Cavaliers and Warriors can’t deny rivalry
Teams meet today in 2016 Finals rematch
By the time LeBron James throws his next Halloween party, this Monday showdown between his defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors at Oracle Arena will be a forgotten memory.
If James makes another batch of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson “RIP” cookies, as he did last time, or has another drum set with a “3-1 Lead” inscription or another stuffed Curry doll at the front door for guests to step over, it will be inspired by the events of the summertime — not the winter.
Or, of course, maybe it will be the Warriors howling at the October moon after returning to the NBA’s mountaintop.
Yet while both teams tinker their way through the regular season — the Warriors (a league-best 34-6) are still learn-
ing how to be at their best with Kevin Durant, and the Cavs (2910, tops in the Eastern Conference) are evolving because of injuries (J.R. Smith) and a recent trade (Kyle Korver) — the fact remains that this peerless rivalry is sheer basketball bliss. No matter what time of year it gets re-sparked and despite James saying it’s not a rivalry.
Imagine what Halloween might have looked like if he thought it was.
“We don’t look at (the Warriors) as a rival,” James said recently. “They’re a great team. They’ve been the best team in the league for the last couple years, the last three years, so we just want to try and get better.
“For us, we’re a good team. And by April, we’ll be a great team. And hopefully we’ll be even greater in May. And if we can get past that, it’d be great to see. But it’s just the next game. It’s Golden State. They’re a hell of a team.”
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue, meanwhile, disagrees.
“Two teams that have been to the Finals in back-to-back years, (and) we split, so I would consider it a rivalry,” he said. “But we’re both trying to figure it out, both teams trying to figure it out right now.
“Us having a new addition with Kyle and trying to implement him into what we’re doing and what he likes to do, so both teams trying to figure it out, and it’ll be a good game on Monday.”
Said Warriors coach Steve Kerr: “It’s a great rivalry. I think it’s a game that everybody who follows the NBA looks forward to. There’s only two of them in the regular season, and we’ve played them back to back in the Finals, so it’s become a muchanticipated rivalry game.
“It’s good for the game. It’s good for us. It’s good for them, and it should be fun.”
The back-to-back Finals meetings alone are a fantastic foundation for a bona fide rivalry, not to mention the strong possibility that the Cavs and Warriors will be the first to collide in three consecutive Finals.
While back-to-back Finals meetings have happened 14 times in NBA history, it had happened only once since the 1997-98 set in which Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and the Karl Malone-John Stockton-led Utah Jazz met: when James’ Miami Heat downed the San Antonio Spurs in 2013, only to fall to them a year later and prompt his free agency return to his home state. Yet that HeatS-purs matchup never had acrimony.
It’s safe to assume that the heightened sensitivities between the Cavs and Warriors are because, in part, of the neverending discussion about whether each of their titles was tainted.
The Warriors won it in 2015 while the Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving (knee) and Kevin Love (shoul- der) were on the bench and heard all offseason long about how it would have been different if that wasn’t the case.
The Cavs’ 2016 title came with Curry ailing (right knee), Andrew Bogut (left knee) missing the last two games and Draymond Green suspended for Game 5 — more than enough to restart the talk radio chatter about what might have been.
The litany of tense moments in the latest Finals only added to the tension.
There was Thompson calling a Timofey Mozgov screen dirty in Game 3, then declaring the NBA “a man’s game” after Game 4 in response to James’ complaints about Green’s trash talking (while also saying James’ “feelings got hurt”).
James and Curry have had their testy moments, too.
Genuine respect for the other’s accomplishment is hard to come by, it would seem, when asterisks and fireworks are always part of the discussion.
Christmas Day only added to it, with the Cavs coming back from a 14-point, fourth-quarter deficit to win 109-108 in Cleveland the same way they won Game 7 in Oakland in June: with an Irving jumper in the clutch.
The Halloween shenanigans were just a manifestation of it.
“It’s obviously not respectful, so it’s got to be on the other side of the spectrum (of that),” Thompson told USA TODAY Sports recently about the Cavs’ off-court slights.
“They can do that childish stuff. It doesn’t matter to us. All we’ve got to do is handle it on the court, you know?
“I mean when we won the championship, though, we didn’t do some stuff like that. But that’s OK. People are built differently. …
“It’s a good rivalry, and it’s good for the NBA. It makes it more fun, you know? It’s rare in pro sports you get rivalries like this, so we enjoy it and we embrace it.”