How do the Cavs and Warriors match up in this years NBA Finals?

Durant also lost a year due to Westbrooks injury and potentially lost another to Ibaka's injury in 2014.

And Durant has nothing on his record anywhere close to as bad as the 2011 Finals. Joke about 3-1 all you want, he put up 40/7/3 on 55 TS% in game 5 and 28/7/3 on 65 TS% in game 7 and averaged 30/8/3 for the series.

As for Durant joined a 73 win team. LeBron James's top competition in the Eastern Conference in 2010 were the 50-32 Celtics, who finished the year 26-26, and Garnett/Pierce/Allen were all 35+ and past their primes. The only other legitimate team had Rashard Lewis as the 2nd option.

So what did LeBron do? He left his 60 win team and joined teams with the 2nd and 4th best players in his entire conference. And before we blast the Cavs and play revisionist history. The Cavs signed Shaq in 2010, he averaged 18/8 the year before. They traded for Mo Williams in 2009 who made the all star team. Despite everyone loving to joke that LeBron turned Mo Williams into an all star, the guy was just as good in Milwaukee as he was in Cleveland.

17.2/3.5/6.3 on 48.0/38.5/85.6 splits in Milwaukee in 2008
17.8/3.4/4.1 on 46.7/43.6/91.2 splits in Cleveland in 2009

The Cavs traded for Antawn Jamison at the deadline in 2010. Jamison was a borderline allstar, averaged 22/9 from 2006-2011, & was averaging 21/9 in 2010 before the trade and continued to play well in Cleveland, averaging 16/8 as the third option.

Cleveland signed Anthony Parker in 2010, who was one of the best shooters in the entire league at the time.

Cleveland brought back Ilgauskas, who had averaged 14/9 the previous 2 seasons.

Cleveland had Varejao who was 2nd team all NBA defense and despite being plagued by injuries, was still a +3.0 BPM level defender as late as 2014.

Cleveland tried to trade for Amare. Cleveland tried to trade for Bosh. Cleveland tried to trade for Love. No, they didn't refuse to trade Hickson like every loves to pretend. It was the Suns that vetoed the trade, Cleveland was going all in.

http://www.morningjournal.com/article/MJ/20120128/NEWS/301289974

I'm tired of this revisionist history bullshit. It's frankly pathetic.

/r/nba Thread Parent