The NBA Finals are now set up to be a rematch of last year, with the Golden State Warriors facing the Cleveland Cavaliers once again. Already, the Warriors are favored in the series, according to WestGate Las Vegas SuperBook (via ESPN). But don’t tell LeBron James. He doesn’t want to hear about it, and he made it very clear how he feels about any kind of preconceived narratives going into the Finals.
LeBron on CLE underdogs: "Not my concern. I don’t get involved in all of that – underdog, overdog, whatever the case may be. It’s stupidity"
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) May 31, 2016
LeBron James said that to think of media narratives and headlines in this NBA Finals series is "stupidity." #Cavs pic.twitter.com/zHLQ2nrs4w
— Hayden Grove (@H_Grove) May 31, 2016
This series is personal for James. He came back to Cleveland to try to break a decades-long championship drought, and he’s already asked veiled questions about Stephen Curry’s MVP credentials. He still believes he’s the best player in the world, but he’s secure in that belief and isn’t going to use outside doubt as a motivator.
James also knows that he’ll likely never have a better shot at winning a title in Cleveland than he did this year. Aside from two unexpected losses to the Raptors in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Cavaliers rolled through the playoffs and got almost a week off while the Thunder and Warriors beat each other up for seven games. Plus, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love are healthy, which they weren’t in the postseason last year. With all of that on his side, of course James isn’t going to buy into the idea that the Cavs are “underdogs,” even if they’re going against a 73-win juggernaut that just rallied from a 3-1 series deficit.
