he stays in Oklahoma City. Or maybe he signs with the Celtics and joins Al Horford and Isaiah Thomas and whatever veteran help Danny Ainge would have been able to deal for as he moved some younger talent and pushed the go-for-it-now button.
• The result of an even more anticipated CeltsCavs Eastern Conference finals could have been far different, though the Thomas injury would have been a major factor no matter what. But certainly it would have been possible the C’s wouldn’t have needed Cleveland resting its stars down the stretch to gain the No. 1 seed in the East.
• And would the Celtics still own the Nets’ pick in this draft, or would they have traded away their right to swap positions with Brooklyn for something that would have pushed them into the Finals against a threepeat-seeking Golden State?
The Cavs certainly don’t have time for any of this nonsense as they admire their 2016 championship rings. But, staying in the whatif? world a bit longer, Cleveland followers might want to ponder the possibility that they would never have been able to have a parade if LeBron didn’t break their hearts and leave town in 2010.
The team James left had Mo Williams and Antawn Jamison tied for second in scoring average behind him. If he doesn’t take off, the Cavs don’t get bad enough to get Finals good with his return, though the Irving pick came from a trade with the Clippers.
And if you’ve gotten this far, you may be regretting the several minutes you can never get back. But it could be worse. You could be a sportswriter and have this kind of stuff rattling around your head all the time.
Happy Finals.