Three in Four: A Deep Dive Into the 2018 Championship

English feature · same subject as above · Team: Golden State Warriors / Star: Kevin Durant

I The Night

June 8, 2018, Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland. The horn went and the board read 108-85. Golden State had swept it — the third championship in four years, the sixth in franchise history.

The game turned in the third quarter. Cleveland trailed by nine at the half and it still looked like a series. Then the Cavaliers scored 13 points in twelve minutes. Golden State took a 21-point lead into the fourth. With 4:03 left, LeBron James came out and the entire building stood up, players from both teams lining up to slap his hand on the way. It was his last game in a Cleveland uniform.

Stephen Curry scored 37 with seven threes. Kevin Durant's line was a different kind of answer: 20 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists, plus three blocks. A triple-double on a night he shot 7 of 17 and couldn't buy a jumper.

By the end, the only question left was who got the trophy. It went to Durant for the second straight year, making him one of a handful of players to win back-to-back Finals MVPs — Jordan, Hakeem, Shaq, Kobe, LeBron, and now him.

It was also the first sweep in the Finals in eleven years, going back to 2007. That year, the team doing the sweeping was San Antonio, and the guy getting swept in his first Finals was LeBron James.

And there was the backdrop: this was the fourth straight year these two teams had met in the Finals, something the league had never seen. They'd split the first three. This one stopped being a series sometime in the second quarter.

Kerr called it the hardest of the three to win, and he wasn't selling anything. This team had been doubted since October, and by June half the roster had missed big chunks of the season.

Durant stood on the podium holding the trophy with one arm and his mother with the other, and the thing he kept coming back to was how hard it had been, not how good they were.

Wanda Durant had been in the building for all of it, and the trophy presentation turned into the two of them standing there while the confetti came down. Two years earlier her son had been booed for an entire night on his first return to Oklahoma City in a visitor's jersey. Now he'd won it twice and taken the best-player award both times. He said afterward that he didn't feel vindicated so much as finished — like a job he'd started in the summer of 2016 had finally been completed.

II The Finals MVP

The 2018 Finals MVP was Kevin Durant, for the second year running. Over four games he averaged 28.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 2.3 blocks.

Game 3 is what defined the series. Cleveland led by 13 in the first half and controlled the building. Curry missed 13 of his first 14 shots. Durant just carried the whole thing, going for a playoff career-high 43 with 13 rebounds and 7 assists, and then hitting that three over LeBron late — the shot everybody calls the dagger.

Then he played Game 4 in a completely different register. His shot wasn't there, so he went and got rebounds, made plays, protected the rim, and finished with a triple-double. A guy who can drop 43 one night and run the offense the next isn't a system beneficiary. He's the system.

The mechanics were brutal for Cleveland. He shot 53.3% on two-point pull-ups, which was more than a third of his attempts. Put a small guy on him, Hill or JR Smith, and he took him into the post. Put a big on him, Love or Nance, and he dragged him out to the arc. A four-time scoring champion with an answer every possession.

His regular season was 68 games of 26.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists, with a career-best 1.75 blocks that ranked fifth in the league. He made All-NBA First Team. On January 10 against the Clippers he became the 44th player to reach 20,000 points, and the second-youngest ever behind LeBron.

Two straight Finals MVPs ended the argument that he'd just shown up for a ride. In 2017 you could still say he came to collect a ring. By 2018 he'd been the best player on the floor in the two games that decided it.

He also did something people forget in the middle of all that: he'd taken less money the summer before so the roster could stay together. Winning the thing twice made that look a lot better than it did at the time.

The blocks tell the story of how much he'd changed as a player. He averaged 2.3 a game in the series and had three in the closeout, nearly all of them coming as a help-side rim protector rather than a guy defending his own man. Oklahoma City had asked him to be a scorer for nine years. Golden State's switching scheme turned him into the last line of defense, and by 2018 he was blocking 1.75 shots a night in the regular season, a career high that ranked fifth in the league.

There's one detail about that trophy that always sat oddly. Curry still didn't have one. He'd been to four straight Finals by then and won three rings, and the award had gone to Iguodala in 2015 and to Durant in both 2017 and 2018. He wouldn't get his until 2022. Durant clearly understood the awkwardness in the room and spent most of his postgame answer talking about what Curry meant to this group.

III The Hardest Road

To get what those two trophies were worth, go back to July 2016. Durant left Oklahoma City as a free agent and joined the Golden State team that had just won 73 games and come back from 3-1 to eliminate him in the conference finals.

The reaction was unlike anything in the sport's history. Softest decision ever. If you can't beat them, join them. The hardest road, said with heavy sarcasm, became a running joke at his expense for two straight years. He tweeted back, deleted it, snapped at reporters in the locker room. None of it mattered until he won.

What gets underrated is what he did the following summer. He didn't take the biggest contract available. He signed for two years and $53 million, leaving roughly $9 million on the table, on a one-plus-one with a player option. That's what allowed Golden State to keep Iguodala, Livingston, West and Pachulia on below-market deals.

Some people read the pay cut as guilt money. What it actually bought was the ability to keep four All-Star-level players and a full rotation under a cap that was never designed to hold them.

After 2017, the criticism shifted form: fine, you can win, but you're not the one who matters. The 43 in Game 3 and the triple-double in Game 4 were the answer to that one. Twice in two years he'd been the player who settled the biggest games of the season.

Whether it was the hardest road is a matter of taste. But there aren't many stars in this league who had to keep proving themselves after winning the thing twice.

He never won the argument, not really. He just made it boring to keep having, which in sports is usually the only victory available.

Context made it worse for him. Golden State had won 73 games in 2015-16, more than any team had ever won, and then lost the Finals after leading 3-1, with Draymond suspended for Game 5 and Bogut's knee gone by then. They didn't need rescuing. That's what made the move so infuriating to everybody else — he wasn't saving a broken franchise, he was joining the one that had just broken his.

IV The Road

The regular season was 58-24, second in the West, a fourth straight year of 58 wins or more. The dominance was gone, though. Third in offensive rating, eleventh in defensive rating — a long way from the team that had scared everybody two years earlier.

Injuries were the reason. Curry missed 31 games with eight separate injuries, four of them ankle sprains, the worst being a Grade 2 MCL sprain that cost him forty days and the entire first round. Iguodala missed 18 games. Patrick McCaw missed 25 after a scary lumbar injury.

Without Curry, Golden State still handled San Antonio in five — Kerr moved Zaza Pachulia to the bench, started Kevon Looney, and won with defense and midrange patience. Curry came back for New Orleans, and that went five too.

Houston was the real test. Sixty-five wins, the best record in the league, a roster built specifically to beat this team. Golden State led 2-1, then Iguodala's knee gave out and the offense collapsed into isolation basketball. Two straight losses. Down 3-2.

Then Chris Paul strained his hamstring in the closing moments of Game 5 and missed the rest. Klay scored 35 in a Game 6 road win. In Game 7 the Warriors trailed by 15 and won 101-92 — Durant 34, Curry 27 with 14 of them in the third, Klay 19, Draymond 10 and 13.

Houston went 7 of 44 from three that night, including an NBA playoff record 27 straight misses. Over the second halves of Games 6 and 7, Golden State outscored them by 63. Fourth straight Finals, fifth team ever to get there four years running.

That Houston series is where the title was actually won. Cleveland was never going to be as hard as a Rockets team that had spent all year building for one specific opponent.

The Rockets were built specifically for this. Daryl Morey had spent two years collecting switchable defenders and floor spacing for the sole purpose of attacking Golden State's switching scheme, and Houston had the best record in the league and home court for the first time in franchise history. When Iguodala went down in Game 3 and the offense stalled, everyone who had spent the whole season waiting for the dynasty to crack thought it finally had.

V The Roster Puzzle

Draymond Green was the foundation. Across the Finals he contested 70 shots — 43 twos and 27 threes, both series highs — and Cleveland shot 5.4% worse than usual on the twos and 15.5% worse on the threes when he got a hand up. He also had 49 box-outs, 18 deflections and 8 steals. Nobody else on either team was close.

Klay Thompson's value never shows up cleanly. He scored 35 to save the season in Game 6 against Houston and 20 in Game 2 of the Finals. The bigger thing: with Cleveland loading up on Curry and Durant, he was the guy who made them pay for it.

Andre Iguodala hurt his knee in Game 3 of the conference finals and didn't come back until Game 3 of the Finals, where he immediately banged up the other leg. The Death Lineup doesn't function the same way without his switching and his ability to push it in transition, which is exactly why a 2-1 lead turned into a 3-2 hole.

Kevon Looney was the unlikely find of that season. He started in Iguodala's spot, and his rebounding and rim protection held up through the hardest rounds. Jordan Bell became the release valve in Game 3 when Cleveland trapped Curry on every pick-and-roll.

Add Shaun Livingston's midrange, David West's passing, JaVale McGee's energy, and spot shooting from Nick Young and Quinn Cook. The bench wasn't better than it had been the year before. Every one of those guys just happened to deliver on a night that needed them.

That's what a deep roster is for. It isn't about having eight good players. It's about having eight guys who can each win you one specific possession in one specific game.

Curry's Game 2 deserves its own line in the record book. He hit nine threes, the most anyone had ever made in a Finals game, and finished with 33. Cleveland threw bodies at him all series and treated him as the threat that mattered most, which is exactly what freed Durant to go get 43 two nights later. The reason Golden State couldn't be schemed was that the two of them kept taking turns being the problem.

VI The Gamble

The bet started with the salary cap gymnastics of the summer of 2016. To create max space for Durant without breaking up a 73-win team, Golden State let nearly the entire frontcourt rotation walk — Bogut, Barnes, Speights, Ezeli, Barbosa, all gone.

The cost was depth, and it was real. They traded proven size and a bench that had already won a lot of games for the best pure scorer of his generation. Bob Myers' read was that in a small-ball league, elite wing talent was worth more than a backup center.

Then came the re-signings in 2017: Curry's five-year, $201 million deal, Durant taking less on a two-year, $53 million contract, Iguodala at three years and $48 million, Livingston at three years and $24 million. Keeping four All-Stars and a rotation together under that cap should not have worked.

The trick was keep your own first, then fill in. Golden State never let a homegrown core player leave over money, and the pay-cut culture made below-market deals normal in that locker room, which is almost unheard of in this league.

The bill came due in year two. The role players got older, the injuries piled up, and the regular-season dominance went — 58 wins, eleventh in defense. When the playoffs started, nobody actually knew how much was left in the group.

Kerr's most important work that season happened during the long injury stretch, when he expanded the rotation and forced the ball through everybody. Cook, Bell, Looney and McGee were all useful in May because they'd all played real minutes in January.

That's the part of this title that gets missed. They didn't win it with their best five. They won it because fifteen guys had been ready since Christmas.

The timing was luck as much as design. The salary cap jumped in 2016 because of the new national television deal, and Golden State still had Curry on a below-market contract from the extension he signed in 2012, back when his ankles were a genuine question mark. That combination is the only reason a max slot existed at all. Try it a year earlier or a year later and the math simply doesn't work.

The Death Lineup was the whole bet in five names. Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Durant and Green outscored opponents by a margin nobody else could touch when they shared the floor, because there was no center to hunt and no slow defender to hide. It only worked because Iguodala and Green could guard bigs and Durant could protect the rim. Take away the switching and the entire theory collapses.

VII The Tuition

Cleveland's season was LeBron James carrying an entire franchise on his back. Twenty-two playoff games, 34.0 points, 9.1 rebounds and 9.0 assists a night. Eight games of 40 or more, including buzzer-beaters to close out Indiana and Toronto.

In the Finals he averaged 34 points, 8.5 rebounds and 10 assists. Fifty-one in Game 1. Twenty-nine and 13 in Game 2. A 33-point triple-double in Game 3. And then 23 in Game 4, the exhausted version.

Game 1 is the one that still stings. Cleveland had the game won. George Hill missed a free throw, JR Smith grabbed the offensive rebound, and then dribbled out the clock with the score tied because he'd lost track of it. Golden State won in overtime. Fifty-one points, wasted.

LeBron wasn't the problem and the numbers say so. Cleveland shot 25.4% from three on passes from him in that series. Wide-open looks, capable shooters, nothing going in.

When he came out with four minutes left in Game 4 and the crowd stood, he sat down and put a towel over his shoulders, and the image went everywhere. Not because he lost. Because everyone could see how far one man had dragged a roster that had nothing left.

He left for Los Angeles that summer, and that group's run was over. Tyronn Lue called it one of the greatest individual playoff runs we'll ever see, and nobody argued with him.

There's a version of 2018 where Cleveland wins Game 1 and the whole thing changes shape. They got the best Finals performance of LeBron's career and lost every game anyway.

Kevin Love was the number two and he never got going. He finished in single digits for the first time in the series in Game 4, shooting 4 of 13. JR Smith shot 31 percent across the whole Finals. Cleveland's three main reserves in the closer — Hood, Jeff Green and Larry Nance Jr. — combined to go 9 of 29 from the floor. A team needs somebody, anybody, to make an open shot, and on that night nobody in a wine jersey could.

VIII The City and the Map

The parade came on June 12 in Oakland. Curry wore a white shirt reading "Rep The Bay" — repeat, and represent the bay — plus a hat that said "Run TMC," the nickname for the Hardaway-Richmond-Mullin team of the nineties, and pants built out of the old We Believe jerseys.

The outfit told you how this team understood where it was. Oakland isn't Los Angeles. No Hollywood, no glamour market, no free agents lining up to move there. This dynasty got built in a working-class city, in an old arena, out of players other teams had misjudged.

Three titles in four years put them on the shortest list in the sport: Russell's Celtics, the Showtime Lakers, the Kobe-and-Shaq Lakers, Jordan's Bulls. That's the whole company.

What makes the 2018 one interesting is that it was the fragile one. Seventy-three wins and a loss in 2016. Sixteen and one in 2017. Then this: down 3-2 to Houston, nearly losing Game 1 to a team with one great player. It was the least dominant of the three, and therefore the best evidence of what this group could actually do under stress.

Zoomed out, 2018 was the year the league accepted a new premise. Superteams can be assembled, but keeping them alive takes constant sacrifice from the stars down to the fifteenth man. Golden State did that better than anyone, and dragged the rest of the NBA into an arms race doing it.

Durant held up a second Bill Russell Trophy that night with the question finally changed. It wasn't can you win. It was how many more. That answer came a year later, and it was a completely different story.

For one more summer, though, this was the best team in basketball and the city that made it got to keep it. Oakland had waited a long time for a dynasty of its own.

The Oracle factor is worth one line. That building was loud in a way arenas had stopped being after the nineties, with the upper deck hanging over the floor and the noise coming down instead of out. Visiting teams talked about it for four straight years. Golden State won three titles there and then left it for a new arena across the bay, which is the kind of timing that only happens to franchises that get lucky twice.

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• 2017 Warriors Championship Deep Dive
• 2022 Warriors Championship Deep Dive

Video Recap

Official Finals MVP highlights: