June 19, 2019

Last week, on June 13, the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA) defeated the Golden State Warriors 114-110 to win the team’s first NBA championship. The Raptors won the best-of-seven finals four games to two. Raptors stars Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry, and an underrated supporting team overcame Stephen Curry and his two-time defending champion Warriors to bring the first-ever NBA championship to Canada. The Raptors team, with its “We the North” slogan, celebrated the Canadian coup with nearly 2 million fans at a Toronto parade on June 17.

Kawhi Leonard of the Toronto Raptors lobs a shot over Golden State defenders during the sixth and deciding game of the NBA Finals at Oracle Arena on June 13, 2019, in Oakland, California. Credit: © Kyle Terada, Getty Images

The Warriors, one-time heavy favorites to “three-peat” (repeat a third time) as champions, played most of the finals without the nine-time All-NBA forward Kevin Durant. (A calf injury limited Durant to just 12 minutes before a ruptured Achilles tendon ended his postseason). The Warriors also lost the star shooting guard Klay Thompson to a hamstring injury in game three and a torn knee ligament in game six. Curry and teammates Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala failed to muster enough offense to keep up with the hungry Raptors, who delivered big plays in the series’s final moments.

The Raptors began the 2018-2019 season with high hopes, having acquired the top forward Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs in a trade involving longtime Raptors swingman (multi-position player) DeMar DeRozan last July. Toronto also netted the steady shooter and defender Danny Green in the transaction, and they picked up the center Marc Gasol in a deal with Memphis this February. The emergence of the rangy third-year forward Pascal Siakam gave the Raptors star power at every position.

Toronto finished the regular season with a 58-24 record, good for second in the Eastern Conference. The Raptors defeated the Orlando Magic in five games in the first round of the playoffs. The team then topped the Philadelphia 76ers in a hard-fought seven-game series. Toronto overcame a two-games-to-none deficit against top-seeded Milwaukee and its towering superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, sweeping the last four games to close out the conference finals.

The Warriors, the most storied NBA dynasty since Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers and Michael Jordan’s  Chicago Bulls, finished 57-25 in the regular season, tops in the Western Conference. In the opening playoff round, the Warriors defeated the Los Angeles Clippers in a tough series that went six games. In Golden State’s second-round match up against the Houston Rockets, Durant exited after a game five calf strain. The Warriors still prevailed, however, and went on to sweep the upstart Portland Trail Blazers in the conference finals.

In game one of the finals in Toronto, the Raptors thrilled the home fans with a 118-109 victory over the Warriors—the first-ever NBA Finals game played in Canada. (The Raptors entered the league as an expansion team for the 1995-1996 season, and this was the team’s first finals. The only other Canadian NBA team, the Vancouver Grizzlies, never made the finals before moving to Memphis.) Toronto looked strong through halftime of game two, but the Warriors outscored the Raptors 34-21 in the third quarter and held on to win, evening the series at a game a piece.

The series continued on Golden State’s home court in Oakland, where the Raptors showed themselves to be the more complete team. Toronto won game three 123-109 and game four 105-92. Back in Toronto for game five, the Warriors overcame Durant’s postseason-ending injury, winning a tight 106-105 contest. In game six, Toronto stormed back after Klay Thompson’s injury, and Leonard, Lowry, and Siakam, together with the reserves Serge Ibaka and Fred VanVleet, proved invincible down the stretch. Leonard—who averaged 28.5 points, 9.8 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals per game in the series—won the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award. The award was Leonard’s second; he earned finals MVP honors in 2014 as a member of the champion Spurs.

Finals game six was the last the Warriors will play in Oakland’s Oracle Arena, which first hosted games as Oakland-Alameda County Arena in 1966. Warriors fans enjoyed championship teams at the venue in 1975 and again during the team’s recent dominance in 2015, 2017, and 2018. Beginning next season, the Warriors will play their home games at the new $1.4-billion Chase Center across the bay in San Francisco.

June 15, 2018

On June 8, 2018, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and the Golden State Warriors took down LeBron James and his overmatched Cleveland Cavaliers 108-85 to capture a second straight National Basketball Association (NBA) title. (Golden State owns three of the last four NBA crowns.) The team’s win last Friday at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, completed a four-game sweep in the best-of-seven series. Curry broke the Cavs’ collective will with 37 points in the final game to bring the series—and the season—to a predictable conclusion.

Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors drives to the basket against LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers during game four of the NBA Finals at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 8, 2018. Credit: © Kyle Terada, Getty Images

This year’s NBA Finals had megastars (Curry, Durant, and James) and history (an NBA-record fourth-straight finals matchup of Cleveland vs. Golden State). There were even intriguing nicknames for the series: Cavs-Warriors IV, or, if you prefer, The Tetralogy (a college-level word meaning trilogy-plus-one). What the series lacked, however, was suspense. The Warriors followed up close matches in games one and three with blowouts in games two and four, easing their way to the title while preventing the Cavs from earning a single win. Durant, who averaged nearly 29 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists on high-percentage shooting in the finals, won the Bill Russell Finals Most Valuable Player Award for a second-straight year.

Between the two teams, only eight players remained from the teams’ first finals tangle in 2015: LeBron James, J. R. Smith, and Tristan Thompson for Cleveland; and Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, and Klay Thompson for the Oakland-based Golden State squad.

Finals game one in Oakland offered the most hope for the Cavaliers and their narrow championship chances. The game was tied at halftime and close throughout. With 35 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and Cleveland ahead by 2, a curious reversal of a foul call during a video review changed a Durant charge into a blocking foul on James. On a night when James did nearly everything right—51 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists—the changed call proved a bit of bad luck the Cavaliers could not overcome. Durant made two free throws to tie the score. Then, with fewer than 5 seconds to go in a tie game, Cavs guard Smith secured an offensive rebound near the basket. Bizarrely, Smith neglected to put up a shot to try to win the game, and he was dribbling away from the basket as time expired. He explained later that he thought his team was ahead at the time. In overtime, Golden State quickly jumped out front and won the game going away, 124-114.

Game two saw no such drama. The Warriors led from start to finish for an easy 122-103 victory. The series moved to Cleveland for game three, and although the game was close, the result was the same. Durant scored 43 points and added 13 rebounds and 7 assists to pull the Warriors ahead down the stretch for a 110-102 win and a commanding 3-0 series lead. James tallied 33 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists for the losing Cavs, extending his NBA-record 10th finals triple double (double digits in points, rebounds, and assists). Game four was the least dramatic of all as the Warriors jumped out early and cruised through the second half with leads hovering around 20 points.

In the Eastern Conference playoffs, James almost single-handedly carried his Cavaliers past the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors, and Boston Celtics en route to his team’s fourth straight NBA Finals appearance. James also secured his individual legacy with an eighth consecutive trip—and ninth overall—to the NBA Finals. James first made it to the finals in 2007 during his first go-round with the Cavs. He then reached the finals with the Miami Heat from 2011 through 2014, winning championships in 2012 and 2013. James returned to Cleveland for the 2014-2015 season, and he brought the Cavaliers their lone championship in 2016.

In the western playoffs, the Warriors downed the San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans before outlasting the regular season NBA-best Houston Rockets in an exciting seven-game Western Conference Finals.

June 14, 2017

On Monday, June 12, the Golden State Warriors overwhelmed the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers 129-120 in the deciding game five of the best-of-seven National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Warriors standouts Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry led the way against Cleveland stars LeBron James and Kyrie Irving to bring Golden State its second championship in the last three seasons.

On June 12, 2017, Stephen Curry (30) of the Golden State Warriors drives to the basket as Draymond Green (23) blocks out Cleveland Cavaliers defenders in Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. The Warriors won the NBA title four games to one. Credit: © Kyle Terada, Pool/Getty Images

This year’s NBA Finals was the third straight match-up between the Warriors and Cavs. Never before in NBA history have two teams returned three straight years to face each other in the finals. After last year’s dramatic win for Cleveland—their first in team history—both the Warriors and Cavs improved their team depth. But it was the Warriors that made the biggest off-season splash, adding free agent do-everything wing Kevin Durant, perhaps the game’s greatest scorer.

LeBron James, who made a record seventh-straight appearance in the finals (including three years with the Miami Heat), became the first-ever player to average a finals triple-double (double-digit totals among three statistical categories) with 33.6 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists per game. “I left everything on the floor every game,” James said after his team’s defeat. LeBron’s sustained excellence was not enough, however, to contain the lethal combination of Durant and the sharpshooting Curry, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP). Curry averaged 26.8 points, 8 rebounds, and 9 assists per game in this year’s finals.

The championship series began auspiciously for the Warriors, who in game one exploited 20 Cavaliers turnovers and numerous defensive breakdowns in a 113-91 rout. Acting Coach Mike Brown led the Warriors in game one and in most of the early rounds of the 2017 playoffs. Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr, who missed 11 playoff games dealing with chronic pain caused by complications from a 2015 back surgery, returned to the team’s bench in game two, when the California squad outscored their Lake Erie counterparts, 132-113.

In a pivotal game three at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, the Warriors closed on a 11-0 run over the last two-plus minutes to win 118-113, crushing the Cavs’ hopes of making the series competitive. The Cavs built a late 113-107 lead but went scoreless thereafter. Durant calmly sank a three-pointer over James to give the Warriors the lead with 45 seconds to go. James (39 points and 11 rebounds) played a wonderful all-around game but could not will his team to victory down the stretch. Golden State’s Klay Thompson (30 points), Curry (26 points, 13 rebounds), and Durant (31 points, 8 rebounds) proved too much for the Cavs, despite masterful shot-making displays by Cleveland guard Irving (38 points) and a 16-point effort from guard J.R. Smith. In game four, the Cavs raced out to an 86-68 halftime lead—the 86 points a Finals halftime record—and held off the Warriors in the second half for a comfortable 137-116 win. The Cavs—led by Irving, Smith, and forward Kevin Love—made 52 percent of their three-pointers in the game.

In game five back in Oakland, the Warriors built a 71-60 halftime lead, but the Cavaliers, behind Smith’s seven-of-eight shooting from beyond the three-point arc, remained within striking distance for much of the second half. Warrior swingman Andre Iguodala, who scored 20 points in his best game of the series, disheartened the Cavs with four rim-rattling dunks, including two on alley-oops from forward Draymond Green.

Durant won the Bill Russell Finals MVP Award after becoming the first player since Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 to score 30–plus points in each game of the NBA Finals. Durant downplayed his individual award, emphasizing that the championship belonged to the team and the city. “We’re champions and we did it on our own floor,” he said.