LeBron James was relaxed
Tarvarius Moore Color Rush Jersey , reflective and even resigned to his fate.The end of the series, season and maybe his second stint in Cleveland, are near.
The Golden State Warriors have made his eighth straight NBA Finals – and their seasonal rivalry with the Cavaliers – very one-sided.
Still weary and wrestling with emotions after losing Game 3 on Wednesday night, when Kevin Durant scored 43 points and shot the Warriors within one win
of their third title in four years, James pointed out Thursday what has become
terrifyingly obvious.
The Warriors are at another level. And may be for a while.
”Obviously, from a talent perspective, if you’re looking at Golden State from their top five best players to our top five players, you would say they’re
stacked better than us. Let’s just speak truth,” James said before rattling off
Golden State’s embarrassment of riches.
”Kevin Durant,” he said. ”You’ve got two guys with MVPs on their team. And then you’ve got a guy in Klay (Thompson) who could easily be on a team and carry
a team, scored 40 in a quarter before. And then you have Draymond (Green), who
is arguably one of the best defenders and minds we have in our game. So you have
that crew.
”Then you add on a Finals MVP coming off the bench (Andre Iguodala), a No. 1 pick in (Shawn) Livingston and an All-Star in David West and whatever the case
may be. So they have a lot of talent.”
Too much, it seems, for these Cavs.
James wasn’t making excuses for Cleveland’s postseason pickle because if not for a reversed official’s call or J.R. Smith’s brain-lock in the closing seconds
of regulation in Game 1 or Durant’s brilliance in Game 3, the Cavs could be
leading the series.
The three-time champion
Joseph Noteboom Jersey Rams , though, was being open and honest about the Cavs’ chances to become the first team to overcome a 3-0 deficit in the
playoffs.
To this point, 131 have tried, and 131 have failed.
”We’ve been in a position where we could win two out of these three games,” said James, who had 33 points and his 10th Finals triple-double in Game 3. ”So
what do we have to do? Do we have to make more shots? Is it we have to have our
minds into it a little bit more? Is it if there is a ball on the ground we can’t
reach for it but you’ve got to dive for it?”
Those were today’s relevant questions. Tomorrow, they’ll be different ones if the Warriors, who have dealt with adversity all season, sweep the Cavs.
James is headed toward free agency and then where: Los Angeles? Philadelphia? Houston?
Or will he decide it’s too painful to part again with Cleveland, his basketball home for 11 seasons and just up the highway from his actual home in
Akron?
The 33-year-old plans to consider everything once the season ends, but he offered some clues about what he’ll consider before making his next move, a
decision that will dwarf any other NBA news in July. James also laid out a
potential blueprint for the Cavs to follow if they want to keep him.
Bottom line: James needs better, smarter teammates.
No player in the league understands the current climate better than James, who formed a super-team in Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and won two NBA
titles before returning to Cleveland and joining forces with All-Stars Kevin
Love and Kyrie Irving. The Cavs’ reign lasted only one year, destroyed by
Durant’s shocking departure from Oklahoma City for the 73-win Warriors, a team
he couldn’t beat but was glad to join.
James said his decision to bolt from the Cavs the first time was simple.
”I knew that my talent level here in Cleveland couldn’t succeed getting past a Boston
Customized Atlanta Falcons Jerseys , getting past the San Antonios of the league or whatever the case may be,” he said.
But beyond the talent disparity, James said the key to winning a championship is ”you’ve got to be very cerebral too.”
James then explained what it takes to be the last team standing, and in the process seemed to take a swipe at unnamed current and former teammates.
”So now everyone is trying to figure that out,” he said. ”How do you put together a group of talent but also a group of minds to be able to compete with
Golden State, to be able to compete for a championship? That’s what GMs and
presidents and certain players, it’s not every player. Every player does not
want to – sad to say – but every player doesn’t want to compete for a
championship and be in a position where every possession is pressure.”
Months of weight will lifted off him once the Warriors, who haven’t lost four straight games since 2013, are crowned again.
This series has been a painful reminder to James that the great teams have more than one king.
”When you make mistakes they make you pay,” he said, ”because they’re already more talented than you are but they also have the minds behind it, too, and they
also have the championship DNA.”
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The NBA might have to get used to this.
Stephen Curry is under contract for basically the rest of his prime. Kevin Durant says he isn’t going anywhere. Steve Kerr has more than proven himself as
one of the game’s best coaches. Free agents will line up for the chance to move
west even if that means taking some pay cuts. There’s even a new arena coming in
a year or so for the Golden State Warriors to call home.
It’s their league now, without question.
For the third time in four years, the Warriors are champions of the NBA world. They’ve gone back-to-back, beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 108-85 on
Friday night to finish off a sweep of these NBA Finals in the fourth consecutive
meeting between those clubs.
The Cavs may very well be coming apart.
The Warriors look very much built to last
Josh Gordon Browns Jersey , and no matter where LeBron James goes this summer it’ll probably be Golden State as the prohibitive favorites to win it all again
next year.
”You don’t want to cheat the moment,” Curry said, the victory champagne still drying on his clothes and skin, wanting no part of any talk about dynasties or
anything like that. ”So we’ll have plenty of time over the summer to talk about
what next year’s going to look like and what it’s going to take for us to get
back to this stage next year.”
Houston probably isn’t going away and remember, the Rockets gave the Warriors all they wanted this season. Had Chris Paul not gotten hurt, who knows if the
Warriors even win that Game 7 in Houston and take the West title. The East might
be a wild race, with Toronto, Philadelphia and Boston probably all likely to
enter the year thinking they have NBA Finals potential – as will any team that
has James on its roster next fall.
This much is clear: Golden State has no designs on giving up its throne.
”I’ve just got to keep getting better,” said Warriors star Kevin Durant, now a two-time champion and two-time NBA Finals MVP. ”I think I’ve got a lot more to
go. So I’m just trying to prove to myself that I could just stay in it for the
long haul, and hopefully I continue to have some success. Just keep growing as a
player. That’s my only concern.”
Durant was voted the best player in this series – and he wants to keep growing.
He can’t be guarded now – and he wants to keep growing.
Ask the 29 other NBA teams their reaction to that statement and they would likely say some form of ”welp.”
”They move at such a pace, and they have five guys on the floor that can dribble, pass and shoot,” Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue said Friday night, a few
minutes after the season ended and a few minutes into the Warriors’ celebration
down the hall. ”They can make plays. So if you make a mistake, they’re going to
make you pay. That’s the beauty of their team.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver marvels at how the Warriors have put themselves in this position. They drafted well. They drafted lucky
Alex Rodriguez Jersey , too – Draymond Green as a second-rounder is an all-time bargain. They spend a ton of money, but they do it smartly.
They are built for the long haul.
And they are having more than their share of fun along the way.
”Klay just Googled himself and it says three-time champion already,” Green said as he sat next to Klay Thompson after Game 4, the Wikipedia world having
already updated pages with the Warriors’ latest championship accomplishment.
”That’s dope.”
Every other team this summer will try to figure out how to beat Golden State. Some will try to do so in 2019. Others will wait for a more opportune time, a
few years from now. Not many teams are in position to even think about knocking
the Warriors off their perch.
Plus, Golden State will get better. Durant has already challenged some of the Warriors’ young and promising players to raise their games. They will retool
their roster this summer, change the look of the bench a bit. They will add
pieces.
”When you get on the podium and you realize all the hard work that you put into it and all that you’ve been through led to that moment, it never gets
dull,” Curry said. ”It never gets boring. It’s always a freshness about that
moment.”
This is why Curry does what he does. This is why he’ll be back in the gym in a couple weeks, restarting the process. Opening night is four months away, after
all.
”I’ve got a big smile on my face right now,” Curry said. ”I’m going to try to hold onto it for as long as I can.”
It might be there for years.
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Tim Reynolds is a national basketball writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at treynolds(at)ap.org
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