THE 2015 National Basketball Association Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers will get underway on June 4 (June 5, Manila time, 9:00 a.m.) at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
Owning homecourt advantage in the best-of-seven championship series by virtue of their all-time franchise mark and league-best 67-15 ledger during the regulars wars, the Warriors will also host Game Two on June 8 (Manila time, 8:00 a.m.) of the Finals with the old 2-2-1-1-1 format for a second consecutive year after having utilized a 2-3-2 scheme from 1985 to 2013.
The rest of the Finals schedule (all Manila times) – Game Three at Cleveland, June 10, 9:00 a.m.; Game Four at Cleveland, June 12, 9:00 a.m.; Game Five at Golden State (if necessary), June 15, 8:00 a.m.; Game Six at Cleveland (if necessary), June 17, 9:00 a.m.; and Game Seven at Golden State (if necessary), June 20, 9:00 a.m.
Las Vegas oddsmakers have installed the Warriors as the favorites to romp away with the Larry O’Brien championship trophy – perhaps because Golden State has the homecourt advantage.
In NBA Finals history, the team with the homecourt edge has won the series 49 times and lost 19 for a .721 victory clip.
In 24 of the last 32 years, the team with that incentive has emerged triumphant for a .750 success rate although off-chart results were recorded in 2011 and 2012.
Game One is just as important in the best-of-seven NBA Finals.
The team that secured the opening game has gone on to win 48 of the 68 previous series, including 21 in the last 30 years, for a .706 success clip.
Just about everybody believes the Warriors will beat the Cavaliers in the Finals. But this battle-scarred House loves to root for the underdogs and will go against the grain to pick Cleveland over Golden State in six games and secure its first-ever NBA title in only its second Finals stint since joining the league in 1970-71.
For the Cavaliers, who tote a 12-2 mark in the current playoffs following a 53-29 regular finish, that’s 45 years of an NBA championship drought. The Cavs first earned a Finals berth in 2007 – in LeBron James’ first tour of duty in Wine City – but were whitewashed in four games by the San Antonio Spurs.
There’s so much frustration in the city of Cleveland, which has not tasted a championship parade from any of the four U.S. major pro team sports leagues since 1964 when athlete-turned-actor Jim Brown powered the Cleveland Browns to the National Football League (Super Bowl) diadem.
The “Dubs” themselves are hungry with 40 years of NBA title futility. Golden State, which owns a 12-3 mark in the current postseason, snared its lone crown in the Bay Area in 1975 although the Warriors also won NBA titles in 1947 and 1956 when they were located in Philadelphia.
(Title droughts by both protagonists in the NBA Finals remind me of National University, whose men’s basketball team also annexed the University Athletic Association of the Philippines crown for the first time in exactly six decades a year ago.)
During the regulars, Golden State and Cleveland split their two-game series with each winning at home. The Warriors won, 112-94, on January 9 with James sidelined by an injury. The Cavaliers equalized on February 26 with a 110-99 triumph behind LeBron’s 42 points and 11 boards.
The meal tickets of both teams in the 2015 NBA Finals have something in common.
James, the first non-Boston player to be invited to the Finals party for five consecutive seasons since several stars from the Celtics’ dynastic eight-year championship reign from 1959-66, has won the regular league Most Valuable Player award on four occasions – 2009 and 2010 with Cleveland and 2012 and 2013 with Miami, a team that the gifted physical specimen deserted after four seasons to return to his home state last summer.
Cat-quick, can’t-catch-him Stephen Curry, the Warriors’ three-point hotshot, is the NBA’s reigning MVP, of course.
What a coincidence: Both James and Curry were born in Akron, Ohio – and in the same hospital – just more than three years apart.
The 2015 Finals also marks the first time that the two teams have a rookie for a head coach – Stephen Douglas (Steve) Kerr (Golden State) and David Blatt (Cleveland) – since the league opened shop in 1946-47 as the Basketball Association of America.
Both Kerr and Blatt are bidding to become the first rookie bench boss to win the NBA title since Pat Riley accomplished the feat with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1982.
Cleveland has six players with NBA title rings on its 14-man playoff roster – James (two with the Heat in 2012 and 2013), Kendrick Perkins (Boston in 2008), Shawn Marion (Dallas in 2011), Brendan Haywood (Dallas in 2011), Mike Miller (Miami in 2012 and 2013) and James Jones (Miami in 2012 and 2013) but four of them – Miller, Perkins, Marion and Haywood – seldom get off the bench. Only Jones has come off the pines in each of the Cavs’ 14 assignments.
Golden State, on the other hand, has no championship veteran in its 14-man lineup.
Australia is represented on both sides – first-string center Andrew Bogut for the Warriors and backup guard Matthew Dellavedova for the Cavaliers, whose starting playmaker Kyrie Irving, though, an American, was born in Melbourne.
Curry’s backcourt partner, Klay Thompson, was born in Los Angeles but his dad, Mychal, is a native of the Bahamas and won a pair of NBA title rings with the LA Lakers in 1987 and 1988. Thompson has been cleared to play in the Finals opener after suffering a concussion in the West final series-clinching Game Five against Houston.
Other internationalists in the Finals include Golden State’s guard Leandro Barbosa (Brazil) and center Festus Ezeli (Nigeria) and Cleveland starting center Timofey Mozgov (Russia).
Barbosa would have loved to see his co-Brazilian compatriot Anderson Varejao in the Finals but the fuzzy-haired longtime Cavs frontliner sustained a torn Achilles tendon last December 23 and was subsequently ruled out for the remainder of the season. Varejao was not included on Cleveland’s playoff roster.
The Warriors employ a rotation of nine men – maybe 10 if backup forward Marresse Speights, who missed the entire West finals against the Rockets due to a calf injury, comes back.
The Cavaliers have an eight-man rotation – it could have been nine if not for the shoulder injury sustained by first-string forward Kevin Love in the first-round sweep of Boston in the East first-round playoffs.
Side stories there are aplenty in the 2015 NBA Finals.
For sure, though, one NBA team will wind up title-less no more after four decades of futility.