DALLAS — It all ended in San Francisco Thursday night, but let’s not pretend there is an underlying sadness or failure on the part of the Mavericks this season. Let’s recognize for a moment what they were battling out west.
The Golden State Warriors are going to the NBA Finals for the sixth time in eight years. They are going to the Finals for the sixth time in the last six years that Klay Thompson, who had his one and only lights-out shooting game of the series Thursday in scoring 32 points, is healthy. In six Western Conference finals since 2015, the Warriors are 24-8 with two sweeps and two teams (one of them now Dallas) dispatched in five games. They were a team constructed to go to the Finals year after year, and it’s exactly what they have done.
It’s the reason I mostly hate the fact that Kevin Durant stopped by to win a couple of Finals MVP trophies. There’s a great chance they were going to win without him. They won it all in 2015 without him. They won 73 games in 2016 without him. When you draft Stephen Curry seventh (one pick after Jonny Flynn) and Thompson 12th (one pick after Jimmer Fredette) and Draymond Green 35th (oops, right after Dallas landed Bernard James and Jae Crowder) and come back a few years later and grab Jordan Poole 28th (right after Dylan Windler and Mfiondu Kabengele) and then trade D’Angelo Russell and junk to Minnesota for Andrew Wiggins and a pick you turn into Jonathan Kuminga, you’re doing more than a few things right as an organization.
