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The annual NBA Finals meeting between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors carries a sense of destiny. This is, after all, the fourth consecutive time that the league's top-to-bottom best team in the Warriors matches against this generation's singular greatest talent in LeBron James.
But their paths to Thursday's fourth edition is not as straight as it sounds. The journey is littered with a litany of what-ifs that easily could have changed history.
Let's all fall down the rabbit hole and consider the paths this four-part saga could have taken with a twist here or a turn there.
1. Kyrie Irving breaks his left kneecap in overtime of Game 1 in the 2015 NBA Finals.
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Back then, a precocious Irving wasn't far removed from endearingly turning to veteran Mike Miller during a regular-season game against the Chicago Bulls and inquiring, "Is this, like, similar to what a playoff game feels like?"
Irving arrived primed for the challenge in Warriors-Cavs I, ready to carry a full burden with Cleveland already missing Kevin Love due to a dislocated shoulder.
Cleveland forced Golden State into overtime in the initial game, and with about two minutes left, Irving drove right, cut hard and dislocated his left kneecap. The injury sidelined Irving for the rest of the series. Scrappy Matthew Dellavedova played hard in his absence, and the Cavaliers even assumed a 2-1 series lead. But the loss of Irving's dynamic playmaking proved too much, even as LeBron James earned considerable MVP consideration in averaging 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds and 8.8 assists. It isn't too farfetched to think that if Cleveland had a healthy Irving for the series, let alone Love, it could have shaken out much differently.
But…
2. Steve Kerr unveils his Death Lineup in the 2015 NBA Finals.
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For decades, the NBA gravitated around the center position. The game was played inside-out. If you had a dominant center, you were usually in good shape. The game had already started its shift when Steve Kerr turned it upside down by unveiling his Death Lineup before Game 4 of the 2015 NBA Finals.
Andre Iguodala was inserted into the starting lineup over Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green was shifted to center in an effort to create space and push tempo. Kerr admitted to lying about the change when asked about potential lineup alterations earlier in the day.
"I figure I have two press conferences on the day of the game, so I'm asked a lot of strategic questions," Kerr said. "So, my options were tell the truth—and I was asked both at shootaround and before the game—so if I tell the truth, it's the equivalent of me knocking on David Blatt's door and saying, 'Hey, this is what we're going to do.' I could evade the question, which would start this Twitter phenomenon: Who is going to start for the Warriors? Or I could lie. So, I lied. Sorry, but I don't think they hand you the trophy based on morality. They give it to you if you win. So, sorry about that."
The move sparked the Warriors to a series-tying win, and Iguodala went on to earn Finals MVP honors over James. Today (when healthy), the Warriors often flex that lineup to overpower teams. It took foresight for Kerr to debut it in a Finals game and without it, Golden State may not have recovered against the more experienced James and the Cavaliers, even without Irving.
3. Golden State demolishes Cleveland by 34 points on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2016.
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Remember David Blatt? He was the first-year coach who guided the Cavaliers in the first Finals matchup with Golden State.
"We never made an excuse, and I certainly won't do that now," Blatt said after the 2015 Finals. "We played our hearts out. The Warriors were better. [Love and Irving] will get healthy, and we'll come back after it next season."
Love and Irving did get healthy. They came back the following season.
Blatt, of course, did not make it through that year, largely because of the shellacking Golden State offered Cleveland. Before the MLK Day game, the Cavaliers took offense to Stephen Curry saying he still hoped the visiting locker room at Quicken Loans Arena smelled of champagne. They then allowed the Warriors to stomp them 132-98, the worst home loss of James' career.
Soon after, with the disconnect between Blatt and James evident, the Cavaliers fired Blatt despite possessing an East-leading record at the time of 30-11, marking Tyronn Lue's ascension. Had Golden State gone a little softer in the nationally televised game, Blatt may have received more time to work on those fractured relationships. The coaching change righted the atmosphere and the Cavaliers worked their way to another Finals appearance.
4. Klay Thompson buries Oklahoma City in Game 6 of the 2016 Western Conference Finals.
Oklahoma City had Golden State pinned in 2016. The Thunder needed just one more win over the Warriors to ticket a finals appearance. They led by eight points entering the fourth quarter in a game that appeared poised to be the catalyst for an Oklahoma City dynasty.
Instead, Klay Thompson happened.
The other Splash brother dropped 19 of his 25 second-half points in the fourth quarter and converted 11 of 18 threes in the win. The performance staved off elimination for the 73-win Warriors and set them on their way to a championship rematch with the Cavaliers.
Thompson's otherworldly performance likely altered the immediate futures of both James and Kevin Durant. The Cavaliers, of course, won the rematch with Golden State. James was a free agent that summer. His re-signing in Cleveland was never a question after he brought a championship to The Land. But maybe James would have gone elsewhere had the Cavaliers lost the 2016 Finals.
The Thunder would have preferred this alternate timeline. Had the Thompson game never happened, there's little chance Durant would have bolted to Golden State that summer off a Finals appearance with the Thunder. Of course, as it turned out, Golden State eventually went up 3-1 in the Finals and should have repeated, but things went south when…
5. The NBA suspends Draymond Green for Game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
The Warriors pushed Cleveland to the brink of elimination in 2016 with a 108-97 Game 4 win. Near the end of that game, Green, on the ground, swung his arm at James as James stepped over him. At the time, officials called a double foul. Later, Green was assessed a flagrant foul, his fourth flagrant point of the playoffs, resulting in an automatic one-game suspension. He watched from a luxury box at the Oakland Alameda Coliseum as Cleveland took the fifth game 112-97.
Curry's mouthguard throw. The block. Irving's shot. The momentum shifted and the Cavaliers rallied for Cleveland's first professional sports championship since 1964.
If Green had never retaliated at James, kicked Steven Adams' groin or took down Michael Beasley earlier in the playoffs, the Warriors easily could be trying for their fourth consecutive championship beginning Thursday. Of course, they may also have been doing it without Durant.
On the other side, a 2016 loss may have ignited significant change in Cleveland. They could have blowb up the roster following consecutive Finals losses. Would the franchise have traded Love that summer before the Kyrie Irving dissension gained serious traction? Would J.R. Smith have re-signed? Would Lue still be coaching the team?
6. The trade of Kyrie Irving in the summer of 2017.
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If Irving knew then of his pending plans to leave Cleveland, forge his own path and reconfigure the NBA's power spectrum, he did not let on at the end of last season's Finals.
Instead, at the podium following Golden State's series-clinching 129-120 Game 5 win, Irving spoke of continuing to learn as the absorbing pupil in LeBron James' basketball masterclass.
"That's what I'm going to continue to do, because I know that if we continue to be with one another and keep utilizing one another, man, the sky's the limit," Irving said. "So, I've learned a lot and I will continue to and I couldn't be more proud of that guy. He left it all out there on the floor, and to average a triple-double in the freaking Finals, man, add that to LeBron's long list that everyone keeps forgetting."
New Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman had been on the job about a day last summer when reports surfaced that Irving had requested a trade. Soon, Irving departed for Boston with Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder on the way to Cleveland.
Before he had departed the organization, the team's previous general manager, David Griffin, worked to land either Paul George or Jimmy Butler to copilot the team with James. Neither deal came to pass, leaving James to assume an otherworldly burden this season, thanks in large part to the roster's spotty performance. Another star player would have helped alleviate that pressure and make these Finals more appealing on paper.
7. Chris Paul is injured in the 2018 Western Conference Finals. The Celtics take Cleveland to seven games without Irving or Gordon Hayward.
David J. Phillip/Associated Press
Injuries are unfortunately a large and random part of sports. The Rockets believe they would have won the Western Conference Finals with a healthy Chris Paul, whose hamstring strain forced him to miss the last two games. Steve Kerr countered that a healthy Iguodala could have helped the Warriors end the series much earlier.
"I genuinely feel badly for Chris Paul not being able to play these last couple of games," Kerr said. "Just like I feel badly for Andre Iguodala. You hate when these guys who compete their whole lives and practice and train and plan for this moment, and they're not able to be part of it. It's a shame."
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, the young Celtics forced Cleveland to a decisive game without either of their two star acquisitions from last summer. It would have been sensational to watch the spectacle of Irving facing James and the Cavaliers the season after he spurned them with the victor earning another trip to the finals.
At some point, the Cavaliers and Warriors are going to rival the Rocky sequels for so many different storylines. Cleveland arrives again largely from the benefit of James' generational brilliance. The Warriors are still steadied by the dynamic shooting of Durant, Curry and Thompson and the do-everythingness of Green.
The matchups and stakes are the same. But that doesn't mean the personnel and storylines could not have been a lot different since that first meeting in 2015.
Jonathan Abrams is a senior writer for B/R Mag. A former staff writer at Grantland and sports reporter at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, Abrams is also the best-selling author of All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire—available right here, right now. Follow him on Twitter: @jpdabrams