LeBron’s presence in the West isn’t intimidating Steph Curry
By Cody Rivera
LeBron James definitely makes the Los Angeles Lakers a better team, but Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors are still the two-time defending champs.
After four straight years of being rivals in the NBA Finals, Steph Curry and LeBron James now find themselves in the same division.
With LeBron’s recent free agency move to join the Los Angeles Lakers, he and Curry are now pitted against each other as Pacific Division, and Western Conference, rivals. Instead of meeting in the Finals, they will now get their shots at each other multiple times during the regular season, and most likely in a Western Conference playoff series.
But the fact that Curry’s Golden State Warriors now have to share a division with the greatest player in the world isn’t something Curry is too worried about. And after all, why should he be? In four consecutive Finals matchups, Curry and the Warriors beat LeBron and the Cleveland Cavaliers three out of four times — with the most recent one being a four-game sweep.
While LeBron is the best basketball player the NBA has seen since Michael Jordan, the Warriors are the most dominant team the NBA has seen since Jordan’s six-time champion Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s. And even though LeBron’s 2018-19 Lakers team will probably be a little better than his 2017-18 Cavs team, Curry knows that they still have to go through the two-time defending champs … and that task won’t be getting any easier, seeing as how the Warriors recently added to their already-stacked roster by signing DeMarcus Cousins.
“There’s a lot that’s been made about the competition in the West and (LeBron’s) eight straight Finals appearance and all that,” Curry said in a Q&A with USA Today Sports, “but that just makes everyone raise the antenna up a little bit – including us. It’s going to be fun for fans, playing (more) in the regular season and who knows in the playoffs. So the West obviously got stronger with LeBron, but you’ve still got to beat us.”
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When you’re lucky enough to play on the best team of the decade, there’s not much else in the league that can intimidate you. And as Curry mentioned, it will be extremely fun for the fans to watch him and LeBron split the loyalties of the state of California.