this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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and (some) people really try to spin in like the Warriors were not the favorites heading into 2017 if they didn't land KD.
They would have been massive favorites. They were already way better than the Cavs, I say this as a cavs fan. We needed LeBron and Kyrie to play the best basketball of their careers and Steph/Klay to underperform while also getting 1 win with Draymond suspended.
They had won 140 games in 2 seasons, and were 1 game away from having the most dominant 2 year stretch in NBA history, arguably NA professional sports history.
A KD-less warriors 2017 & 2018 team is definitely better than their 2015 & 2016 version. They certainly would still be the favorites even without KD.
But the league was already on it's way to figuring them out. The only reason why the Cavs struggled mightily to beat them was because of Kevin Love, who could no longer defend and ate up a giant chunk of their cap.
The Rockets and Bucks were two teams constructed with multiple rangy switching defenders specifically to neutralize the chaos of Steph zipping around the court. It's like the warriors were 50% favorites to 30% favorites. Still the best odds but not overwhelming anymore.
The game is just moving really fast now. Because of shortened contracts, high influx of rookie talent and the fast pace shortening careers, rosters are turning over rapidly, and in ways that are able to adapt to the best teams. This is why even though the Warriors revolutionized the game, they could only hold on to their advantage for so long.
I don't think the league "figured them out" so much as learned to play like them and beat them at their own game. Warriors at the top of their game shot the 3 ball collectively as a team better than any team in history. They won tons of games they should have lost because they were just getting more points per shot than the other teams. Now every team's first/best look on offence is a 3 point shot and warriors are about average by comparison
Lol the reason they couldn't "hold on to their advantage" is time. If Dray, Klay and Steph were all in their prime we'd be set.
People trying to dismiss the 2015 ring because they were beat by the healthy cavs the next season never made sense. Took a historic performance by Kyrie and Lebron to even take them to 7
exactly. Looked like cavs were going to rollover for most of that early series too. Could have easily been a 4-1 win over healthy cavs
I take your point, but I have an issue with calling a team "massive favourites" to win the finals if they lost the previous year and will have to get through the same team the next year. Maybe they were favourites, but I think massive favourites is a stretch.
I don't think you can isolate Lebron and Kyrie's over-performance, KD and Steph's underperformance, and Draymond's suspension. At the time, it would have been reasonable to suspect that those same dynamics might repeat themselves in the 2017 finals.
The Warriors were a much worse team by the end of that season than they were at the start. Currys injury completely derailed their trajectory. Hell they lost more games in those playoffs than they did in the whole regular season. Plus they should have lost to the Thunder, but the NBA are giant pussies and wouldn't suspend Draymond until he dared to touch LeBron.
He actually didn’t touch Lebron lol. He missed. Dray’s suspension against the Cavs was totally BS but I can’t complain because you are right, he should have been suspended against the thunder and they should have lost that series
Yes, nothing was even called in game when Lebron stepped over Draymond and Draymond's arm swung upwards.
They would've probably gone on a 2014 Spurs revenge tour type of run to win back what they were so close to winning
I don’t know if massive favourites is fair. More reasonable to say the two teams were pretty evenly matched with a slight edge to the warriors. Those cavs teams were excellent and Lebron was the best player in the world
They wouldn't have. The perception at the time was that LeBron was in their heads and that they had nothing for him, Kyrie had also just badly outplayed Steph in the NBA Finals and the Cavs looked like the tougher and more resilient team.
No, they weren't. It took them injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie to beat the Cavs in 6 the year before and they lost in 2016. You also are completely ignoring the psychological edge the Cavs had after that win and the fact that the Warriors almost didn't even make it that far, needing a historical chokejob by the Thunder to get to the Finals.
Also no. The Bulls won 141 games games in 2 seasons, regardless if the Warriors had won it or not, Chicago still had the most dominant 2 year stretch in NBA history. Chicago also obliterated the '96 and '97 playoffs, losing 7 games TOTAL in those 2 postseasons, the Warriors lost 7 games in the 2016 WCF and NBA Finals alone.
This is some blatant revisionist history, there was not a soul on EARTH in 2016 that thought the Warriors were the favourites before they got Durant, everyone thought that LeBron was about to spank them for years to come.
Kyrie and Lebron are the 2 best players in a 7 game series between those two teams and Lebron was a whole tier above steph with a much more unstoppable play style compared to stephs play style which the Cavs effectively slowed down. The Cavs dominate them without KD or at least the warriors have to prove they can overcome that hurdle. They did not prove it though, they ran crying to Durant and turned a potential legendary team into a joke.