In addition to witnessing which team will be worthy of representing the Western Conference in the championship round, we'll be treated to a tasty subplot in the conference finals: Is Steph Curry really a more valuable player than James Harden?
One way or another, a score will be settled and no doubt, an exciting if not exhausting series will take place between the two best teams, record-wise, in the West. The Warriors are bringing the most lethal offense-defense balance the league has seen in years with a season differential of plus-10, while the Rockets are bringing supreme survival skills because, to paraphrase former coach Rudy Tomjanovich, never underestimate the heart of a team that fell behind 3-1 in the semis.
You look at the Warriors and you see a team that's deeper than Chicago pizza, with an abundance of 3-point shooters and frisky defenders. You look at the Rockets and you see castoffs and rejects being proudly reborn and refusing to shrink when thrust into important roles. You see these teams and you ... well, c'mon. Seriously, now. You see Curry and Harden.
Curry is having an epic postseason from a shooting standpoint, being quicker to 100 3-pointers than anyone in history, and once again leaving defenders tangled in their own legs and ankles. The league MVP shows no signs of being a regular-season wonder and is usually in the mix whenever the Warriors are peeling off a tenacious scoring run.
Harden answered with a politically correct shoulder-shrug when he finished second to Curry for the MVP but nobody in basketball was buying that. He was genuinely hurt, believing he did more for his team -- one that missed Dwight Howard for a stretch, one that's loaded with role players -- than Curry or anyone did for his. Harden has been somewhat inconsistent in the postseason and the Rockets' biggest playoff moment -- their Game 6 rally against the Clippers -- did happen with him on the bench, partially weakened by illness. And yet, with the Rockets a heartbeat from the Finals and Curry standing in his way, Harden knows he finally has his chance to make a lasting statement.
Reaching this deep into the postseason has been a long time coming for both teams. Coincidentally, this is the 40th anniversary of the Warriors' last championship, when Rick Barry, shades of Curry, was the core of the club. The Warriors reached the conference finals the next season but since then it's been mostly dry, with the exception of the fun Run-TMC era and an epic takedown of the top-seeded Mavericks by Baron Davis and friends. After a lost decade where they simply didn't register on the NBA pulse, it all came together swiftly for the Warriors, and now they're loaded and built to last.
"It's a credit to our organization and the moves that were in place well before I got here," said Steve Kerr, the first-year Warriors coach.
Likewise, the Rockets enjoyed back-to-back titles in the mid-'90s then fell asleep. They were often beset by misfortune because the ambitious Tracy McGrady/Yao Ming project never really launched. And then they benefited when the tightwad Thunder refused to give Harden a max contract, and again when Howard didn't want to be teammates with Kobe Bryant. General manager Daryl Morey did a marvelous job scrapping together unwanteds such as Josh Smith and Corey Brewer and Jason Terry and wouldn't you know, the Rockets are back in the conference finals for the first time since Hakeem Olajuwon was dream shaking.
"The injuries through the year made us fight through adversity no matter what," said Harden. "There's nothing we feel can't do."
If nothing else, we'll see the changing of the guard in the West. Over the last 16 years, the Lakers or the Spurs won the conference title 12 times. It was a dynastic run by those championship-rich teams, and now, the new blood is ready.
So are Curry and Harden and an argument that will see new life. The changing of the guard could be decided by the challenge of these two guards.
