2015 NBA Finals: Guide for beginners
By Stu White
Feeling like an outsider is no fun, especially when it seems like everyone around you is excited. You want to participate and be part of the conversation — it’s only human, after all — but it can be challenging to speak up when it seems like everyone is an expert — full of opinions and analysis and well-researched facts — except for you. Nobody likes to feel ignorant or uninformed or otherwise lacking in knowledge, stuck on the outside looking in.
When it comes to sports, this sense of outsiderness can feel especially oppressive. Sports fans, on the whole, are obsessive creatures: Fans since childhood, they’ve forgotten more statistics than you’ll ever memorize, and they tend to speak in shorthand, specialized jargon that can be alienating to even casual fans, much less novices. These feelings of alienation can become even worse when there’s a major event about to occur, because all of the sudden that chatter that you’re not a part of becomes inescapable (for example, if you’re not a football fan, I assume that the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl are outright miserable for you, and I feel like you should receive a sympathy card and/or numerous hugs).
So if you’re in that boat with regard to the upcoming NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, don’t worry! We’re here to walk you through all the basics you need to know in order to survive the next few weeks of around-the-clock NBA coverage. We can’t make you an expert, unfortunately, but we can at least help make you more conversant when it comes to discussing the various matchups and narratives that will be dominating conversational spaces until the final buzzer sounds and the championship trophy is awarded.
To begin, let’s take a look at the respective franchises.
Next: The Two Teams