Well, the 2018 NBA Finals turned out to be as lopsided as most people assumed.
The Golden State Warriors completed a sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 108-85 victory on Friday night in Cleveland to win back-to-back championships.
It’s Golden State’s sixth title in franchise history and their third title over the last four years, with all three of those championships coming against LeBron James and the Cavs (though Cleveland was victorious in the 2015-16 matchup).
Game 4 was a thorough beatdown of the Cavs, and it was frankly an embarrassing effort by Cleveland in front of their home crowd. The Cavs straight-up looked like a team that gave up. Look at this sequence for an example of how the game looked for pretty much the entire second half, with ABC’s Mark Jackson even commenting on how embarrassing the effort was:
After a (very rare) brutal performance in Game 3, Steph Curry rebounded with a typical Steph Curry performance. Curry scored 37 points (12-of 27 FG, 6-of-6 FT) and drained seven threes, including this ridiculous one in the first quarter:
Game 3 hero Kevin Durant “only” scored 20 points in Game 4, but still managed to put together a triple-double (20 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists). And he was named NBA Finals MVP for the second straight year.
On the other side, LeBron — as always — led the way with 23 points, but — as always — got very little help from his supporting cast. And now the main story in the coming months will be about where he’s going to play next season, which seems to be anyone’s guess at this point.
But let’s stop for a second and recognize how absurd this Warriors group has been. This has been a ridiculously dominant team over the last four years, with their only slip-up thanks to an otherwordly individual performance by LeBron in 2015-16 (and that still took seven games). Golden State is now 63-19 in the playoffs over the last four years.
If the Warriors win tonight they’ll improve their record in the playoffs over the last four seasons to 63-19.
The NBA teams to win at least 63 games in the regular season in that span:
17-18 Houston: 65
16-17 Warriors: 67
15-16 Warriors: 73
15-16 Spurs: 67
14-15 Warriors 67— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) June 8, 2018
And while they will likely have more competition next year (especially in the Finals with the Celtics and 76ers on the verge of becoming forces), they’re going to be the favorites to win it all again. And probably the year after that.
