Bring on Cavaliers-Warriors, a promising NBA Finals trilogy
Kevin ArnovitzESPN Staff Writer
Try as it might to encourage parity among its 30 teams, the NBA will showcase the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers for the third consecutive spring when the NBA Finals tip off on Thursday (ABC, 9 p.m. ET) -- and the league couldn't possibly do any better.
Every once in a while, a rivalry teases us with potential long-term appeal, but it rarely develops the inertia required to cast itself over the game over the course of several years. Cleveland and Golden State have no such issues. The teams' rosters each feature a collection of players squarely in the prime of their careers. Each has taken a title from the other, and each wants to stake its claim as the defining team of its time.
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Yet the Warriors-Cavs rivalry carries even more than a ring count: It's a battle over the outward identity of the NBA at one of the league's most ascendant moments. With the retirement of Kobe Bryant in 2016, LeBron James and Stephen Curry remain as the league's two breakthrough stars and the two players who get business execs around the league downright giddy about the balance sheet when they pass through town. Another Finals matchup offers yet another round in a battle for the NBA's supreme individual identity -- and winning means everything.
In 2015, following the Warriors' title, 15.9 percent of NBA fans named Steph their favorite player, with 11.7 percent identifying with LeBron, according to ESPN fan research. One year later, after the Cavs' comeback series win, the numbers flipped -- 15.6 percent for LeBron, 12.3 percent for Steph. In the NBA, which is fueled by personalities, a fan's relationship with a star is a bit more fluid and conditional than in other sports. Many an NBA fan demands a brilliant individual performance that delivers a W before committing. A win for Steph and those fan sentiments are likely to flip again.
LeBron James and Stephen Curry will meet for a third straight NBA Finals. David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images
In Oakland, Kevin Durant has found an office with the right compression level, but Warriors 1.0 loyalists still need reassurance. Durant is the league's most prolific pin-down artist, but he also is a lethal creator who needs the ball in his hands more than a Dubs' offense usually accommodates. As well as he has sublimated those habits this season in deference to the existing style in Oakland, will those needs disrupt a Warriors' offense that was nearly perfect prior to his arrival at the biggest moments?
After being sidelined during the previous championship matchup with the Warriors, Kyrie Irving assembled a scintillating 2016 Finals. An equivalent output this June and he'll solidify himself as one of his generation's better big-game performers -- a shot-maker who loses nothing in the spotlight of the biggest stage.
Draymond Green's suspension might not have lost the Warriors the title one year ago, but bad behavior at the worst juncture demands a level of poise this time around that will test his best and worst instincts as a leader/irritant.
And before the Cavs even formally advanced, Warriors owner Joe Lacob squawked that Golden State was "the better team" last season in losing and has "unfinished business."
There's a reason a compelling season of a prestige TV drama demands another season. More episodes means more time to watch characters navigate situations, more time for narrow character windows to grow a little bigger, more time for bizarre plot turns and more time for storylines to pivot yet again. The league still clings to the idea that competitive balance is virtuous, but the Warriors and Cavs are a pair of superteams with far too much intrigue to resist.
LeBron James' boulevard of broken East teams stretches long
LeBron James has sparked several debates, but when it comes to who owns the Eastern Conference, there is no discussion. Brian Windhorst looks at James' reign in the East and the teams he has destroyed over the years. (2:36)
Brian WindhorstESPN Senior Writer
Well after midnight, a fatigued and frustrated Chauncey Billups slumped in a chair at his house and reluctantly turned on SportsCenter, knowing what he was going to see.
On the last day of May in 2007, the first hot night of the late spring in suburban Detroit, the Detroit Pistons lost a crushing overtime home game to the Cleveland Cavaliers and their precocious 22-year-old star, LeBron James.
Billups watched the highlights showing James scoring 29 of his team's last 30 points to upset the Pistons in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals to take a stunning 3-2 series lead over the No. 1 seed Pistons, a team that had owned the Cavs over the previous few seasons.
The behind-the-back escape dribble that set up a dagger jumper. The vicious basket attack that came with so much force that Billups' defensive stalwart teammate, Tayshaun Prince, cowered out of instinctive self-preservation. The twisting underhanded layup that proved to be the game winner as James zigzagged through the Pistons' famously stout defensive layers.
"I didn't realize until then what he'd done to us," Billups said. "I sat there and watched it and I said to myself, 'He's figured it out.' I figured it out, too. I knew we were going to be done, it was the start of the end for us."
The line of players who have been denied trips to the NBA Finals by LeBron James keeps growing. Juan Ocampo/NBA/Getty Images
A year later Billups was traded and the breakup of the Pistons, who won the title in 2004 and made six consecutive conference finals appearances, was officially underway. They haven't recovered since. James knocked them out of the playoffs twice more in the first round, both sweeps, for good measure.
This is a scene that has played out repeatedly over the past decade. Teams at the top falling under James' sword or rising challengers smothered in the East, which he's won for the seventh consecutive year and eighth time in the past 11 seasons. James has conquered the conference like no one since Bill Russell, when the league was significantly different and there was no salary cap or free agency to act as a buffer to dynasties.
"I've played every team in the Eastern Conference in the postseason, or I've played for the team," James said. "There's no surprise for me."
Zach talks to Brian Windhorst about LeBron's weird game, Cavaliers-Celtics and the looming Finals trilogy.
Indeed that is correct: James has beaten every team in the East in the playoffs except for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heatand Orlando Magic. The Magic got him in the 2009 conference finals and they haven't met since. Every other team has been sent packing by James and even the Heat and Cavs, with whom he won titles, have been devastated when he left in free agency.
James is a certified East homewrecker. He has laid waste to promising cores and forced numerous trades and coaching changes. He's now to the point where he might be preventing trades as teams try to guess when his prime might be over. The Boston Celtics may very well be employing that strategy and only mildly covering it up.
"It's real frustrating to continue on losing to the same team or the same person. It's real frustrating," Indiana Pacers star Paul George said in April after being eliminated for the fourth time in the past six years by James.
"This is what I work hard for in the summers, to try to help lead a team on my own and ultimately it's who I'm going to always have to see and face. I always come up short. Didn't do enough again."
George and the Pacers pushed James to a Game 7 in 2013. They were up 2-1 in 2012 but lost in six and worked hard to get home-court advantage for 2014 but lost again in six. Coming up short over and over to James seemed to ruin them as players started to drift apart and management was forced to change tactics. Roy Hibbert got traded, David West left in free agency and coach Frank Vogel was fired. George also suffered a terrible injury, breaking his leg in the summer of 2014. Now the Pacers' future is uncertain, James having whipped them again.
"I sat there and watched it and I said to myself, 'He's figured it out.' I figured it out, too. I knew we were going to be done, it was the start of the end for us."
Chauncey Billups on LeBron's East takeover
All this started when James and the Cavs eliminated the Washington Wizards three consecutive years in the playoffs, from 2006 to '08. The 2006 series, James' first, had two games come down to the final seconds and another that ended in overtime. Some Wizards players from those teams still lament that James got away with traveling on a key play in one game and the vital free throws Gilbert Arenas missed after James trash talked him in another.
"We were convinced we could beat them; we were convinced we could beat him," said Caron Butler, part of the core of that Wizards era along with Arenas and Antawn Jamison. "But he just kept getting better and better and it was clear to us, he was going to be our roadblock. We thought we were the big brothers at the park and we were going to teach the little brother a lesson. But he figured us out."
After three straight losses to the Cavs, Wizards coach Eddie Jordan was fired in 2008. Arenas and Javaris Crittenton ended up submarining that team when they brought guns into the locker room in 2009 and were given long suspensions. Butler and teammates Brendan Haywood, DeShawn Stevenson and Jamison were traded and a challenger was gone.
When the Chicago Bulls lost a competitive 4-1 series to James and the Cavs in 2010 they hoped it could be turned into a net positive. Young guard Derrick Rose starred in the short series and Joakim Noah, in addition to insulting the city of Cleveland, showed promise as a valuable postseason performer during the first-round series.
The Bulls made a pitch to James as a free agent a few months later, touting their growing core of Rose, Noah, Luol Deng and Taj Gibson. The Bulls also made presentations to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. When they couldn't open enough salary-cap space to sign all three and Rose declined to directly recruit James, the window closed.
That turned out to be penal. James was devastating in beating the No. 1 seed Bulls in the next season's conference finals, averaging 26 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He beat them again in 2013 with the Heat and in 2015 back with the Cavaliers, when James averaged 26 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists plus hit a demoralizing buzzer-beater in Game 4 that essentially decided the series.
The Bulls fired coach Tom Thibodeau after the loss and later traded the injury-ravaged Rose and Noah. Deng and Gibson were traded, too. As with the Pacers, James ended the Bulls' season four times in a six-year run.
"I don't come into a series with baggage, maybe others do but I don't," James said. "I'm a preparation guy. Each series and each game is different. You prepare for that."
With all due respect, it doesn't feel that way.
The Celtics got the best of James in 2008 and 2010, two energy-zapping long series that were humbling to James. In the wake of losing Game 7 in '08 -- despite his 45 points -- James publicly challenged the Cavs' front office to get him better players. They did and the team won 60 games in the next two seasons. But the loss to the Celtics in '10 with an aging roster led him to make a change and move on to Miami.
LeBron James has flushed the Raptors away the past two seasons, but Toronto is not alone. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
In a way those Celtics teams, led by Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, broke up what had been a promising Cavs team. James more than returned the favor. The next year, with his new team in Miami, James combined with Wade and Bosh to average 71 points and 25 rebounds a game to beat the Celtics in five.
James collapsed to a knee at the series-clinching buzzer, overcome with emotion after finally besting a rival. He hasn't stopped beating them since -- and on Thursday night ended the Celtics' season for the fourth time in seven years.
The Heat beat the Celtics again in 2012, winning in seven games after James' 45-point explosion in Game 6 in Boston became a signature moment in his career. The breakup of the Celtics began afterward when James helped recruit Allen to Miami as a free agent, a defection that has still not been forgiven by his former Boston teammates.
After Boston lost in the first round to the New York Knicks in 2013 -- James and the Heat won that season's title -- Celtics coach Doc Rivers left to coach the Los Angeles Clippers and it triggered a rebuild that saw Pierce and Garnett dealt to the Brooklyn Nets in an NBA-shaking trade that is still showing effects to this day.
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"I knew what the Celtics felt like," Billups said. "There was a time when we felt like were LeBron's kryptonite. We beat him in the 2006 playoffs and we beat him all the time in the regular season. But once he got that confidence and he knew he could beat us, we were done. We all knew it."
The Nets ended up paying a record $197 million in salaries and payroll after trading for Garnett and Pierce. They lost to James and the Heat 4-1 in the second round in 2014. Pierce left in free agency and Garnett was later traded. After much fanfare, James buried that threat quickly.
Many organizations tried over the years, but the Atlanta Hawks built perhaps the closest thing the league has seen to a replica of the San Antonio Spurs and their egoless, team-first, ball-sharing offense in the 2014-15 season. Put together by former Spurs player and executive Danny Ferry and coached by former Spurs assistant Mike Budenholzer, the Hawks ripped off a 19-game win streak, had four players named to the All-Star team and racked up 60 wins to land the No. 1 seed in the East.
The Cavs swept them in four games in the Eastern Conference finals, with James averaging 30.3 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists along the way. The next season the Cavs swept the Hawks again, this time setting a record by making 77 3-pointers in the four games -- including 25 in Game 2 alone.
By midway through this season, four of the starters from that 60-win team were gone as Jeff Teague and Kyle Korver were traded (Korver to the Cavs) and Al Horford and DeMarre Carroll had left in free agency. Another team's hopes crushed under James' heel.
The Boston Celtics' superteam was the rare exception to LeBron's rule in the Eastern Conference. David Liam Kyle/Getty Images
The Toronto Raptors had their two best teams in franchise history between 2015 and '17. After winning just one playoff series since joining the NBA in 1995, the Raptors won three over the past two seasons in addition to their first two 50-win seasons.
In the 2016 Eastern Conference finals, James averaged 26 points, nine rebounds and seven assists while shooting 62 percent and the Cavs beat the Raptors in six games. James had 33 points and 11 rebounds in the clincher in Toronto, which the Cavs took by a humbling 26 points.
This season the Cavs did the Raptors in again, sweeping them in the second round as James had perhaps one of the greatest series of his career, averaging 36 points, eight rebounds and five assists. The average margin of victory was 15 points.
Four key Raptors -- Kyle Lowry, Serge Ibaka, P.J. Tucker and Patrick Patterson -- will be free agents this summer. It seems likely not all of them will be back as perhaps yet another team faces its mortality after dealing with James. If that happens, there should be no shame. They will have company.
"That's all in the past, I'm more of a present guy," James said, trying to dismiss his record against East peers. "I've been lucky to be in the postseason for 12 straight years. I guess I've experienced a lot."
ts
Pelton mailbag: What could 76ers get by trading down in the draft?
Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
May 20, 2017
Kevin PeltonESPN Staff Writer
This week's mailbag features your questions on Karl-Anthony Towns' best position, current NBA one-and-dones vs. experienced college vets, Mo Cheeks and Tim Hardaway's Hall of Fame chances, and more.
"If you had to make up teams of one & dones and players that stayed in college for 2-plus years, who do you think would win?"
-- @kjbrophy
A few things become obvious doing this exercise. The first is that the players with multiple years of experience would dominate. Here's my stab at 15-player rosters:
Of the five players I picked for MVP, four of them are on the team with two-plus years of experience, and LeBron James isn't eligible at all. (Sadly, the preps-to-pros team is running short on the talent necessary to compete with these teams.) There will probably be three or four one-and-done players on the All-NBA teams this season, as compared to something like eight off the team with two-plus years of experience.
So why is that? To some extent, it's a math problem. There are something on the order of three times as many players who spent at least two years in college in the NBA at any given time than one-and-dones, so there are more opportunities for players like Butler and Millsap to unexpectedly develop into stars. And lest we go too far into the value of college experience, the fact is a good percentage of the stars were there precisely two years, so they weren't exactly getting a full NCAA career. Still, it's a good reminder not to dismiss the upside of older players in the draft.
The other fascinating thing is the imbalance of these two rosters. I had to stretch to find a second true center for the experienced team, while Myles Turner and Hassan Whiteside couldn't even crack the one-and-done roster. Because height is so much easier to identify than skill, it's clear that quality big men tend to leave college earlier unless -- like both Green and Millsap -- they're undersized. Wings, in particular, tend to emerge on the NBA's radar much later.
So my assumption, fair or not, is if the Philadelphia 76ers trade down, it's probably to take Kentucky guard Malik Monk -- a better fit for their needs than De'Aaron Fox, Josh Jackson or Jayson Tatum. That being the case, you probably wouldn't want to go any lower than No. 6 because the Orlando Magic are the most legitimate threat of that group to take Monk. (With young shooting guards, the Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings are probably out of the Monk market.)
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Based on my trade value chart, there's not a huge difference between the third pick and any of those selections. Going from No. 3 to No. 6, for example, is a difference approximately equivalent in value to the 39th pick. In practice, of course, teams have paid a much higher premium to move up.
So I think my target would be getting the Magic to give up No. 6 and their other first-round pick, No. 25 overall, for No. 3. That would yield 860 points of draft value in Philadelphia's favor -- enough to make this deal a win even if the Sixers had to throw in one of their four second-round picks (Nos. 36, 39, 46 and 50) as well. It could be reasonable for Orlando if the Magic are particularly enamored of Jackson, who seems unlikely to get past Phoenix if he's still on the board.
I think there certainly is an argument that Karl-Anthony Towns belongs at the 4 for now, and it starts with last season's performance alongside Gorgui Dieng in the Minnesota Timberwolves' starting lineup. According to NBA.com/Stats, the Timberwolves outscored opponents by 1.4 points per 100 possessions and had a 109.3 defensive rating when Towns played with Dieng. When Towns played without Dieng, Minnesota was outscored by 6.4 points per 100 possessions and gave up a whopping 114.4 defensive rating.
Now, the fact that the Timberwolves' offense didn't improve much when Towns slid from power forward to center probably reflects the rest of the lineup. Per NBAwowy.com, rookie backup point guard Kris Dunn played more minutes than starter Ricky Rubio with Towns on and Dieng off. Nemanja Bjelica also hasn't proven quite stretchy enough to make a frontcourt pairing with Towns at center challenging to defend.
However, Minnesota's defensive decline does seem to point to Towns' inability to anchor a defense at this stage of his career. The Timberwolves allowed far more shots inside three feet (35.4 percent of opponents' attempts) with Towns alone on the court than when he played with Dieng (32.1 percent). Watching Towns, he doesn't yet appear to have developed feel for when to help and when to stay home. That may come, given Towns has all the physical tools. And the tradeoff may still prove worth it, if Minnesota can upgrade the options at power forward this offseason. But if the Timberwolves decide Towns is better as a power forward, that's reasonable at this point.
"In your opinion why is Mo Cheeks not in the Hall Of Fame?"
-- Terence Jackson
There are a handful of point guards from the 1980s and '90s who have been on the borderline of making the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. Cheeks and Tim Hardaway were finalists this year, while Kevin Johnson was a finalist the year before. Though he doesn't appear to be a serious Hall of Fame candidate, I'd throw Terry Porter in that mix too based on his advanced statistics.
Here's how my championships added metric compares the value provided by the four point guards in terms of regular-season performance, playoff performance and the awards they won.
Kevin Pelton
Breaking it down that way shows that a lack of awards is surely what's hurting Cheeks' chances. He was a four-time All-Star but never made an All-NBA team. (Cheeks was a five-time All-Defensive selection, but I don't include that in my awards rating because there's no offensive equivalent.)
Johnson made just three All-Star teams because there was so much competition in the West but was chosen for five All-NBA teams, including the second team four times. (There was no All-NBA third team for much of Cheeks' prime, so it's not included in championships added either for fairness.) Hardaway also made five All-NBA teams and was the only player in this group chosen for the All-NBA First Team. So despite his limited playoff impact, I think Hardaway probably has the best chance of making the Hall of Fame from this group.
Not all that close, in fact. Although naturally many of them overlap (i.e., the same games are included in multiple seven-game stretches), he has had 33 seven-game spans with a better total game score than during the 2013 NBA Finals.
That's partially because Green struggled in the San Antonio Spurs' Game 6 and Game 7 losses in Miami, combining to shoot 2-of-19 from the field. But even if we go by best five-game stretches, Green has had two separate periods (February 2013 and November 2014) with better game scores over five games than his first five of the NBA Finals, after which he was being considered for MVP of the series.
I guess that shows it's easy for an important series of games to seem more unusual or unlikely than they really are.
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