BAE Index, 6/17/15: The Golden State Warriors win the 2015 NBA Finals
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The Warriors win clinch the NBA title
What an accomplishment for a team that has been at the top of the league all season. Emphasize the “team” part there, too. Steph Curry, the league’s MVP and Golden State’s fearless leader, wasn’t himself for the whole series, and his teammates pulled through for him. They played a beautiful brand of ball, and while the Cleveland Cavaliers played them well, they just didn’t have enough fire-power outside of LeBron James. Congratulations to the Warriors on a heck of a season.
Andre Igoudala wins the Finals’ MVP award
Igoudala was the most consistent player through the course of the Finals for Golden State. He did his thing on offense, scoring decently, running the floor in transition, and keeping the ball moving with some spectacular passing in the half-court. Most importantly, though, he played a huge role in preventing LeBron James from single-handedly winning the series for Cleveland. James still got his, obviously, and had one of the greatest individual performances in Finals’ history. But, Igoudala and a slew of help defenders made James go through a ton of work to perform the way he did, and forced him into missing just enough shots for the Warriors to win.
There’s always next year, Cleveland
This is familiar territory for Cleveland sports fans, getting excited about the possibility of winning a championship only to have their hope stripped away by cocktail of misfortune consisting of injuries, not getting bounces, and playing a flat-out better team. While things might be terrible now, there still might be light at the end of the tunnel. Kyrie Irving and (most likely) Kevin Love will be returning to a team that very well could have won the title in it’s first year together if they were healthy. They struggled early, but the Cavaliers put it all together in the second half of the season. Now that they’ll have another year together to gel, that will them so much more dangerous.