Have a seat on that throne, LeBron James. You’re still the King.
Even better, you’re bringing an NBA championship back to your title-starved hometown of Cleveland.
In an epic Game 7 that will be remembered as long as Russell vs Chamberlain or Magic vs Bird, James, Kyrie Irving and the Cavs capped the most remarkable comeback in NBA Finals history by stifling the Warriors 93-89 on their home floor.
No team had ever gotten off the canvas from a 3-1 Finals deficit. Cleveland did it while winning twice at Oracle Arena, which went from deafening loud to stunned silence during a tense, jittery Sunday evening.
“I’m home,” James said during the postgame ceremony, tears flowing down his cheeks. “I’m home, and this is what I came home for. I’m at a loss for words. This is unbelievable.”
Following a series marked by blowouts from both sides, basketball fans finally got the epic they richly deserved. The game featured 21 lead changes and 11 ties.
Golden State’s last points, a Klay Thompson layup off an assist from Draymond Green, tied the score 89-89 with 4:39 remaining.
The Warriors did not score again and finished with only 13 fourth-quarter points. Golden State shot 26.3 percent (5 of 19) over the final 12 minutes.
Kind of ironic that a record 73-win regular season that featured so much uncanny, never-seen-before shooting accuracy ended with a barrage of bricks.
Two plays down the stretch, both made by Cleveland, will stand out from the rest in the highlight reel. The first was a remarkable block by James on an Andre Iguodala layup attempt in which the Finals MVP (who else?) appeared to materialise out of nowhere.
The second was Irving’s shake-and-bake three-pointer, in the face of regular-season MVP Stephen Curry, with 53 seconds left that broke the game’s final tie.
Another enduring image will be Curry, trying in vain to answer Irving’s three, barely grazing the side of the rim after being unable to shake free of Kevin Love.
Yes, Kevin Love. Who played a whale of a game (14 rebounds) after being an afterthought the entire series.
It was not the ending the Warriors – and certainly the growing bandwagon of Warriors fans – envisioned.
“We’re stunned,” coach Steve Kerr said. “We thought we were going to win. I was extremely confident coming into tonight, especially having Draymond back from the suspension from (Game) 5 and now Game 7 at home.
“But this is why you can’t mess around. Not that we messed around, but this is why every game counts. Game 5 was really the key. That was the turning point of the whole series. We didn’t play well enough to win.”
Green, the only Warriors player to turn in a Game 7-worthy performance (32 points, 15 rebounds, nine assists), credited Cleveland while sounding a defiant tone.
“This won’t be the last you hear from this team,” Green said.
Perhaps, but no one will ever confuse the 2015-16 Warriors with one of the greatest squads ever assembled.
Not after what transpired these last three games. Winners get to write history, while losers are relegated to the dustbin of it.
You’ll undoubtedly hear a lot of talk Monday about legacies, and what this championship does to elevate James while diminishing Curry, Thompson, et al.
Most of it is a bunch of hooey.
Legacy, according to the folks at Merriam-Webster, is defined as “something (such as property and money) that is received from someone who died.”
When I saw him in the locker room after the game, Curry was still breathing. So forget that one.
There’s also a second definition: “something that happened in the past or that comes from someone in the past.”
If legacies are about the past, it makes absolutely no sense to try and define someone’s legacy from the perspective of the present. Yet many in the media stumble over themselves to do that very thing. It’s called a #hottake.
Discussions about an athlete’s legacy ought to wait until years after retirement, allowing the passage of time to grant much-needed perspective. But in an age of 24-hour sports talk and 140-character opinions, who has time for that?
No question James’ legacy gets enhanced by winning another title, his third in seven tries. Over the last three games, with Cleveland facing elimination in each one, he averaged 36.3 points, 11.6 rebounds and 9.7 assists.
That’s indescribably good, Best Player in the World-type stuff. But there will always be those, either with an agenda or an axe to grind, who will find a way to diminish those accomplishments. Those people certainly don’t live in Cleveland.
Putting historical touches on Golden State’s season is a trickier matter, mainly due to the immensity of the collapse.
In the biggest game of their careers, neither Splash Brother shot well. Curry, who went 6 of 19, said Saturday he needed to play the best game of his career. Not hardly. Thompson (6 of 17) wasn’t much better, missing open shots he normally swishes with his eyes closed.
There will be a few nagging questions: Why did Kerr start Festus Ezeli in the third quarter, a move that evaporated Golden State’s seven-point halftime lead? Why did Curry spend the first 2:55 of the fourth on the bench? Why is Anderson Varejao even issued a uniform?
No satisfactory answers are forthcoming.
Just because the Warriors lost Game 7 on their home floor doesn’t mean the season was a complete failure. (I’ll never subscribe to that philosophy – it was simply too much fun to watch.) But Golden State’s one-year reign atop the NBA has ended.
Give the King back his crown.