Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Durant’s flair fortifies NBA’s biggest rivalry
Sunday will mark the first time since June’s epic seven-game showdown between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals that the league’s two heavyweights will meet.
In many ways, not much has changed. The Warriors and Cavaliers remain massive favorites to win their conferences this season, setting up what would be an unprecedented third straight meeting in the Finals, and a rubber match after the two split the championship round the past two seasons.
But in one important way, the impending meeting couldn’t be more different: The introduction of Kevin Durant into the most significant head-to-head NBA battle since Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were trading championships in the 1980s.
“It should be fun,” Durant said. “It should be fun. They’re the champions. They’re the defending champions, and they’re defending their crown, so we have to go in there and do what we do and play our game.
“It’s going to be an electric atmosphere. I’m looking forward to it.”
So is virtually every basketball fan, as this game has been circled on everyone’s calendars since the schedule came out in August. Who could resist the first meeting between these two since the Cavaliers came back from a 3-1 deficit to knock off the Warriors and deliver Cleveland its first championship in a half-century?
But, in many ways, it is exactly the way that series played out that will, for everyone involved, downplay the importance of Sunday’s game at Cleveland and the return leg next month at Oakland, California. Last year, the Warriors comfortably beat the Cavaliers in both regular-season meetings, winning a game they controlled the whole way at home on Christmas Day before going to Cleveland and winning by 30 in an utter rout a few weeks later.
The combination of how those games and the first four games of the NBA Finals went, compared to the final three, are a constant re-
minder to the Warriors that no matter what happens Sunday, the thing that truly matters is what happens come June.
“I think our guys are excited, for sure,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “It’s Christmas Day, and the Cavs, and all that. So it’s an exciting game.
“But these guys have been around for too long. What happens on Christmas has nothing to do with what happens in June.
“We proved that, unfortunately.”
And, for large stretches of this season, that’s how the Warriors have played. Yes, they are 27-4, but their season mostly has been defined by the team turning things on when it must.
Take Thursday, for example. The Warriors went into halftime trailing by 16 at the bottom-feeding Brooklyn Nets after having a late practice due to arriving in New York the night before and not having a morning shootaround the day of the game.
But then, just as they have many times this season, the Warriors burst to life in the third quarter, outscoring the Nets 39-19 to retake the lead and never looking back, cruising to yet another win after playing less than their best for all 48 minutes. It’s the latest evidence that the grand experiment this team created by signing Durant is working out the way everyone hoped that it would — though that won’t matter if the result in June is no different from the one this past spring.
“Whenever you get a chance to play the best team in the Eastern Conference, it’s always exciting,” Klay Thompson said. “It’s a good game to see where we’re at. I’m going to be excited … it should be a game with a lot of fireworks.”
Some of those fireworks will be tempered by Cleveland’s loss of J.R. Smith after the mercurial shooting guard fractured his right thumb, an injury that required surgery and probably will mean Smith will miss both regular-season meetings between the teams.
Still, if any team is going to be able to make up for the loss of a scorer other than Golden State, it’s Cleveland, with LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love off to excellent starts this season, looking more comfortable than they ever have before in their third season together with the Cavaliers.
That familiarity is something the Warriors are still trying to master. They have been relatively injury free, but have naturally needed time to adjust to the loss of longtime fixtures Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut, even if they would swap them for Durant and Zaza Pachulia, their replacements, 100 times out of 100.
Given their success — posting the best record in the NBA and having the second-best offense and defense in the league — it could be scary if this team still has another level or two to go from here, as it certainly seems it should. But no one can test this squad quite the way that Cleveland — and specifically James — can, which is why Sunday’s game carries significance no other regular-season game musters.
“It’s one (regular-) season game,” Pachulia said, “but it’s a special game. You’re playing on Christmas Day, on TV, different jerseys, all that. It’s a rematch of last year’s Finals, those two teams playing against each other.
“It’s not just a regular game. It’s a special game.”