The Rotation: Kevin Durant beats LeBron James, this time

Welcome to The Rotation, our daily playoff wrap-up of our favorite stories, large and small, from last night’s NBA action.

This wasn’t Warriors vs Cavaliers, this was Durant vs. LeBron

By Wes Goldberg (@wcgoldberg)

In 2012 LeBron James stiff-armed Kevin Durant on his way to his first NBA championship, and it’s taken five years for Durant to brush himself off and catch up.

By signing with the Warriors in July, Durant put himself on a bullet train to catch LeBron at the goal line. And so the two met in the NBA Finals (as we all expected) and went face-to-face for five (and three thrilling) games.

Zoom in on Cavaliers vs. Warriors Part Three and there’s LeBron James, posting up Kevin Durant. There’s KD jab stepping to a jumper over The King. What at first seemed like a story about two cities turned out to be only about two people. This was either LeBron ascending to G.O.A.T.-ness, or Durant checking off the requisite box to be considered among The Greats.

For a season that read along a predictable plot, the ending was storybook. In the final quarter of the final game of the season, the two best basketballers in the world squared up and traded blows.

It started with LeBron opening up the fourth quarter with a layup, and Durant answering with a 17-foot turnaround fadeaway. LeBron was responsible for 17 of Cleveland’s 27 fourth quarter points. Durant 16 of Golden State’s 31. LeBron guarded Durant the entire time he was on the floor and vice-versa. The moment was tangible in every bounce and step back, as consequences beyond scoreboard results hung in the purgatory of anticipation.

Durant went to the Warriors to win a title and LeBron went to the Cavaliers to bring one to Cleveland. But, for you and I, everything that happened happened to get us back here. Back to the two best players vying for a singular prize.

“He’s the only person that I was looking at since 2012,” Durant said of his rival as he walked off the court. “He’s the only one I looked at. He’s the only one who can look me eye to eye.”

Now we enter the summer. There will be changes—small or big—to both rosters, but LeBron and Durant will remain on the frontline. When next season starts, they’ll lead their teams back towards the Finals but, this time, both will be weatherworn and accomplished. In a broad sense the 2016-17 NBA season materialized cleanly and expectedly, but the first installment of a series often does. It’s afterwards that sh-t gets complicated. This is when the real fun begins.

Durant’s vindication

By Brandon Jefferson (@Jefferson_Hoops)

Kevin Durant has been hearing it for almost a full year now. He’s a snake. He’s a traitor. He’s lame. He didn’t face adversity, but ran from it. After last night’s 129-120 win by the Golden State Warriors he’s something else now too, he’s a champion.

Durant titled his Player’s Tribune announcement letter, “My Next Chapter” and this second act of his career has started off with a bang. The talk about the rich getting richer proved true, however, after a five-game series in the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the end result is all that matters.

The Cavaliers stealing Game 4 brought everyone’s favorite phrase “3-1 lead” back en vogue, but armed with Durant, Golden State would not again watch an insurmountable lead slip through their fingers.

In the Finals Durant averaged 35.2 points, 8.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 blocks and 1 steal per game on shooting splits of 55.6/47.4/92.7. He takes home the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP award as well. He was able to notch 30-plus points in all five games (a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since Shaquille O’Neal in the 2000 NBA Finals) and saved his best for last, scoring 39 points on 20 shots to close out the series.

With 50 seconds left in Game 5 and the Warriors up by 11 points Durant became noticeably overcome with emotion bent over at halfcourt. It continued after the final horn sounded, Stephen Curry found him and shouted “This what you came here for! This what you came here for!” Next up was Wanda Pratt, aka “the Real MVP”.

Mother and son, who’ve been intertwined so closely over Durant’s 10-year NBA career — and the 28 years of Durant’s life — were sharing the moment that Durant had told his mom would come since he was eight-years-old.

This moment is why he made the choice to join the Warriors. Durant’s move to the Bay Area has gone about as well as anyone could have imagined. He finally laid claim to the ever elusive title, he now joins Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain as the only players to win four-plus scoring titles and an NBA title.

The backlash is a thing of the past. He answered all the questions and had the biggest impact on the biggest stage.

Now he can look at the haters and naysayers and ask, “What now?”

Why hate what’s great?

By Matthew Miranda (@MMiranda613)

With under eight minutes to go in Game 5, LeBron James missed a fadeaway. Klay Thompson got the rebound and passed it to Steph Curry, who pushed up the floor and found Andre Iguodala behind the Cleveland defense for an uncontested dunk. The Warriors went up 10 and went on to win their second championship in three seasons.

Four Cav defenders were attending to Curry and Thompson behind the arc. Usually, surrendering an open 2-pointer is a cardinal sin. But Golden State warps convention to the point where cardinal sin becomes the lesser of two evils. That’s what greatness does. You don’t have to like it. Many don’t. Why?

The composer J.S. Bach didn’t become famous until 100 years after he died; in life, he was once fired from an organist gig because he was so good improvising people assumed he was possessed by the devil (greatness is often misunderstood). You’ve probably heard of Mozart, and you probably haven’t heard of any of the Viennese composers more popular than he was when he died. LeBron James just led his seventh straight team to a Finals, and after deserving the Finals MVP two years ago and winning it last year, he became the first player ever to average a triple-double in the Finals. Yet the next couple of months will see a tsunami of poorly assembled LeBron hot takes. You’ll see Golden State slandered, too, despite just having won it all. Again. Isn’t such success what fans of mortal teams dream of? Why are the Warriors so disliked?

Is it the fact that they’re a growing dynasty? Can’t be. The Lakers and Celtics are the NBA’s primordial rivalry, and there was hardly any griping when they owned the 1980’s, or met twice more late last decade. The NBA is, historically, all about dominance: 10 teams have won it all since 1984. Eight won more than once; only Cleveland and Dallas failed to. Ten teams since 1984 have played in three consecutive Finals, so it doesn’t seem an extent-of-greatness problem, either. The 1992 Dream Team beat teams by 50-70 points a night and is as feted as any basketball team ever.

Maybe it’s more how the Warriors were assembled. We’re used to storylines where organizations build winners. When the Larry O’Brien trophy is presented, who gets it first? The owner(s). Talk radio and internet comment boards pulse with prose proposing winning formulas, too.

But here, now, by the Bay, we have our second player-generated superteam of this decade. When the people who control the means of production take the reins of their fate, and terraform their workplace, building teams themselves rather than ending up at the mercy of someone else’s blueprint, we argue about what it means, often clutching our pearls and bugging, rather than reveling in what’s wondrous and new before us.

Durant, the Finals MVP, averaged 35 a night with shooting numbers that neared an unheard-of 60/50/90 level. Two-time defending league MVP Curry nearly put up a 30/10/10 series. In Thompson, the Warriors have a player who can score 37 in a quarter, yet spend the Finals focused on defense. Draymond Green is a nightly triple-double threat and a historic defender. Iguodala has been All-Defense, an All-Star, and Finals MVP, and threw down the highlight of the series.

The Warriors averaged over 121 per game. Every year of their Finals run, they’ve gone up against the GOAT of their era, possibly the GOAT of GOATs, at the absolute peak of his powers, and won nearly two-thirds of those games. They’re amazing on both sides of the ball. They share. They cut. They move. They kill you with jabs. They kill you with haymakers. They make giving up uncontested 2-pointers a practical concession. Think about that.

Next: Warriors clinched the championship with a signature run

Somewhere, the next superteam is brewing. When the Lakers and Celtics ran the 80’s, Detroit was developing all the while; when the Heat and Spurs were splitting titles a few years ago, Golden State was taking its first fumbling steps towards contention. Whoever eventually usurps the Warriors will only end up as great as they are because Golden State was as great as they are now. Don’t hate the players. Don’t hate the game. Don’t miss out on what’s unfolding before you. The greatness of greatness is inseparable from its fragility – you never know if this is the last time you’ll get to witness it, at least in this incarnation. So enjoy.