For the seventh time: Golden State NBA Champion

Comeback Championship: For the most impressive win in the Golden State dynasty

The Warriors' current championship is the most impressive of the current dynasty.

Not because this is the highest quality version, but rather because of all the limitations.

Assaf Ravitz analyzes and wonders: Where is Steph Kerry in the ranking of the greatest players ever

Assaf Ravitz

17/06/2022

Friday, 17 June 2022, 13:01

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Golden State players celebrate in the locker room (from Instagram)

All the championships are exciting, but it was a particularly exciting championship.

Golden State comeback championship.

It is utterly unprecedented to return from such a deep pit.

Chicago was a legitimate contender for the championship even in the retirement seasons of Michael Jordan, between the two trilogies.

San Antonio remains a top team as it reinvents itself between 2007 and 2014.

Golden State lost Kevin Durant - the final MVP in two of the three championships and one of the best players in the world.

She lost one of the Splash brothers to a pair of injuries that took him two and a half years to recover from.

Steph Kerry and Raymond Green have also missed big chunks from the past three years, and in the process Grandpa Time has also done his part.

Two years ago this was the weakest team in the league, a year ago it lost in the play-in, this year it is a champion again.

More on Walla!

Kerry won the MVP final for the first time and burst into tears: "He is the greatest coordinator ever"

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The most impressive championship of the current dynasty.

Clay and Kerry Celebrate (Photo: GettyImages, Adam Glanzman)

This is Golden State's most impressive championship as a club, the dynasty's most impressive championship.

Not because this is the highest quality version, really not, but rather because of all the limitations.

Because Steph is 34 and has reached the playoffs after the weakest shooting season of his career;

Because of Clay Thompson's illogical comeback;

Because age definitely affects Green, who has lost some of his athleticism and sharpness;

Because Andre Iguodala turned out to be irrelevant during the playoffs;

Because the assisting team is made up of players that other teams did not want and young players are immature.

While this is the team with the highest total salary in the league, it is mainly related to the contracts of the big three that stem from respect for their past achievements far more than future expectations.

This is the most important championship for this dynasty.

The first championship was against Cleveland without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, the next two were with Durant, a one-time window of opportunity allowed him to reach.

The current championship puts a final stamp on the historic greatness of this team even without KD, of the Steph-Clay-Dray skeleton, of the method Steve Kerr built around those three.

This happy basketball, this different one, brings championships, in the plural, with no asterisks and question marks.

Like every year, this year too there have been significant injuries, teams like Milwaukee, Denver and the Clippers feel that in a full squad they have had the opportunity to challenge for the title.

But there were also enough very high-quality teams, some on paper and some actual, and in the end Golden State dealt pretty easily with everything that was in front of it.

When you think of the Warriors you think of the offensive movement, the impossible threes, the joy of life.

The recent games have been an important reminder that defense is an integral part of the dynasty's identity.

Golden State turned a 2-1 deficit into a 2-4 victory first and foremost thanks to three wonderful defensive displays.

She has conceded 97.9 points per 100 passers in the last three games (for comparison, Boston's best regular-season defense has conceded 106.2 points per 100 passers).

This is a smart and determined defense team, which thinks faster than the opponent, makes it difficult for every intrusion and every shot, performs perfect rotations.

One of the biggest compliments to the club's culture is the way Andrew Wiggins has become the best stopper in the league in the last two rounds.

The last three games have been his perfect defensive displays.

Perhaps the best way to sum up the final is that at some point the Warriors ’defense caught on to the Celtics’ offense and began to take the sting out of it.

She made it difficult for the stars and completely eliminated most of the sub-players,

More on Walla!

The History of Kerr's Trio and Closet: Golden State Championship Numbers

To the full article

Belongs to the list of the largest.

All that can be understood is whether he is in the top 15 or in the top 10. Steph Kerry (Photo: GettyImages, Elsa)

Steph

Steph Kerry is a historical actor.

He was also before this final.

I object a bit to the statement that he changed the game of basketball, the triple and pace revolution is an analytics revolution that Steph is just her poster.

Even though the league is already full of youngsters who have grown up on him and are throwing threes non-stop, no one is still playing like him, not consistently scoring shots at his difficulty level, no matter games through motion without a ball like him.

Although this group has been around for almost a decade, no other group comes close to something similar to the Warriors style, no one even seriously trying.

B.

Because it expands the possible range, what can be imagined, it is not achieved even for those who play with it and against it, it is one-time.

Over the years I have been quite stubborn in refusing to place Steph in relation to other players historically.

Something in it always eluded comparisons, this one-off gave a sense of its own category.

But after the finale I feel it's worth putting Kerry into the historical equations.

Because it was a senior player final at the height of his career, one that reaches the NBA Finals and is simply consistently better than anyone else.

It was a final in which an opponent managed to take the method to Golden State, so Steph defeated her with his own hands until she surrendered and started performing a double team on him.

His bad game, the fifth game, was also a good game except that the threes didn’t get into it.

And if that wasn’t enough, he also made a defensive leap, he finished two excellent defensive rounds against an opponent whose offensive play was built on a relentless attempt to attack him.

Of all the stamps this final produces, the most obvious stamp is of Steph as someone who belongs to the list of the greatest of all time, all that is left is to figure out whether to place him in the top 10 or top 15.

Without reaching an exact number, I believe it will be placed higher with me than with many others.

When I value a historical player, one of the guiding questions for me is which team can be built around him.

Tim Duncan should be a top 10 player certainly because any type of team could be built around him and he knew how to adapt and allow the players around him to reach the top.

Steph is probably on his way there because one of the greatest teams of all time was built around him.

Thanks to his unique abilities, and also thanks to his personality that made it possible.

Steph is the superstar who enjoys the knowledge that his movement without a ball produces lay-ups for teammates, he is the superstar who knows how to move aside when needed, he is the superstar who allows other stars to join and feel at home.

We've seen some constellations collapse this year for all sorts of reasons, it's becoming more impressive the way Steph and Golden State have allowed Durant to fit in.

The importance of their presence cannot be overstated.

Drymond Green and Clay Thompson (Photo: GettyImages)

Clay and Drey

On the face of it, it was not a big final of the other two ribs in the trio.

Clay scored 35.6 percent from the field, Drey 33.3 percent.

But the importance of their presence cannot be overstated.

In the case of Clay Thompson, the very ability to come back after two and a half years, after going through two of the most serious injuries a basketball player can go through, is almost inconceivable.

We had no idea what made sense to expect from him, what we got was a player who most of the time is reminiscent of who he was, who in every series finds his way to a big two-game game.

And starting with Game 4 in the final, his defense also came back to mention who he was before the injuries, he played an important part in the defensive effort of the last three games.

It can be assumed that as long as he is not injured again, next year he will only be better and more stable.

With Drymond Green, as mentioned, one could feel a drop in athleticism and sharpness that in non-negligible parts of the series made him a burden.

The climax came when Steve Kerr took it out for a few minutes deep in the final quarter of Game 4, perhaps the most important minutes in this series.

Maybe this is the moment that changed something.

Dray responded to the bench by the fact that when he came back he performed some great actions in money time, and in the next two games was excellent defensively and effective offensively.

At no point, even in his worst games, did he stop being the beating heart and defensive anchor of the team.

The dynasty would not have existed without these two, in this final there was enough around them to cover up their instability and make their great moments meaningful.

Bob Myers' biggest flash.

Andrew Wiggins (Photo: GettyImages, Thearon W. Henderson)

Reconstruction

General manager Bob Myers signed for this team, he is the one who selected a historic trio in 7th, 11th and 35th places in the draft.

But in this championship, he gets huge credit for a very successful rebuilding process.

The process began in the summer of 2019, following the injuries of Durant and Clay.

Myers managed to turn KD's departure into a sign and trade on DiAngelo Russell, which later became a trade for Andrew Wiggins and a high pick.

In that summer's draft, Myers selected Jordan Paul in 28th place.

In the next two years Myers learned to identify players who fit and did not fit the style of the team and filled the roster with suitable players.

Last summer there was one place left in the squad, the veteran players thought the experienced Avery Bradley was the one to get this place, Myers insisted on giving the contract to Gary Peyton II, he identified a player who fits the method with an exceptional fighting spirit.

Game 5 was Myers' rebuilding game.

The day Steph's threes did not come in, Wiggins,

The rebuilding did not end with the players who contributed in the final.

That high pick from Wiggins' trade became the promising Jonathan Cuminga, along with him came in the same draft Moses Moody who got significant minutes in the Western Conference Finals.

On the shelf awaits James Weissman, the second pick two years ago, a chin with a particularly high potential who meanwhile is mostly injured.

Along with Paul, the Warriors have a future skeleton that can help veterans grow old with dignity and continue to struggle at the top.

It is conceivable that in a year and two years Paul will be even better and Kominga and Modi will be consistently integrated into the rotation as two more forwards with a combination of defense and offensive abilities.

These are exactly the players that every playoff team is looking for, and it is likely that as early as next year Cold will earn at least one significant rotation player with their help, if not two.

The Warriors ’ability to continue running at the top depends on the trio’s ability to stay at least at the level of the current playoffs for a few more years.

It also depends on the willingness of homeowners to continue to pay astronomical taxes that will only increase.

The contracts of Kwon Looney and Peyton are coming to an end this summer, and in order to keep them Golden State you will have to pay sums worthy of senior sub-players and further increase the spending column.

Next summer Wiggins and Paul will end contracts and it may be that we will already reach the limit of the owner's ability to pay.

Quick integration of Kominga and Moody, while on rookie contracts, could greatly help the system find balance and survive the years left for the veteran stars with quality staff around them.

Weissman is the secret card that can turn out to be a significant addition or someone more right to trade in a group under construction.

"The next most significant step is probably in Taitum's ability to continue to advance towards the biggest stars in the league" (Photo: Reuters)

Boston

The loser in the final is always disappointed, and Boston will surely feel that they missed an opportunity to go up to 1: 3 and change the second half of the final.

But once you let the disappointment sink in, Boston can be very pleased with this season.

A season in its advanced stages it was out of the playoff picture in the East, and then began one of the most impressive revolutions I can remember.

The Celtics went from an unimportant team to the best team in the league, by a margin, in the second half of the season.

Ima Yuduka reached the players, the attack began to move a ball, the defense became an extraordinary phenomenon and the structure of a team without flaws proved itself against rivals with more talented stars.

It would be a great injustice if we remember the Celtics mostly the last few games in the finals, if we remember Jason Taitum mostly the finals and not what he did to lead him to Boston.

I believe one of the reasons for the fall in recent games was that the players of Yuduka were physically and mentally exhausted from two series of seven games they played before the final.

Taitum is still also the player who scored 46 points in the away game, still the player who defeated Kevin Durant in the direct battle between them, still a player who finished an exhausting playoff with a line of 25.6 points, 3.2 threes, 6.7 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game.

And he's 24, while the final MVP is at his peak at 34. Taitum has more to learn and where to go, and he's gaining just the experience that will allow him to do so.

Around him there is a young staff (except for Al Horford) who will now run a good few years at the top of the East.

As long as Robert Williams is healthy the Celtics defense will secure her a place at the top on its own.

Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens have signed all the important players for a few years on reasonable contracts that will not cause Boston to enter the area of ​​unfounded taxes at least for the next few years, and there will also be room to add another two-player to the bench.

Yudoka will be hoping for a leap forward for Peyton Pritchard and Arun Nismith in their third year, and Stevens will be looking for players of their kind in the free market and trades.

But the next most significant step is probably in Taitum's ability to continue to advance towards the biggest stars in the league.

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