As LeBron James wept on the court, overwhelmed by joy and fulfillment and surrounded by the teammates whose careers he validated, Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala stuck around, among the thousands inside Oracle Arena looking on in stunned silence. The Golden State Warriors had been scheduling a date with destiny for nearly eight months, through a swashbuckling, leave-no-doubt campaign that entered them – perhaps prematurely – into the argument as one of the greatest teams ever. But when it came time to finish the job and etch their names among those immortals, they had nothing left – and were left to ponder so many what-ifs that will surely haunt them for many years to come, and possibly forever.
"It stung," Curry said after the Warriors' magical season vanished with a 93-89 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. "It sucked to watch them celebrate, and we wish it would have been us."
Instead of a Champagne shower to celebrate those 73 wins, Curry's first unanimous MVP and Steve Kerr's Coach of the Year honors, the Warriors' locker-room carpet was doused with the tears of disappointment. Not only did they come up short in proving wrong all those who attempted to diminish their title run from a year ago, but they have to live with the ignominy of being the first team in history to blow a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. The franchise that owner Joe Lacob claimed was "light years" ahead of everyone else, got chased down by the defining player of this era.
James crashed the coronation with a never-before-seen determination and turned all of the Warriors' accomplishments during an otherwise dream season into footnotes in a legendary career that is far from its completion. The Warriors' NBA Finals collapse was so stunning in its swiftness that fingering the source of the blame would be a dizzying exercise that still misses the actual target. The Warriors could look to Draymond Green's suspension, Klay Thompson's smack talk to James about this being a "man's game," Harrison Barnes' disappearing jump shot, Andrew Bogut's knee injury, Andre Igoudala's back, Curry's mouthpiece toss or the Twitter meltdown by his wife, Ayesha.
But the question the Warriors might have to ask themselves is one for which there isn't an easy answer: Would any team placed in a similar position to set an all-time record for regular-season wins take that shot again? The Warriors wanted to top Michael Jordan's 72 wins and gleefully, greedily went after it without taking into consideration how it might affect a two-month postseason chase for the title. Maybe it didn't matter but the end result suggests otherwise – and in many ways that is unfortunate, because there should be some reward for attempting to squeeze all of the greatness from the tube and leaving it all out there. Green already stated that the Warriors wouldn't hang a banner for some regular-season record, and raising "73-9" – a mark that will likely remain unbroken, given how this season ended – really would only serve as a mockery of what they were unable to actually accomplish.
"It's been an amazing year," Green said. "We just failed at one goal we had, but this whole season isn't a failure for me."
The Warriors had a tendency to procrastinate all season but were playing a dangerous game, increasing the possibility of more harm the longer this season went on. They were exhausted after rallying from a 3-1 deficit against Oklahoma City and grew more fatigued against the boundlessly energetic James, who was soaring to throw down mind-bending dunks and cementing his hero status in Northeast Ohio with an out-of-nowhere blocked shot on Iguodala in the final two minutes that also erased 52 years of misery for Cleveland sports fans.
"It was meant for them to win. That's the bottom line," Iguodala said.
Aside from being without Kerr because of complications from back surgery, the Warriors stormed through this season with little to no resistance or worry. The postseason, however, was filled with an endless stream of physical and mental tests – injuries to Curry's right ankle and right knee, being on the brink of elimination against Oklahoma City – that they were able to pass until they got buried by them.
James' Cavaliers took an almost opposite path as they dealt with non-stop drama in the regular season. From firing David Blatt, to James' sometimes frosty relationship with co-stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, to his confusing subtweets and so on, the Cavaliers had gone through the wringer and come out better on the other side. They were untested in the Eastern Conference playoffs, so they had plenty of time to rest, work on new handshakes and strengthen their bonds. A daunting deficit against the Warriors forced them to summon the character derived from past setbacks. The struggle was rewarding.
For the Warriors, the struggle was real. They came up one win short in a season that was all about how they had revolutionized the game, turned bitterness over perceived slights into happiness and used it as motivation to demolish the opposition. But in the playoffs, the Warriors went 15-9, lost on a game-winning shot for the first time (against James Harden and the underachieving Houston Rockets), lost consecutive games for the first time all season (against Kevin Durant's and Russell Westbrook's Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference finals) and lost three in a row for the first time in two seasons under Kerr.
The Cavaliers will get rings, but Golden State will still be remembered as the best team that failed to win it all. Albeit for the wrong reasons the 2001 Seattle Mariners and 2007 New England Patriots still get mentioned in the annals of history. The fact remains that James' third championship will go down as the crowning achievement of his regal career solely because it came against these Warriors – a team that challenged what we should come to expect from the best, a team that shamelessly pursued every means to flaunt how good they were.
"Did something no team's done before. Fell short in the last game of the season. It hurts," Curry said. "It wasn't easy what we accomplished, and it's not an easy pill to swallow what we didn't accomplish. So you've got to take the good with the bad, understand that we hopefully will have many more opportunities to fight for championships and be on this stage because it is what it's all about."
Thompson and Curry both said prior to Game 7 that this season would be a failure if they were unable to cap it off with a championship. Kerr thought such talk was ridiculous, and perhaps that mindset contributed to such a disheartening end. What was supposed to be fun suddenly became a burden. The Warriors were neither complacent nor aggressively hunting down that final trophy; they were trying to avoid the shame and the Crying Jordan memes.
Even until the end, when he could've come clean without persecution, Curry refused to use his physical ailments and limitations as an excuse ("I was out there, ready to play," Curry said). Green accepted responsibility for allowing the season to go on longer than it needed by getting into that exchange with James that turned around this series ("I blame myself for everything. That's just who I am," Green said). And Kerr, even at his lowest Sunday night, still tried to keep the whole experience in perspective.
"You know, we've had so many moments of joy together," Kerr said, "and it was like, 'Wow, we're actually having a moment of sorrow as a team.' It's a great reminder that, first of all, it's not easy to win a championship. But … it's life. Things happen. You move on."
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