OAKLAND – Imagine being Kevin Durant.
You’re back home in Oklahoma City, watching these NBA Finals tip off just three days after your relentless Thunder squad came so close to dethroning the defending champions, and you see this.
Golden State didn’t just win Game 1 of these NBA Finals against Cleveland at Oracle Arena on Thursday, a 104-89 affair in which they nearly led from beginning to end without much help from their alleged sharpshooters (Steph Curry and Klay Thompson were a combined eight of 27 from the field). They handled the Eastern Conference champions in the kind of way that made the Thunder’s Western Conference Finals effort seem that much more astonishing.
That feisty, ferocious defensive grit that pushed the Warriors to the brink of elimination? Replaced by a porous Cavs defense that let the Warriors breathe again. The collective will and desire to get the unlikely deed done? Nowhere to be found with this Cleveland team that, save for those two inexplicable losses in Toronto during the Eastern Conference Finals, went untested on their breezy path to this point.
The Thunder, in essence, were like one of those baseball bat donut weights – a foe so formidable that it’s a shame they can’t take the Cavs’ spot in this series. And now that they’re gone, the weight having been removed, the Warriors are swinging freely again.
“Strength in Numbers,” indeed.
On this night when the Warriors lived up to their two-year old motto by winning the bench scoring battle 45-10, and when the Cavs’ only sign of life came in a fleeting third-quarter stretch in which they took a one-point lead, the question of confidence that will have everything to do with the outcome here was front and center again.
The Warriors, dating back to those final three wins of the 2015 Finals, have now downed the Cavs in six consecutive meetings. And unlike the Cavs, who shot just 38.1% as a team and hit less than half their normal playoff rate of three-pointers (seven in all), it’s the Warriors who faced all that seemingly-endless adversity on their way back up this mountain.
They survived the loss of Curry, whose right ankle and knee injuries took him out of six games in those first two rounds while derailing all the momentum they’d had from the historic 73-win campaign. Then, they survived the roaring Thunder.
Truth be told, somebody from the Warriors organization ought to send the Oklahoma City folks a gift basket right about now. The lessons learned from that series, it seems, just might propel Golden State to a title defense. And while the Warriors surely won’t say it, you’d better believe they can sleep better facing these Cavs than they did in those torturous past two weeks.
“This is the same team who we had down 1-0 last year and they hit us twice (with losses in the Finals),” Warriors forward Draymond Green insisted of the Cavs. “So (there’s) no control. Obviously last year in The Finals I think we won three in a row and kind of figured that out. And then this year, I mean, well, both games (in the regular season) they didn't even have the same coach that they have now (David Blatt was replaced by Ty Lue in late January).
“This is a team that, you know, they're used to winning. They're going to battle, they're going to compete, and they're super talented. So you can't come out saying, oh, we beat them six in a row, we're good. Absolutely not. As soon as you do that and let your guard down, it's a wrap. We know that. So we've got to continue to compete and try to win games.”
Beating the Thunder, more than anything else, was the kind of accomplishment that all but guarantees there won’t be any complacency from the Warriors’ side. If the Cavs rediscover their ways, burying threes while James batters the rim, then that surprising turn will be a case of Cleveland simply outplaying Golden State.
Yet in the opener, they answered every time – most notably in that 17-4 run during the late third-quarter and fourth stretch in which the Shaun Livingston show (20 points, 10 in the fourth) was in full swing. Now after all they’ve been through, and considering the undeniable reality that James has been beaten four times in six Finals tries while losing Game One five times, this one-sided tone that was set in the series seems very likely to continue.
“They got to the point where they were last year and won a championship because of their whole team and their bench,” said James, who had 23 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists along with four of Cleveland’s 17 turnovers. “And they're here once again in The Finals because of their whole team. So nothing has really changed. They're a team that's had another year under their belt, and they've exceeded what they did last year.”
Three more wins, and they’ll have the finish they spent the past year striving for.
