If I wanted to be a real jerk, I’d say I predicted most of this. I called a seven-game epic in my finals preview column, but in truth, this series has gone beyond prognostication. Have any of us actually been right even once? I wouldn’t call any of the six games in this NBA finals series a classic, in the traditional sense, unless your idea of a good time is thorough domination and light ball torture.
For a moment, this looked to be a simple coronation. The Golden State Warriors won Game 1 by 15 points and Game 2 by a massive 33 points. The mood in Oakland was about as light as possible for a championship round. After Game 1, people were dancing and repeating yelling “Warriors!” at anyone who walked by, like it was a threat or something – maybe if you say it three times, Festus Ezeli appears and boxes you out. Maybe I should have known this was going to turn after all that celebrating. You’re thumbing your nose at the basketball gods, and they’re a vengeful lot. But I also probably should blame the city of Oakland for expecting a parade. Fans of the Warriors had gotten used to it looking easy, like the delicate swish of a made Steph Curry three-pointer. Nothing was easy in Game 6, which will forever be remembered for Curry’s insolent tossing of his mouthguard into the stands after fouling out of the contest.
Yeah, Steph Curry fouled out. The Steph Curry who is so accustomed to galavanting around the court, miraculously finding space, and heaving up heat check shot after heat check shot. Sure, Curry was a major part of the Dubs easing their way back into the game after a stunningly awful 11-point first quarter, but the sight of him truly losing his cool (and then the meltdown his wife, Ayesha, had on Twitter) has to have shaken the confidence of this team. The champs are rattled. LeBron James coaxed a Game 5 suspension out of Draymond Green. Harrison Barnes, so vital to Golden State’s balanced offense, imploded last night – a woeful 0-8 that allowed Cleveland to ignore him on defense. Their superior bench, which I have been hyping up for the majority of this series, did just about nothing, save for 14 points from Leandro Barbosa.
Sure, the Cavs’ bench sucked too, but does it matter when they have a player of LeBron James’s caliber? I suppose that’s the one thing we should have been able to predict. LeBron was going to will his team back into this series. As much as his detractors love to malign his alleged lack of “clutch” he nearly single-handedly pushed the Warriors to six games last year, despite having no Kyrie Irving. This year, his handicap has been the presence of Kevin Love, rather than anyone’s absence. Irving’s emergence in Games 5 and 6 have given James the sidekick he so badly needed last year.
As much as I, and countless other basketball critics, have gleefully pointed to Cleveland’s lack of depth, they possess a weapon that nullifies all of that. James’s back-to-back 41-point performances will surely go down in history as some of the best basketball to ever be played in the NBA Finals. If he is able to drag these Cavaliers to a championship and avenge 2015, his legacy will truly be undeniable. No team has ever come back from down 3-1 to win the title. He will have vanquished what many were calling the greatest team of all time. And he will have done it playing absolutely sublime basketball.
It’s the kind of performance we’ve been craving from Steph Curry. Whether it’s injuries, fatigue, stress, or some combination of those factors, he’s seemed decidedly mortal. His defense in the last two games has been rough, especially on pick-and-rolls. His finishing at the hoop is average. It seemed too obvious to make this a battle of Curry and James. What a tidy, simplistic narrative that is. Well, it’s exactly what will likely decide Game 7. Can LeBron put together a third MVP-caliber performance? Will Curry respond to the pundits saying he’s not up to the challenge? Like I said, I’m not even going to bother trying to understand this series anymore. I could make myself crazy attempting to unravel Game 7. These situations defy expectation and usually come down to some unholy combination of luck and fate and bloody momentum. The only thing I know for sure is that, like Jon Snow, I know nothing.
