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This Day In Sports…June 16, 2015, 10 years ago today:
The Golden State Warriors win their first NBA championship in 40 years with a 105-97 victory in Cleveland. The Warriors took the Finals four games-to-two despite a game effort in the series by Cavaliers superstar LeBron James, who became the first player in history to lead both teams in points, rebounds and assists through an NBA Finals. The Warriors and Cavs split Games 1 and 2, which both went into overtime (a Finals first). Then Cleveland went up two games-to-one with a 96-91 win in Game 3 and was looking, well, golden. Golden State turned it on from there, though, winning by 21 and 17 points before closing it out.
The matchup between James, making his fifth straight appearance in the title series, and the Warriors’ Stephen Curry, the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, was overshadowed by Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, whose first start of the entire season didn’t come until Game 4 of the series. Iguodala, a 31-year-old veteran forward, became the first ever to be named MVP of the Finals without starting every game of the series as he averaged 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.0 assists. Iguodala received seven of the 11 votes for the award—James got the other four.
It was the 103-82 Warriors rout in Game 4 that provided the seismic change. First-year Golden State coach Steve Kerr inserted Iguodala into the starting lineup, replacing center Andrew Bogut as Draymond Green was moved into the post. The switch to small-ball was genius, as the Warriors held Cleveland to 4-for-27 shooting from three-point range and limited the Cavaliers to 12 fourth-quarter points.
Kerr was credited with finally gluing together a very talented group of guys. The trio that would become known as the Warriors’ “big three” of Curry, Klay Thompson and Green had already been together for two seasons. And Curry and Thompson had been nicknamed the “Splash Brothers” after combining for an NBA duo record of 484 three-pointers in 2014.
But Kerr plugged basketball IQ into their game, eschewing isolation plays for ball movement and player movement, involving everyone on the floor. And the ol’ word “culture” enters into it. Kerr is almost like a college coach that way. Golden State posted the NBA’s best regular season record at 67-15, and Kerr was the winningest rookie coach in league history. Oh, and Curry and Thompson broke their own record with 525 combined threes in 2014-15. There was a single Warrior with NBA Finals experience. That, of course, would change over the next seven years as Kerr and Golden State would win three more championships.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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