DYNASTIC 3RD TITLE NOT EASY
CLEVELAND — Make it official:
Dynasty.
The Warriors, the league’s biggest laughingstock not so long ago, have entered the NBA history books as one of the great teams of all time.
On Friday night, the Warriors finally reached their dynastic destination. Three championships in four years; the third coming in a four-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Warriors won 108-85 at Quicken Loans Arena, becoming the ninth team to sweep its way to an NBA Finals trophy.
More important, the Warriors proved to themselves that they truly are what they’ve been billed as for the past two seasons: a super team.
Klay Thompson, sitting in the postgame news conference, Googled himself. Draymond Green looked over his shoulder and laughed.
“It already says three-time champion,” Green crowed. “That’s dope!”
Before the game, head coach Steve Kerr said he thought his team had learned from all of its experience over the past four seasons. He believed that the Warriors would be more poised in Friday’s clinching game. “I hope I’m right,” he said. Oh, he was. The Warriors jumped to a double-digit lead in the first quarter, attacking, forcing bad shots by the Cavaliers and hitting from the perimeter.
Despite rallying in the second quarter, the Cavaliers soon faded in the face of an unusually focused Warriors team. By the third quarter, when the Warriors outscored them 25-13, the Cavaliers looked as though they had waved the white flag. They were even being booed in an increasingly despondent Quicken Loans Arena.
The only drama left was the Finals MVP race between Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant. Though Curry rebounded from his off-night in Game 3 with a 37-point effort, and was clearly the sentimental favorite, the award went to Durant for the second consecutive year. Durant, who had one of the great playoff efforts in history in Game 3, finished Game 4 with 20 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists and a ridiculous rating of plus-30.
Curry didn’t care. Kerr pointed out that when the team went to the Hamptons to recruit Durant, no one “was asking who’s going to win the MVP in the Finals.”
There was a startling revelation after the game: LeBron James said that he had been so frustrated with the Game 1 loss that he suffered a “self-inflicted” injury. He punched a white board and played the last three games with “basically a broken hand.” James knew that a different Game 1 outcome could have changed the tone of this series.
Though probably not the outcome.
Along the way to their third trophy in four years, the Warriors ended their greatest rivalry. Four times in four years they have met James and his Cavaliers. Though the series looks lopsided with three of the trophies going to the Warriors and a 15-7 record in favor of Golden State, the Warriors know — game to game, possession to possession — it was a tense and intense matchup.
But this was the worst iteration of the Cavaliers the Warriors faced. The exhaustion, and frustration of a strange season, was beginning to show.
With 4:03 remaining in the fourth quarter, and his team trailing by 25 points, Cleveland head coach Tyronn Lue waved the flag and pulled the emotional rip cord. He took James out of the game to a standing ovation, one that felt like a goodbye. He bumped fists with his teammates and all of the Warriors on the court, and took a seat.
Kerr called this the team’s toughest season, openly speculating about how he plans to try to motivate his team next season (“I may not show up until the All-Star break because they’re not going to listen to me anyway,” he joked). But it was getting through this season that was the toughest challenge — with a team that was tuning in and out, pulled in different directions, trying to find an inner motivation.
In that way, it was Kerr’s toughest and best coaching job. He had to find the right buttons to push, new things to say, new lineups to juggle. It was a grind, the tail end of a full five seasons’ worth of basketball played out within a four-year span.
The Warriors are a different team than they were when this journey started.
“In 2015, things seemed chaotic,” Kerr said. “Now, it seems businesslike. We’re more poised.”
Kerr said, “It was definitely the toughest. I remember sitting in this room three years ago, it seemed like a dream. This feels more like reality . ... It’s a very different feeling. It’s still euphoric. Three years ago, it was, ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ Now it’s, ‘I can definitely believe this happened but it was hard.’ ”
Does “businesslike” mean less joy?
When you saw the Warriors hug and pour Champagne over one another for their third championship, laughing and wrapping their arms around one another, you knew the answer to that question was no. Mature. Older. A dynasty. But just as joyful.