It should go without saying that the Cavs-Warriors Finals rematch that tips off on Thursday is a star-studded affair. Yet it’s still pretty astonishing that this series will feature a four-time league MVP, a back-to-back MVP (also the first-ever unanimous MVP), former Finals MVPs, and 11 All-Stars altogether.
The sheer collection of talent is unprecedented, such that the guy who’s inarguably been the league’s biggest star the past couple of seasons isn’t even among the top two players in the series, at least according to Scottie Pippen, who offered this rather sobering assessment of Steph Curry on ESPN’s The Jump on Tuesday (his comments start at the the 5:17 mark).
“I think we have to also look at it now that he’s not the best player on either team,” Pippen said. “Even though he’s a two-time MVP, a unanimous MVP, right now, he’s not the best player on his team, and he’s not a dominant player. He’s a great player, and the things that he does out on the basketball court force Cleveland to have to do things to get the ball out of his hands, but in terms of what LeBron and KD can do, those guys can dominate you in all areas of the game, from rebounding, to blocking shots, to defending, to scoring. They beat you all across the board.”
It’s hard to argue against his logic. LeBron has been as dominant as ever and Durant has pretty clearly been the best player on the Warriors when he’s been on the court, but let’s not try to take this to mean that Curry is some sort of schlub now. He’s still perfectly capable of dropping 40 points and hitting eight or nine threes on any given night, which is exactly what makes the Warriors so deadly.
Curry has also been more than willing to defer to Durant in certain spots, which should say a great deal about his character, but what we saw in the Western Conference Finals was that the two could thrive next to each other. How Curry will perform in this series alongside Durant is just one of myriad reasons why the 2017 NBA Finals will be so compelling. We’ll get an early answer to that when Game 1 tips off Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
