Say what you will about the Golden State Warriors in the Kevin Durant era, but their last (at least for another year) act was about as good as anyone could have hoped. Simultaneously, we saw just how great basketball can be in June when the final outcome isn't a fait accompli as it was the prior two seasons, and we also saw how great the Warriors heart and special talents are, and finally how great you have to be to beat them.
For all the people that are still upset that Kevin Durant's totally reasonable decision to join Golden State turned the competitive axis of the sport off kilter (I'm one of those people) we all had our various visions of how amazing it will be when that team finally loses. And in the end, when it happened, it didn't feel gleeful to watch them lose, it felt honorable.
We are about to enter a post-Warriors world. They'll still be decent, but assuming Durant is out all of next season, and Klay at most plays a month or two, they will be like any normal team that will fight for playoff seeding. The NBA will return to normalcy next year. But maybe when it does, we may start looking more fondly on what we had these last few years.
It feels bad to focus so much on the Warriors side of the finals. But unlike other times when we do that, focus more on the losers, here we are focusing on what fight they showed, what unfortunate circumstances they were repeatedly put in, instead of focusing on what mistakes they made.
The Raptors are a great team. Kawhi Leonard is a hall of fame player that has made the case when healthy he is the best 2-way player in the NBA - let's remember in his last healthy season prior to this, he was leading a 61-win Spurs team to a 25-point lead against the Warriors before Zaza slid under him setting off a ridiculous chain of events.
The Raptors are also worthy champions because of how well they are built, a foundation that was lifted by the addition of a truly magical player like Kawhi. In so many ways, this team resembled the last solo-superstar team to beat a juggernaut: the 2011 Mavericks, with Kawhi in the Dirk role. That team had a series of older veteran players that all shared the lasting hardening experience of postseason failure, be it Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, Peja Stojakovic, and others.
Here you had Kyle Lowry, a man beaten down time and time again for the Raptor's repeated inability to beat LeBron James. Lowry has so often been targeted with the burden of a playoff failure, a man who's game doesn't play in May or June. He had his moments of instability, but now he's a champion who rolled up big early in Game 6.
You had Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka, two men who have seen their fair share of these Warriors, first with Gasol's Grizzlies losing a 2-1 lead in 2015 back when we didn't truly realize what a supernova the Warriors were already becoming, and then Ibaka a year later with the Thunder losing a 3-1 lead and then their best player. Both came up huge throughout these playoffs, with Gasol probably rounding off a Hall of Fame career himself now.
You had Fred VanVleet playing the JJ Barea role of a sparkplug off the bench that become a more and more constant part of the team's rotation. His five threes in Game 6 were all needed, and the last one putting them up for good, and more than even Curry's miss probably the symbol of the final dagger to the Warriors dynasty.
This Raptors team played team defense at a level that was far above what any other team has been able to manage against the Warriors, even when you remove KD from the equation. These Raptors never lost their focus even after letting Game 5 slip away. These Raptors are champions because they deserved it, no matter what injuries beset their opponent.
I watched Game 6 from a bar named Mr. Purple in New York City, at first attending a work even and then staying there with a group of about 5-6 after the event ended. The bar put the game on at halftime. This is not a sports bar. But slowly but surely, as the game drew into the fourth quarter, it may have well been one. That's the power of a close finals game, of seeing such a lasting presence in our lives - these Warriors - trying to not let the last moments of their brilliance slip away.
It's hard to not talk about the injuries, and not in their impact to the series (especially with KD, who reportedly was never going to come back but then suddenly did), but in the impact to these two brilliant players, both of whom were cruelly free agents. The Durant injury has a potentially staggering impact on the league, even if one of the most immediate impacts is the saddest, that we won't get to see the slim reaper's brilliant game.
For Klay, he probably was coming back to Golden State anyway, but even for him having to rehab and miss most of the next season is so sad. We're going straight from a world where the Warriors, for better or worse, dominated the NBA news cycle for nearly five years - especially the last four with the 73-win season followed by three years of KD on them. That is over now.
The rise of the Raptors may be fleeting too, if Kawhi leaves, but it leaves us with this incredible moment in time. The Warriors dynasty is over. Canada won the finals. Kawhi missed a season, left in infamy and somehow made his legacy greater. Up is Down. Left is Right. And if this is truly the end of the Warriors-era of the NBA, it ended in a way that will truly never be forgotten.
