Familiar foes meet again
Both teams enter Game 1 with bruises from previous round
Game 7s to win their respective conference finals.
“One of the most challenging seasons I’ve had,” said James, who may be playing the best basketball of his life right now at the end of his 15th season.
Here’s some of what the Cavaliers have dealt with since Golden State-Cleveland III ended last June: Kyrie Irving got traded for Isaiah Thomas over the summer, coach Tyronn Lue had to miss time to deal with health issues, Love missed two months, they lost 11 games by 16 or more points, revamped their roster in February and spent much of the season unable to guard anybody.
They’re in the Finals again anyway, led by someone who will play in the last series of the season for an absurd eighth consecutive year.
“It’s been a roller coaster,” said James, who is seeking a fourth ring in his ninth finals appearance overall. “It’s been good, it’s been bad. It’s been roses. There have been thorns in the roses. There’s been everything that you can ask for.”
This wasn’t all peaches for Golden State, either. The Warriors didn’t get the No. 1 seed out West, lost Curry to a knee injury late in the regular season, lost 10 of their final 17 games and got pushed to the brink.
“I’m glad we’re going back,” Warriors forward Kevin Durant said.
The Warriors swept the two regular-season meetings with the Cavaliers, winning by seven at home on Christmas Day (without Curry) and prevailing by 10 in Cleveland about three weeks later.
Film-wise, those two games are meaningless now.
Of Cleveland’s five leading scorers against Golden State this season, three no longer play for the Cavaliers. James and Love combined to score 100 points in the two games, but Dwyane Wade, Jae Crowder and Thomas all were shipped elsewhere by the Cavs in a series of trade-deadline moves.
“We obviously know what LeBron’s capable of,” Curry said.
If the Cavaliers win this championship, it might be time to declare the regular season irrelevant.
Cleveland was only 50-32 this season. Should James and his mates get it done, that would be the secondworst regular-season record for an eventual champion in the last 40 seasons. Houston went 47-35 on the way to the 1995 title; to find another champion who was worse, go back to Washington in 1978 when the Bullets were a mere 44-38.
“Everybody doubted us,” Cavaliers forward Jeff Green said. “Everybody had their opinions on what our team was, what we would do, what we can’t do, from the start. And now, I mean, we’re where we want to be. We’re where we set out to be and where we knew we could be at this point.”
Same goes for the Warriors. This season was no cakewalk for them, either.
“We’ve been through a lot with this team,” Warriors guard Klay Thompson said. “Believe it or not, it’s not all success with the Warriors. We got our bumps throughout the season. But to get to this point again, we earned it.”