NBA Finals Preview: What if… the Warriors sweep the Cavaliers?

Let me own this up front: I don’t think this is likely. Tyronn Lue is an inventive, if not outright good, head coach, and he’ll try to take Steph Curry out of the game (as much as that is a thing that can happen), with physicality and pressure on and off the ball. He’ll use Tristan Thompson to play the glass and force the center to remain relevant. He’ll have LeBron James, which is good odds against a sweep in any event.

But his defense has shown leaks against teams with a plurality in weapons, so not the Indiana Pacers, and teams that pass quickly out of traps, so not the Toronto Raptors. Likely, his defense can be stretched to a new degree by teams built of raw star talent, so not any of those teams or the Boston Celtics.

And in these voodoo playoffs, where fate is determined to see everybody swept? In the NBA Finals of those playoffs, which stands as the culmination of what was always a two-team title picture from the start and possibly our last chance of fulfillment by competitive basketball? Yeah, I’m willing to consider that the Golden State Warriors sweep the Cleveland Cavaliers. Disappointment and shame are undefeated this year.

Now, let’s not put any of that on the Warriors, who have definitely made these basketball games boring, but only by doing what they were supposed to. They got good. They got Kevin Durant, who took control of his freedoms as a player to go do something that was good for his career and well-being. I respect the power move. I don’t really care to watch the games anymore.

The Warriors were plenty of fun last year, when they won 73 games. They were plenty of fun the year before, when they won a title. Their come-up was organic, and saw plenty of cool things happen: draft picks becoming stars, Curry getting over the ankle injuries, a full-on embrace of the 3-pointer, Draymond Green defining new terms for modern basketball, Shaun Livingston winning, Steve Kerr, Luke Walton, JaVale McGee. It goes on.

But stasis is boring, and dynasties are boring. I liked that team for the way they built themselves up and eventually found success, but now I’ve seen enough of it. Selfishly, sure, but as a fan I get to be selfish. I only want to see a team dominate the field like that for like, two seasons maximum. Anything else, and you had better be the San Antonio Spurs — always reinventing yourself to keep things interesting, and never the runaway favorite.

If the Warriors crush the Cavaliers, everything that these playoffs have been so far will come to a head. Imagine the takes. We will burn in a maelstrom of sports shouting, over parity of all things. Some major television network will talk about the Washington Wizards for the first time this season, and ask why it couldn’t have been them. They’ll ask why the Warriors are allowed to be this good, and whether it’s healthy for the league, and it’ll be awful, but come on, it’ll also be kind of funny.

As for the question at hand: should the league address this? There’s at least a bit of a parity issue bound to the minute writings of the CBA, definitely. There’s also been plenty of pure, good luck in what the Warriors have achieved, like the NBA’s last TV deal — signed back in the year of the We Believe-era Warriors — ending at the perfect time. Some stuff is just exceedingly difficult to write out through the CBA, and every possible solution comes with the risk of introducing problems of its own.

Maybe the geniuses working alongside Adam Silver and Michele Roberts can figure something out one day, and when that day comes, I’m sure we’ll all be better off for it. But I don’t know the solution, I don’t know if there is a solution and I don’t know if we really need one. I just know the shouting heads will have a damn day with a Warriors sweep, and as long as they aren’t taking a country’s health care, I think we can revel in this.

For sure, part of me wants a competitive Finals, to close out the season with seven games of real good ball. Part of me wants the Cavaliers to pull out a win, because LeBron is the GOAT and every success pulls a 50–50 consensus towards factual accuracy. Another part of me wants the Warriors to just sweep the thing, so that we can really lean into the chaos of dead parities.

Next: Finals Preview -- After 'The Stop,' Kevin Love is a different player

The promise of mutually assured destruction between basketball and its fans is nigh. I’ve had enough of the Warriors and I’ve definitely had enough of Draymond talking all types of noise and sucking us into his BS vortex, but we made it all this way through these garbage playoffs. My actual prediction is something boring like Warriors in 5 or Warriors in 6, but what’s another sweep for a summer of tremendous content?

Home/NBA