Welp, here we bloody go again.
The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors will face off in the NBA Finals in what will be their third consecutive clash for the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
This year’s NBA Playoffs have seemed less like an actual contest and more like a needless delaying of the inevitable, with both the Warriors and the Cavs virtually steamrolling their way through to their date with the finals.
The Cavs punched their ticket to big dance by closing out the Boston Celtics – which is a sentence that makes it sound like the Celtics had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. They did not.
Cleveland bullied a hapless Celtics in today’s Game 5 of their Eastern Conference Championship clash, erasing any doubt as to who the big swinging dick was by the end of the first quarter in which the Cavs dropped an eye-watering 43 points on the Massachusetts Green Men.
LeBron James, in dropping 35 points today before coach Tyronn Lue put the cue in the rack in the fourth quarter, surpassed Michael Jordan as the NBA’s all-time playoffs scoring leader. He’s now 5 points shy of draining 6,000 total points in playoffs alone.
On the subject of James, this will now be his 7th consecutive trip to the NBA Finals, having played in ever Finals series since 2011 (four with the Miami Heat, three since his return to Cleveland). He’s the 7th player in history to achieve this feat, with the other 6 all coming from Boston‘s untouchable Bill Russell-era dynasty side of the 1960s. Also James Jones is doing the same dang thing but you won’t hear many people talk about that.
Of the Warriors and the Cavs, only Cleveland has dropped a game this playoffs – a single, solitary loss to Boston on an off-day, that the internet is hilariously suggesting was a thrown game so LeBron could beat the Celtics senseless in Boston one more time.
Game 5 was such a non-event that Charles Barkley stated he was going to nick off at half-time to watch the (far more enthralling) Game 7 NHL clash between Ottawa and Pittsburgh.
The 135 – 102 final scoreline flattered the Celtics immensely, who now take their (admittedly very talented) core and await the arrival of the number one draft pick that they somehow spirited away from Brooklyn several years ago.
As for everyone else, it’s the rubber match, folks. Cavs v Warriors III.
Does LeBron get to march another trophy back into the Q Arena?
Will Kevin Durant‘s cuckold-ish scampering to San Francisco be rewarded with a championship ring?
Is Steph Curry gonna go mental and start draining balls from Jimmer-range?
Is Matty Dellavedova double-parked on a set of Corona tinnies as we bloody speak?
Time will tell.
Game 1 of the NBA Finals is scheduled for next Friday (AUS time), June 1st.
Game. Feckin’. On.
Source: NBA.com.
Photo: Adam Glanzman/Getty.
