CLEVELAND -- Three years ago, the Golden State Warriors walked out of this city with a championship. It was all so fresh and new and exciting, this homegrown team full of unselfish players who played the game with equal parts ferocity and unbridled exuberance.
The Warriors had the sport in the palm of their hands back then. It wasn’t a question of if they’d be back on the Finals stage, but how many more titles would they would win. In that euphoric postgame celebration, no one could have foreseen the moments that would define the next few years.
They would win 73 games the following year, only to fall to LeBron James and the Cavaliers after building a 3-1 series lead. They would answer by signing Kevin Durant, upsetting the fragile balance of competitive advantage in a sport where only a handful of teams can even dream of winning a championship each year.
They have three championships now after wrapping up a series sweep over the Cavs, getting it done with a 108-85 victory in Game 4 that was as anti-climatic as it was inevitable. They are 8-1 in the Finals since adding Durant, and while LeBron remains a daunting obstacle, this rivalry has never seemed less competitive than it does now.
If the first title was for joy, and the second was for revenge, this one was for relief.
“I remember sitting in this room three years ago, it seemed like a dream,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “This feels more like reality. And I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant. It’s just that’s the talent we have, and that’s the experience we’ve gained. But it’s a very different feeling. It’s still euphoric, but three years ago was, I can’t believe this happened, and now it’s, I can definitely believe this happened. But it was hard, and it gets more and more difficult as you go through.”
Losing this series was never an option, and that was before LeBron punched a blackboard in frustration following Game 1, a revelation that came out after the series was over. “Pretty much played the last three games with a broken hand,” he said.
The only real suspense of the evening was whether Steph Curry or Kevin Durant would get Finals MVP. Durant took home the trophy in a close 7-4 vote, though neither player seemed particularly bothered or excited about it.
“Does it matter?” Durant said. “Does it? We won two championships. We just won back-to-back. I don’t think anybody’s even worried about that type of stuff.”
More than Cleveland and even more than LeBron James, the Warriors were competing with themselves. Throughout the season, they had to find new ways to motivate and challenge themselves. A series sweep was just the thing to bring out their best performance of the Finals.
“Yeah, I want a sweep,” veteran Shaun Livingston said between Games 3 and 4. “I’ll put that on record. It’s an opportunity to do something we haven’t done. It’s an opportunity to close the door on a super duper long ride. It’s been a long journey. Not just this year, but the four years. To end it this way, to put together that complete game we were talking about, it would mean a lot. It would all come to fruition, that journey. Let’s go out and be great.”
I asked Livingston if he felt like this run had gone by in an instant or if it feels like an eternity.
“It feels like forever,” he answered.
In their minds there is a perfect game. Within that game are endless passes, constant movement, and clean shot attempts. There are no turnovers or stoppages. There is just one long, effortless flow from start to finish.
“It’s generic, but we talk about: We haven’t played our best basketball yet,” Golden State assistant coach Bruce Fraser said. “If we had 500 passes and no turnovers, that would be ideal.”
That such a game is beyond the reach of even the Warriors doesn’t matter. That it is even conceivable to play an idealized version of basketball is what separates them from everyone else. The goal isn’t to attain perfection, it’s to pursue it.
“It’s always in the moment, without sounding too zen,” Fraser says. “I just think our team operates in the moment really well.”
They are good enough, and savvy enough, to choose when the moment reaches a suitable level of importance to bring out their best. That added a layer of frustration to this season for both their fans and their detractors. For their part, the Warriors are beyond caring about the perception that their relentless accumulation of championships is boring or somehow bad for the game.
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Regardless of how they were constructed or the circumstances that allowed general manager Bob Myers to build a superteam, they are truly a remarkable collection of players. It’s not just talent, it’s how the talent blends and complements one another.
In Curry, they have the greatest shooter the game has ever seen. Durant is an unstoppable isolation player with range out to 30 feet. Draymond Green is on the shortlist of most versatile defenders in history, combining instant recall and athleticism along with court vision and uncanny passing skills.
And then Klay Thompson is the perfect complementary star. A brilliant shooter and all-league defender, there are few players anywhere who are as comfortable in their own shoes as Klay is in his Antas.
“Klay just Googled himself, and it says three-time champion already,” Green announced from the post-game podium. “That’s dope.”
Add to that All-Star core a who’s who of wise veteran role players from Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston to David West, and you have a team for the ages. The collective basketball IQ alone puts them far beyond the reach of most of their competitors.
“Listen, we’re all NBA players,” James said between games. “Everybody knows how to put the ball in the hoop. But who can think throughout the course of the game?
“So now everyone is trying to figure that out. 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.”
The problem is that no one else has all of those ingredients. Certainly no one else has four All-Stars in their prime, let alone two superstars with Most Valuable Player trophies. That made these Finals an unfair fight.
“Bottom line is we’ve got a lot of talent,” Kerr said. “And we had more talent than they did, and talent wins in this league.”
Too much talent, really. Over the last two seasons since adding Durant, the Warriors have been tested exactly one time. That was just a few weeks ago in the Western Conference finals against the Rockets. Down 3-2 and trailing by 10 points at halftime, the Warriors outscored Houston 64-23 in the second half and then rallied again to win Game 7 on the road.
That series with the Rockets was the real Finals, a matchup between the two best teams in the league with the challenger -- Houston -- primed to complete a season-long quest to take the Warriors down. It had everything you could possibly want in a series, except for one thing: the injury to Houston’s Chris Paul.
Had Paul been healthy for the final two games, perhaps we wouldn’t be wrestling with the impact of the Warriors run of dominance. If that series proved anything, it’s that the Warriors can be taken to the limit. There will be other challengers appearing on the horizon from Philly and Boston to wherever LeBron happens to wind up this summer.
The Cavs? They just kind of happened to be here thanks to geography and LeBron James. Theirs was fascinating story full of drama and intrigue led by the most important player of his generation. But in a basketball sense, no, they never had a chance.
No one did. Not this season and maybe not next season either.
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