Golden State Warriors
2017-18 NBA Champions
Photo courtesy of Keith Allison's Flickr page - Stephen Curry: https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/5493668904
Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
So now it's official.
The fourth straight meeting between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers goes to the Warriors, and it was decisive. The Cavs could not even get a game off the Golden State this time around, although they came close in Game 3.
In the end, though, the Warriors simply have too many weapons, and too much experience. Stephen Curry. Kevin Durant. Klay Thompson. Draymond Green. Andre Iguodala. It's almost like an NBA All-Star lineup.
Clearly, it has proven a bit too much for the Cavaliers, and indeed the rest of the NBA, over the past two years in particular, and really, almost form the past four years more generally. Other than a fluke collapse after taking a 3-1 series lead in the 2016 NBA Finals, the Warriors have been far and away the best team in the league for four years running.
They are in the midst of a dynasty, and they are scrambling to keep all the pieces in place. One of the headlines that I saw this morning already just hours after they clinched the title last night, was that the owner is working on a contract extension for coach Steve Kerr.
Indeed, they better try to keep all of the pieces in place. The Warriors - these Warriors, anyway - are special. They look like an unstoppable force, at least when they are at full strength, as they clearly were the deeper into the playoffs these guys got. By the time that they reached the NBA Finals against Cleveland, they clearly were running on all cylinders, and were like a locomotive with full steam. Nobody was going to deny them the championship.
It certainly appears that the Warriors are enjoying a dynasty at the moment, and there also does not appear to be an immediate end in sight. These guys should be able to win more championship hardware over the next few years, and add to their already impressive collection.
As for Cleveland, the question that seems like it's on everyone's mind is whether or not LeBron James will skip out of town yet again. The Cavaliers could offer him a five-year package worth over $200 million, and unlike other franchises that will surely court him, they do not have to wait until midnight on June 30th to offer that to him. Whether or not he takes that is another matter.
Again, not to harp on the point of why I feel that James cannot hold a candle to Michael Jordan in terms of being the greatest basketball player of all time. For the second time in his career, LeBron James got swept in the NBA Finals. Of course, he revealed that he was playing the majority of the series with a broken hand, which is obviously a serious injury that would impair his ability to play. Yet, this injury was "self-inflicted," caused by his punching a white board after Game 1. So, this is not even a real excuse as to why he might not have played at his best, because this is part of what LeBron James does, and who he is.
The fact of the matter is that while James has been to more NBA Finals than Jordan, having gone to nine NBA Finals to Jordan's six, the fact of the matter is that while Jordan won (and dominated) all six, earning Finals MVP for each one, James is now 3-6 lifetime in NBA Finals. When Jordan finally reached the point when he and his team were good enough to reach the NBA Finals, he sealed the deal by upping his play. He was voted league MVP five times overall, and won the NBA Finals MVP award all six times that he played in them. He won the "Defensive Player of the Year" award for the 1987-88 season, to show that he was a complete player and contributor all around. And his offensive numbers were off the charts good at the time, and it needs to be remembered that he played in an era that was not so friendly to offenses as the league has since become.
Not that Jordan did not take his lumps. Again, he had an immediate impact on the Bulls since he first arrived, but it took them years of failure in the playoffs to finally learn to win. The Bulls qualified for the postseason every year that Jordan was on that team. But they lost to Milwaukee the first season in 1984-85, and got swept by the historically dominant 1986 Boston Celtics, who went 68-14 and would go on to win the NBA title. They got swept by Boston again in 1987. Then, they fell short against Detroit in 1988, 1989, and again in 1990.
Finally, they got good enough to get past Detroit in 1991, and that meant that they were good enough to qualify for their first NBA Finals. With Jordan leading the way, the Bulls dominated the Los Angeles Lakers of the Pat Riley era, with Magic Johnson still in the lineup. They went back to the NBA Finals in 1992 after surviving a tough challenge by the New York Knicks, and dominated the Portland Trailblazers to capture a second straight championship. In 1993, they overcame an 0-2 deficit to New York to get back to the NBA Finals, and beat the 63-19 Phoenix Suns, for the first three-peat. Houston won the next two titles, but most people feel that an asterisk needs to be placed on those championships, because Jordan was retired during those two seasons, with the exception of the very end of the 1995 season, when he came back but was not at full strength. Once he was, Chicago enjoyed a historically dominant 72-10 championship season in 1995-96, dominating the 64-18 Seattle Supersonics, who otherwise likely would have been themselves remembered as a dominant team. The Bulls just missed another 70-win season in 1996-97, finishing 69-13. They cruised their way to another NBA Finals, and beat a very tough 64-18 Utah Jazz squad. Then the Bulls went back to the NBA Finals again in 1998, surviving a very tough seven game series against Indiana, and once again, beat the Utah Jazz to secure the team's sixth championship in an eight year span.
It is hard, if not impossible, to compare different players and different teams that played in completely different eras. Michael Jordan reached his peak in the 1990's (although he was pretty damn good already in the 1980's). LeBron James reached his peak in the late 2000's and into the 2010's. But once they reached their peak, their legacies were completely different. Jordan secured an almost invincible aura as his legacy. Nobody beat him or the Bulls once he reached his peak. Not the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons, not Magic Johnson and the Lakers, not Clyde Drexler and the Trailblazers, not Patrick Ewing and the Knicks, not Barkely and the Suns. The Rockets won those two titles without ever having to face Jordan, but once he was back, a loaded Supersonics team with Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton could not hold back the Bulls. Neither could Karl Malone and John Stockton on a loaded Utah Jazz team two year in a row, and not Reggie Miller and Rik Smits on a very tough and talented Indiana Pacers team coached by Larry Bird. That's a lot of guys, and a lot of great teams, that were denied rings by a team led by Jordan at his peak.
By contrast, LeBron's legacy is a mixed bag. Yes, he won NBA championships as well, and performed great in so doing. His finest hour was one of sports great moments, when he led his team to overcome a 3-1 deficit to the mighty 73-9 Golden State Warriors to win the first sports championship for Cleveland in over half a century. The rest of his legacy, however, is marred by his own antics. Yes, he won two other NBA titles in Miami. But he skipped out on his home town after getting swept in the 2007 NBA Finals by the Spurs and then losing the next year in the Eastern Conference Finals, and showed a classless side in so doing by making a huge production out of it, and joined a loaded Miami Heat team. They probably should have won the NBA title every year that he was there on sheer talent alone, but he and Wade showed immaturity in the 2011 FInals, mocking Dirk Nowitzki's illness, before being upset by the Dallas Mavericks. In 2014, the Heat seemed impatient and not as together as a team, and they lost to the San Antonio Spurs, before LeBron left the Heat and returned to Cleveland. There, he was impressive in leading the Cavaliers to four straight NBA Finals appearances, making it eight straight for him, personally, between the Heat and the Cavs. And again, his finest hour was the 2016 NBA Championship that he had promised to his hometown. However, the Golden State Warriors have now established themselves firmly as a dynasty, and they did it by beating LeBron James while he was at his peak. The San Antonio Spurs secured their dynasty status as one of the great teams of all time by also beating James at his peak in 2007 and again in 2014. James hurt his own hand, and compromised his team's chances, by losing his cool and punching a poor, defenseless white board after being frustrated in Game 1 of these NBA Finals. The Cavaliers could not even win a single game against the Warriors this time.
Nor is this a situation where you can make an argument that more appearances on the championship level necessarily seriously adds some strong points in favor of LeBron James in this debate, as it did with, say, Tom Brady versus Joe Montana in football. In Brady's case, he won more championships than Montana did, and has showed unbelievable longevity and consistency in the process. Thus, even though he lost some Super Bowls, which Montana never did, you can definitely make the argument that this actually enhances Brady's status as the greatest of all time. Brady stayed with one team through the ups and the downs, and never seemed tempted to skip town and join some other powerhouse team just to add to his championship hardware, or to leave his team in frustration after one of their failures - and the Patriots certainly suffered through some heartbreaks and failures during the Brady era. Indeed, the one major advantage that James has over Jordan would be that he made it to the NBA Finals far more often than Jordan did. But then again, Jordan did not leave the Bulls and take his talents to South Beach or somewhere else in frustration following some of those early failures, like LeBron did. His Bulls made it to the NBA Finals often in the nineties, but Jordan had been on that team since the 1984-85 season, while LeBron joined a loaded Miami Heat team, and the consensus was that he was doing it to get some championship hardware the easy way. Even then, they failed to win the Finals twice in those four years, and the conduct and immaturity of James was a factor both times. He did lead the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals for four straight years, but the Eastern Conference was not loaded with tough teams challenging them as serious title contenders in their own right. In fact, neither the Heat nor the Cavaliers ad to face a team on the caliber that the Detroit Pistons, the New York Knicks, or the Indiana Pacers posed to Jordan's Bulls in the nineties, and that was no small factor in James reaching the NBA Finals for eight straight seasons.
To conclude this blog entry, I argue that this year's NBA Finals will likely be viewed as the defining moment in this era of the NBA. The Golden State Warriors have now firmly and undeniably established themselves as clearly the dominant team of this era, while LeBron James has further established himself as one of the great players of all time, while simultaneously undermining any arguments that could still be made to challenge Jordan's status as the greatest player of all time.
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