One of the most thrilling NBA Finals games of certainly the past decade will undoubtedly be remembered for an egregious mistake. In fact, JR Smith’s blunder in the closing moments of regulation might go down as the most consequential mental error in sports history. Not knowing the score in such an important situation is far worse than not knowing whether your team has any timeouts remaining (i.e. Chris Webber). And while there have been more notable physical mistakes (Bill Buckner, Russell Wilson’s INT at the end of Super Bowl XLIX), Smith’s stupidity was not only astonishing, but I think we could look back two weeks from now and say that it cost the Cavaliers any shot at beating the Warriors.
So how should Stephen Curry and company feel after a hotly-contested Game 1? No, not worried. They should feel ecstatic! For LeBron James and the Cavaliers to come so close to stealing Game 1 at Oracle and yet ultimately fall short in such a manner is devastating. Coupled with how Golden State is clearly the more talented team, it is doubtful that Cleveland will be able to muster similar efforts over the course of this series, which is why I now feel more confident that the Warriors will win this series in five games.
Let’s not neglect how lucky the Warriors were to win Game 1, though. For starters, they obviously benefitted from Smith’s shocking error. But in fairness to JR, the Cavaliers wouldn’t have necessarily won the game at the end of regulation even if Smith had not dribbled out the clock. After all, the game was tied and it is not a guarantee that whoever took the final shot would have made a game-winning attempt.
Smith also would not have been the scapegoat if George Hill simply made one more free throw to give Cleveland a one-point lead. Sure, it’s conceivable that Golden State still could have won the game despite being down by one with under 5 seconds left, but the fact that the Warriors needed a missed free throw from Hill and Smith’s blunder to ensure overtime was miraculous.
And let’s not sleep on the third reason why Golden State was lucky last night: the overturned charge.
As Tyronn Lue and others said following the game, the reversed foul call that went against the Cavs with roughly thirty seconds remaining did not make much sense, especially since LeBron was clearly outside of the restricted area beneath the basket. And since the original call on the court was a charge, it’s unfortunate for Cleveland that the referees thought there was enough evidence to switch their opinion and give Durant two free throws. A questionable decision, to say the least.
So with these three plays — Smith’s blunder, Hill’s missed free throw, and the overturned charge — in mind, it makes more sense how the Warriors were able to withstand another historic performance from LeBron James, who became just the 6th player to score over 50 points in an NBA Finals game. Unsurprisingly, the King also became the first to drop 50+ and lose. Nonetheless, it was a showing so sensational — I’d argue that it was the greatest single-game statistical performance of LeBron’s Finals career — that it will do nothing but enhance James’ legacy.
Yet even LeBron is incapable of stopping one of the most dominant teams in NBA history when luck is such a crucial element. But I suppose these Warriors — who I would be remiss not to mention also benefitted greatly from Chris Paul’s absence in Games 6 & 7 of the Western Conference Finals and, to go one step further, have had other opposing stars like Kawhi Leonard and Kyrie Irving miss crucial time while Golden State was en route to nearly all of their Finals appearances and victories — are not different than many of the other great dynasties in sports history. The Patriots, for instance, were incredibly fortunate to win their two most recent Super Bowl titles. The San Antonio Spurs needed the ping-pong balls to bounce a certain way in order to select Tim Duncan. And in 1920, an MLB team that had not won a single pennant received a stroke of luck when a rival owner decided to loan his best player — a man named Babe Ruth — in order to finance a theatre production. 27 championships later, the New York Yankees remain baseball’s marquee franchise.
Former Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey once said, “luck is the residue of design.” And given the way the Golden State Warriors have revolutionized the sport of basketball over the past four years, they undoubtedly deserve to be recognized as one of the great sports dynasties of the past half-century.
I wish, however, that their success over the past week was not the product of unbelievably favorable injury luck and, with respect to Game 1’s bizarre ending, inexplicable fortune.
