Past year he carried his team back from the brink as the Cavs became the first team to rally from a 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven NBA Finals and win the title. The Eastern Conference Finals weren’t as easy as the first two rounds of the postseason for Cleveland.
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Golden State is -7 points for Thursday’s Game 1 National Basketball Association match-up and they are listed at a surprising -260 to win the series. King James is making his seventh consecutive NBA Finals appearance, and fourth with Cleveland (2007, 2015, 2016). “I can’t lie”, Durant said of his latest trip to the finals compared to his first.
From the moment he returned home from Boston following the Cavs’ win in Game 5 of the conference finals, Lue has immersed himself in the Warriors, a virtual All-Star team featuring two league MVPs (Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry), a dead-eye shooter (Klay Thompson) and a triple-threat performer (Draymond Green).
That’s actually in the same ballpark as last year’s NBA Finals’ Game 7, when the get-in price for tickets ranged from about $850 to $1,000 just before the deciding game was to be played.
The Warriors being playoffs-unbeaten going to the Finals make them the first team to start 12-0 in league history. Both teams are loaded with stars leaving everyone else far behind… again.
Maybe, just maybe, the Warriors are slightly ahead due mainly to the addition of Kevin Durant, the former Thunder with a thunderous amount of baskets in nearly every game that he’s fielded in.
James will face the end of his career one day. Assistant Mike Brown has been leading the team since then, and Golden State has gone undefeated.
As risky a scorer as he is from outside or driving to the hoop, James also threatens by being able to find teammates such as Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love with passes when defenders focus too much on him.
But despite returning to the Finals with relative ease the Warriors are well aware of the value of not becoming complacent. When a game, or this series, is on the line this year, we’ll find out if the Warriors truly have that chemistry. We’ve got to come out and play. LeBron James is arguably the best player of all time and certainly among the top three.
Brown wasn’t around during the past two Finals when the Warriors faced the Cavaliers, so he has watched some of last year’s Finals. It was a stark contrast to their December 25 meeting this season, when James went 4-for-4 for 10 points when he was defended by Durant. Just can’t get discouraged with guys like that – him or Kyrie (Irving).
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It’s not hard to see why Golden State is expected by many to win the title, considering how unstoppable they’ve looked this season with Kevin Durant.
