Right now, I’m sure that everyone is assuming that LeBron James will take the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals once again. It’s clear that it doesn’t matter if the Cavaliers are the No. 4 seed or the No. 1 seed, as long as this team has LeBron James, they will be the favorite to win the Eastern Conference. And even though James will soon be celebrating another NBA Finals appearance, this celebration will be short-lived if he has to face the Golden State Warriors again.
We all know that LeBron James is the best player in the world, and we know that he is virtually unstoppable on the basketball court, but not even James can rally this Cavaliers team to beat the Warriors in a seven-game series. The Warriors are basically the Avengers of the NBA world, meaning that this team has way too much talent to lose to anyone. One could argue that LeBron James is like Thanos, so there is a chance for him to beat the Warriors, but if LeBron James is Thanos, then he represents Thanos without the Infinity Gauntlet (sorry about the Marvel Comics reference). LeBron James cannot single-handedly beat a team that has Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and Klay Thompson. It will be nearly impossible. If the Warriors make it to the NBA Finals again, I give the Cavaliers a 20 percent chance to beat them and that is only because of LeBron James.
However, Cleveland does have hope. The Warriors are not in the NBA Finals yet, and they are about to face their toughest opponent of the season. The Houston Rockets could possibly dethrone the Golden State Warriors, and if this happens, I will pick the Cavaliers to become NBA champions. The Houston Rockets beat the Warriors twice in the regular season, thus proving that they have what it takes to challenge the NBA champions. Obviously in the playoffs, teams play much harder than in the regular season, so this time around, the Warriors will play much better, but there is still a chance that they will lose to the Rockets.
When the Rockets added Chris Paul in the offseason, there team became significantly better. Now they have two superstars on the team (James Harden and Chris Paul), these two have played extremely well together on the court. They also have great shooters like Eric Gordon and Trevor Ariza, and their coach Mike D’Antoni has developed a great system that gets every player involved. Now of course, the Rockets will have to stop playing isolation basketball when going against the Warriors because this type of strategy will not work against them, but I’m sure that the Rockets have a different strategy in order to beat this team. It also benefits the Rockets that they have home-court advantage against the Warriors, and Steph Curry is still trying to get back into basketball shape since he just came back from his injury. So, the Rockets definitely things working in their favor, but this will still be a very hard task to accomplish.
I know that LeBron James will be rooting for the Houston Rockets to beat the Warriors because his team definitely has a better chance of winning a championship if they do not have to play the Warriors. So, while the Western Conference Finals are underway, James will be anxiously waiting and hoping that he will be traveling to Houston for game 1 of the NBA Finals, and not Oakland.
