During this quarantine ESPN has struggled with deciding what to show during the week and weekend. This past Saturday May 9th they decided to play Game 7 2016 Cavs vs. Warriors for the third time. With nothing else to watch, I watched it again for the 4th time in 8 weeks (I had watched the full game a couple weekends before on Youtube to make it a 3rd).
This has been called by many the “Game of the Decade” and after watching this closer than I have before, this is not a great game. Do not get me wrong the magnitude of this is unbelievable. The motives at stake are: The first ever finals 3-1 blown lead, LeBron can grab his 3rd title, Cleveland wins there first title in a million years, and does KD even go to the Warriors if the Warriors win?
The intensity of Game 7s can overwhelm players and create some bad play and that is what this game produced. You have Steph Curry throwing the ball out of bounds and shooting bad shots, Cleveland going ISO ball the entire fourth quarter instead of getting into any sets, the Warriors missing shots they would have made in any other game of the year, and oh ya it is 89-89 with 4:30 left in the fourth and there isn’t a point scored for the next three minutes.
Game 7s are always built up to be these amazing games, but players are always so nervous to play in them, the intensity overwhelms them making for bad games. For example, last year the Raptors beat the 76ers in game 7 with Kawahi’s amazing shot, but if you rewatch the game it is brutally boring.
3 questions I asked myself while watching this game were: How the hell were the Cavs even in the game? What the fuck is Festus Ezeli doing on the court? If the Warriors win, where does KD go?
In the first half alone the Warriors connect on 9 threes while the Cavs only hit 1. Draymond also goes OFF for 23 points in the first half making everything he puts up. After all of this the Cavs are somehow down 7 at the half. How does a team only making one three in the first half to the 2016 Warriors only be down 7 at the half?
Festus Ezeli straight up had no business playing in the NBA or even being on a team of this caliber. In his 11 minutes of action he was 0-4 in field goals, had 1 board, 1 assist, and a plus minus of -9. In the first 3 minutes of action he misses two shots, gets blocked on another, gives up an offensive rebound and layup to Tristan Thompson, and then Steve Kerr decides he has had enough and puts in an even better Anderson Varejo who produced an even better -9 in 8 minutes of action.
The reason Ezeli was even in the game in the first place is because Andrew Bogut gets hurt earlier in the series. This instance is for some reason left out of people’s memories in NBA history. With Bogut out, the Warriors had no rim protection or big man rebounding. The result of this made them put Draymond at the 5 the entire series (something they weren’t alien to), but something they did not necessarily want to do the entire series.
Then comes the biggest “What if Question” of the decade. Where does Kevin Durant go for the 2017 season and beyond? No chance he would have gone to a finals winning Warriors, so would he have stayed in OKC or gone to my beloved Celtics or his hometown of Washington? The world may never get an answer to this question, but the outcome would have truly changed the way the NBA looked for the next couple of years at the least.
Let none of these opinions and questions take away from one of the most amazing comebacks in sports history with some of the best performances the NBA finals has ever seen by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. What these two did in the finals may never be replicated by any duo. Two players scoring north of 40, IN A FINALS GAME, may never be seen again.
But please do not call this game “The Game of the Decade” because it does not produce the best basketball of the decade. This game should instead be remembered by the biggest “What If” game of the 2010 decade. This game poses too many questions with the outcome being what it was.
If the Warriors had won, the NBA would have looked entirely different.