Eric Freeman’s NBA Finals Reputations Index: Which legacies are on the line?
Fairly or not, the NBA Finals decide short-term fame and long-term legacies. Stars who win them instantly become more respectable while those who don’t run the risk of being seen as lacking some essential quality of the true greats. Role players can add a few seasons to their careers and maybe an extra figure to their contracts. Coaches become geniuses or dummies with the outcome of every adjustment.
Try as we might to focus on the nitty-gritty of this matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors, it will be impossible not to get swept up in these judgments. The key is to accept them before they take over every network, website, and timeline. The Reputations Index will help you get ahead of these stories before they even happen.
Stephen Curry: The MVP gets an A+ for 2014-15 no matter what happens in this series. Any player who tops All-Star voting, wins the league’s greatest individual award, and makes the finals in the same season is one of the NBA’s top superstars, a true great who has earned his popularity. Arguing otherwise would be foolish, but Curry is so beloved that it’s unlikely anyone would even try.
Nevertheless, there’s still a lot at stake for Curry in this series, because a guy who achieves all that and wins his team’s first championship in 40 years (with a likely Finals MVP award on top of it) can lay claim to elite status among peers who’ve built their Hall of Fame resumes over the better part of a decade. Curry, who wasn’t seen as much more than a talented player with injury issues three years ago, can reach the level of LeBron James and Kevin Durant if he leads the Warriors to the title. It’ll be hard to deny him that level of dominance and global popularity.
Kyrie Irving: Prior to this season, there were doubts as to how well Irving’s style would adapt to the rigors of a title run. The regular season seemed to prove his score-first ways work perfectly fine as long as he can play next to another terrific shot creator, and the playoffs projected to be the moment in which he ascended to the ranks of the league’s most widely respected stars.
Various injuries have delayed that process, to the point where an average series vs. Golden State would do little to hurt Irving’s reputation in any way just because he’s looked so limited. However, if he can return to the court and have a few games to shift the result to Cleveland’s favor, it would not be shocking to see him reach the same level in a different way. Few stories catch on like that of the hobbled star who pushes through pain to win a few games in the NBA Finals.
Draymond Green: The supposed debate over Green’s worthiness of a max-level contract became even more one-sided in the first week of the playoffs, when his value became very clear against the New Orleans Pelicans and superstar Anthony Davis. Since then, a national audience has been exposed to what Warriors fans and regular observers knew very well — Curry is the team’s best player, but Green is most responsible for Golden State’s versatility and ability to match up well with any opponent. If Curry is their version of Steve Nash, then Green is the Shawn Marion, the player who links a freewheeling style to more classic forms of the game.
Marion never really got the credit he deserved for serving that role in Phoenix, chiefly because the Seven Seconds or Less Suns didn’t achieve the results that would have forced old-school types to accept that they weren’t just a bunch of naïve hedonists. Most everyone already agrees that Green is the kind of player who’d thrive in any environment, but a Warriors championship would allow full-on celebrations of his importance and the team’s more tough-minded strengths. It’s one thing to acknowledge such qualities — it’s another altogether to etch them into the official histories of this season and perhaps the league as a whole.
J.R. Smith: Now in his 11th season, Smith could average 30 points while winning Finals MVP and still be unable to shake his reputation as a streaky boom-bust player as likely to lead his team in scoring as he is to shoot it out of a game. Smith has been involved in too many controversies and left too many teams under poor circumstances to rehabilitate himself so fast. No matter what he does for the Cavs over these next few weeks, he’ll still be approached with ambivalence.
Yet there’s a difference between enigmas and figures so toxic that their mere presences send up red flags. Smith has the potential to turn this series for Cleveland with a few big performances, enough to prove that, under the right circumstances and with enough good fortune, he can be a key figure on a championship team. His most strident critics would never claim as much now, but they would be unable to argue against clear results.
Klay Thompson: Like Curry, Thompson’s season is a success no matter what. He made great strides as a scorer and defender, deservedly made his first All-Star team, and shares a nickname with the reigning MVP. He was great enough throughout the year that a postseason of inconsistent shooting has done little to dim his star. It figures that similar performances in the Finals will matter only if the Warriors lose, and probably not much at that.
A ring would do a lot more for Klay if only because he’d be the second-most recognizable player on a title-winning team. Although the history of the San Antonio Spurs might suggest otherwise, such players can expect annual consideration for All-Star teams and maybe even show up on some lesser cereal boxes. In other words, Thompson can reach a new tier of fame, and he won’t even need to shave his goatee to do it.
David Blatt: When was the last time a conference-winning coach received as little credit as Blatt? Though never known as a master tactician, Scott Brooks at least got some plaudits for shepherding the young Oklahoma City Thunder through a loaded conference in 2012. Blatt, on the other hand, is seen as a mere bystander to LeBron’s greatness, less an organizer of the Cavs’ system than someone who happened to luck into a terrific situation before being saved from his own mistakes by David Griffin’s midseason moves. It’s not clear that a title will even elevate Blatt, because the conventional wisdom says that he isn’t in control of the team’s fate.
That view seems a little unfair, if only because getting out of the way can be an underrated quality for a coach of a basketball genius. But it’s also true that this series will be Blatt’s biggest test yet. He will most likely have to make adjustments and concoct new ways for Cleveland to stop Stephen Curry and Golden State’s army of shooters. If they succeed, Blatt is unlikely to get most of the credit. If they don’t, expect more takes on his inability to push this extremely talented squad to a championship.
Kevin Love: It remains difficult to know what to make of Love, a proven star who essentially played the role of a more famous Channing Frye prior to his season-ending injury in Game 4 of the first round vs. the Boston Celtics. Unlike Chris Bosh in Miami, Love had difficulty adjusting to a decrease in usage as his team’s third option. If we take him at his word, then the outcome of this series won’t keep Love from forgoing his early termination option and staying in Cleveland for at least one more season. Nevertheless, after a season in which he most assuredly wasn’t used to his fullest abilities, he looks more like a luxury than an essential piece.
That doesn’t have to be the case. If the Cavs win, Love’s reputation will probably take a hit, if only because they gave up a lot to get him and ended up not needing him to contribute to grab the title. But if the Cavs lose, it would be easy to point to the absence of Love as a big reason for their failings. For that matter, it might compel the team to make a special point of increasing Love’s role in the hope of varying their attack.
Tristan Thompson: In January, Yahoo’s own Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Thompson had turned down a four-year, $52-million contract extension prior to the league’s October 31 deadline. The news came as something of a shock given the fourth-year pro’s middling production and relatively minor role with the Cavs — the decision made little sense even in the context of Thompson and LeBron sharing the same agent.
Against the odds, the pending restricted free agent now looks likely to earn a similar deal on the open market this summer. Thompson’s has arguably been Cleveland’s second-best player over the course of the postseason, serving as an excellent replacement for Love and crashing the offensive boards in game-changing fashion. With the Warriors ever focused on getting out in transition, Thompson’s rebounding figures as an x-factor in this series. A stellar finals could even drive him out of the Cavs’ price range.
Andrew Bogut: We all basically know what Bogut is — a terrific defender with limited scoring ability but apparent offensive value as a screener and passer. What’s sometimes forgotten is that he was the top pick in the 2005 draft ahead of Chris Paul and Deron Williams, two players whose career accomplishments outstrip Bogut’s enough to make the Milwaukee Bucks’ solution look foolish in retrospect. That change if Bogut plays a big role in this series, particularly as a rim protector. Like Tyson Chandler before him, Bogut is a very good player whose career can look much more successful in retrospect if he is known as one of the two most important defensive players on a championship team. Suddenly, that status as a top-overall pick won’t look quite so iffy, even if he never reaches CP3’s level as a superstar.
Matthew Dellavedova: The young Australian has already built a reputation as one of the NBA’s foremost pests. If he gets someone like Stephen Curry or Draymond Green ejected in this series, he will become a legendary irritant on the level of Bruce Bowen. And after just two months, to boot!
Steve Kerr: Kerr proved that he was an upgrade on Mark Jackson after only a few months on the job by installing a gorgeous, ruthlessly effective motion offense and improving a defense that was already among the best in the league. His accomplishments this season don’t stop there — he unlocked the potential of Green, got Harrison Barnes’s career back on track, didn’t alienate Andre Iguodala and especially David Lee when they started playing fewer minutes, etc. Many of these successes are a reflection of the work of his loaded staff of assistants, but that’s also a mark of Kerr’s good sense to hire them. He could get swept in this series and stay among the ranks of the league’s very good coaches.
Winning a championship (without inheriting a roster widely acknowledged as that of a contender) would vault him into the stratosphere. It’s hard to compare a first-year coach to someone like Gregg Popovich, but Kerr would instantly gain a whole new level of respect usually afforded to the best two or three coaches in the NBA. This year’s Warriors exceeded their preseason best-case scenario long ago. Holding the Larry O’Brien Trophy would be an unprecedented achievement for someone in Kerr’s position, and the basketball world does not take such accomplishments lightly.
LeBron James: In the 12 years since he was drafted, LeBron has met nearly every expectation placed upon him. He’s one of the best players in the history of basketball, pretty clearly the top talent of his generation, and a two-time champion with enough excellent years left to be the lead star on several more title-winning teams. Unfortunately, his status demands the presence of a small but vocal group of doubters who use his every failing as an opportunity to claim a sub-elite desire to win no matter the context. It seems that James will not silence his critics unless he matches all the accomplishments of Michael Jordan, and even that probably won’t stop some from claiming that His Airness would have done more in this era.
So we must entertain the various arguments that people will use against LeBron if the Cavaliers lose to the favored Warriors. A loss would make two consecutive years in which James decimated the East before falling to the West champion, which could do a lot to convince people that his run of five-straight NBA Finals appearances is not as impressive as it sounds. It would also mark four losses in six finals for James, which is probably the best available ammunition for anyone who needs to argue against his place among legends at the level of Jordan or Bill Russell. It’s still not entirely clear to me why it’s necessary to classify the legacies of transcendent players — the mere experience of watching an amazing player should be enough to inspire awe — but these discussions aren’t going anywhere, and these kinds of issues help define them.
The good news for LeBron fans is that a Cavs win would have effects beyond making his detractors look silly. When James returned to Cleveland this summer, he did so with the long-term goal of bringing the city its first championship of any time since the Cleveland Browns won the pre-Super Bowl NFL title in 1964. While he was celebrated for merely accepting up the challenge instead of taking the superficially easier route with another franchise, actually reaching that goal would turn LeBron into the most celebrated sports figure in the city’s history, killing any lingering resentment from The Decision and making him both a conquering hero and a man who returned to his home state in the name of unfinished business.
The meaning of that accomplishment goes well past branding James as a true winner, or whichever clichéd term you prefer for a guy who leads a down-in-the-dumps franchise to ultimate glory. Legends are not known just by their milestones — they carry an aura that makes accruable stats seem like an inadequate descriptive tool. Bringing Cleveland a title would render arguments about his Finals winning percentage moot. If rooting against certain players is an inherently emotional decision, then it’s tough to develop a coherent case against the man who single-handedly delivers a title to a city that has pined for that triumph for so long. Only a cynic could possibly find fault with that narrative.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
