See face to face the teams that they have won five of the last eight NBA titles and seven of the last eight crowns in the Western Conference is already a sufficient reason to justify the attraction that the key is generating between Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers. But that clash has an extra magnetism: a new duel in a decisive instance (perhaps the last) between Stephen Curry y LeBron Jamesthe two most decisive players of the last decades in the most important basketball league on the planet.
These two franchises had not met in a playoff crossover for more than three decades. The last one had been in the semifinals of the West in 1991: the Lakers of Magic Johnson y James Worthy they prevailed 4-1 against the group that had as main figures Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond y Chris Mullin. However, the recent history between Curry and James in single-elimination instances is much thicker.
Twenty-two times these two cracks met in four consecutive finals, between 2015 and 2018, When LeBron was playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Curry was the winner in 15 games and his team won the trophy in 2015, 2017 and 2018. James and the Cavs They clinched the title in 2016 with a feat no team had achieved before and none would ever do: rallying from a 3-1 deficit in the final series. In addition, in these 22 games, James averaged 33 points (plus 11.5 rebounds and 9.3 assists), while the Warriors point guard averaged 25.4 points.
The lives of these two players have something in common from the day they arrived in the world, since both were born in Akron, a city of 212,000 inhabitants in the state of Ohio, located 65 kilometers south of Cleveland. Curry’s stay there was brief: Before he was a year old, he moved to Charlotte, since his father, Dell, had signed a contract with the Hornets. Instead, James lived his entire childhood and adolescence in Akron, where he completed his secondary studies at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School before being selected in the 2003 Draft by the Cavaliers and jumping into the NBA without going through college.
Although Cleveland has been his home (he played 11 seasons there in two cycles), the two-time Olympic champion in Beijing 2008 and London 2012 also had a stint with the Miami Heat, with whom he won the titles in 2012 and 2013, and arrived in Los Angeles. in 2018, after the last lost final with the Cavs. The Lakers gave him his fourth crown in 2020. Instead, Curry, after three years at Davidson College, He was selected by the Warriors in the 2009 Draft and since then he has never left the franchise with which he also won four championships, the last one last season.
The collective triumphs of both have been accompanied by individual successes. James, 38, was voted season’s most valuable player four times (in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013) and another four as the most valuable of the finals (2012, 2013, 2016 and 2020). And in February of this year he shattered Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record (38,387) and became the player with the most points scored in the NBA regular season (he closed this season with 38,652).
Curry, 35, He was named season MVP in 2016 and 2017, and last year he received the Most Outstanding Man award in the final that his team beat the Boston Celtics 4-2. In addition, the point guard is the player with the most triples scored in NBA history: in December 2021, during a game that Golden State beat the New York Knicks 105-96, he broke the record previously held by Ray Allen (2,973 ). From that moment he continued adding and already brought his account up to 3,390 in the regular season.
“We are two of the most competitive players the sport has ever seen. We want to record our name in the history books and we play our way. I only feel admiration and respect for Steph”, praised his rival (and self-praise) James on Monday. “It’s special to know that we are blessed to be able to continue playing at this level since the first meeting in 2015,” Curry said. A little further was Steve Kerr, Warriors coach: “LeBron is one of the greatest players of all time. When you play against him, you learn how smart he is. I realized that after every timeout because he knew what we were going to do.”
These men were also the two highest-paid basketball players in the world in the past year. James appeared fourth in the ranking of athletes with the highest income published this week by the specialized magazine Forbes and headed by Cristiano Ronaldo: he received 119.5 million dollars, the product of the 44.5 million that his contract with the Lakers brought him and the 75 million that he got thanks to his sponsors and his investments diversified. In June 2022, he became the first active basketball player to earn $1 billion in revenue.
Curry was number eight on the Forbes ranking, with earnings of $100.4 million. The base was the player with the best salary in the NBA this season (48.1 million dollars) and in the next campaign he will become the first man to break the 50 million barrier in the league, since he will receive 51.9 million. In addition, it has juicy endorsement contracts with companies such as Under Armor and Chase Bank, and investments in the multimedia company Unanimous Media, in the virtual reality platform Golf+ and in the startup TMRW Sports, founded by golfers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
With no financial hardship to attend to, the two stars are focused on reaching their fifth consecration. One will see his desire cut short and another will come out stronger after a series to which the Lakers arrived in clear ascent, favored by the physical recovery of Anthony Davis and the successes in the trades they made in February: they won 9 of their last 11 games in the regular season, they beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in the play-in and beat the Memphis Grizzlies, the second seed in the West, 4-2 in the first round of the playoffs.
The Warriors, who finished sixth in the regular season, had to sweat the fat drop to win 4-3 and leave the Sacramento Kings by the wayside. On Sunday, in the decisive match of the key, Curry showed his leadership and dispatched with 50 points at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. Thus he established a record for scores in a seventh game of a playoff series.
The duel between the Warriors and the Lakers began on Tuesday at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where the Los Angeles team prevailed 117-112 in the first game with 30 points, 23 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 blocks by Anthony Davis. That night, James had 22 points and 11 rebounds for the victors, while Curry had 27 points for the losers. The winner of this series will face off in the Western Conference final against the winner of the duel between the Denver Nuggets and the Phoenix Suns (the ones from Colorado have a 2-0 lead).
2023-05-04 23:17:00
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