It remains to be seen whether LeBron James will have another chance to win the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Given that jarring uncertainty, the likelihood of him ever meeting the Golden State Warriors again with a championship on the line is almost slim to none. The two-time defending champions are in a more stable position than James' Los Angeles Lakers, to be sure, but Kevin Durant's purported interest in leaving the Bay Area and starting a new chapter in his career elsewhere seems more real with every day July 1st grows closer.
All of which begs a question: Might we have seen the last of James and the Warriors fighting for glory in the NBA Finals? That prospect was easy to dismiss as insignificant last summer, when the possibilities for Los Angeles were limitless and the basketball world had just watched Golden State summarily do away with James and the woefully overmatched Cleveland Cavaliers in four games.
Nearly a full season later, though, as James watches the Lakers limp to the finish line from the sidelines and the Warriors prep for anther title run before a future-defining summer, it's easy to long for the intensity, emotion, and all-around brilliance that marked four straight Junes of battles between them.
In that spirit of nostalgia, these are LeBron's greatest moments against Golden State.
The Ball Spike – Game 2, 2015 Finals
Game 1 of the 2015 Finals was supposed to be the Cavaliers' only chance. Playing without an injured Kevin Love and with a hobbled Kyrie Irving, Cleveland was a decided underdog coming into the series, and the broken kneecap Irving suffered in the opening minute of overtime meant the wine and gold were doomed. James had already carried his team through the Eastern Conference playoffs; even if he somehow summoned the energy necessary to do it again on a bigger stage, it simply seemed impossible for the Cavaliers, absent two All-Stars, to compete with a Warriors team that was historically dominant during the regular season.
Wrong.
James had 39 points, 16 rebounds, and 11 assists in Cleveland's stunning 95-93 victory over Golden State in Game 2, evening the Finals at one game apiece as they headed to Northeast Ohio. Could the Cavaliers really beat the Warriors? All by himself, James, in god mode despite shooting an ugly 11-of-36 from the field, made it seem feasible, and his monstrous roar once the final buzzer sounded that could be heard from the upper bowl of Oracle Arena made any other outcome – in the moment, at least – suddenly seem impossible.
51, 8, 8 – Game 1, 2018 Finals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aKhAisjWCU
What might be the finest offensive performance of James' career will be overlooked by the gaffe that cost Cleveland their only realistic chance of putting up a fight against Golden State. He had 51 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists, a mind-numbing line that had never before been accomplished in the Finals and was made all the more impressive by his teammates' collective inability to help him.
James shot 19-of-32 from the field, 10-of-11 from the free throw line, 9-of-10 from the restricted area, and connected on seven jumpers of 20 feet or more, including three triples. The rest of the Cavaliers combined to shoot 37.3 percent overall, 7-of-30 from beyond the arc, and even just 6-of-11 at the line. One more make, at any time throughout the game, and Cleveland would have left Oracle Arena having stunned not just the Warriors, but the basketball world at large, with an effort from James that would go down in league annals as one of the best of all time.
Instead, George Hill missed a go-ahead free throw, J.R. Smith didn't know the score, and James' masterpiece has been relegated to a footnote in by far the least competitive series between the Cavaliers and Warriors.
The Falling Down Alley-Oop – Game 3, 2016 Finals
Lost in the eminently meme-able hysteria of Golden State losing a 3-1 lead in the 2016 Finals is that Steve Kerr's team won the first two games of that series by a combined 48 points. Cleveland was behind from the outset of Game 1, and got absolutely walloped after the first quarter of Game 2.
Still, a victory by the Cavaliers in the series' first game at Quicken Loans Arena wouldn't have been shocking. Cleveland, after all, ran roughshod through the Eastern Conference field. But the way the Cavaliers demolished the Warriors in Game 3, pouncing on them from the opening tip en route to a 120-90 win, allowed for the possibility that their offensive firepower combined with James' historic greatness could make a 73-win Golden State team vulnerable.
And there was no better manifestation of that belief than when James, stumbling after collecting a steal from Steph Curry, somehow reached to the Quicken Loans rafters to finish this high-arching lob from Kyrie Irving with ultimate authority.
Embarrassing Steph Curry – Game 5, 2016 Finals
Curry had just put together arguably the best offensive season of any player in NBA history, a feat for which he was rewarded as the league's first ever unanimous MVP – an honor James missed out on by one vote in 2013. The 2015-16 season was the first time in years, since Kobe Bryant's prime, when a sizable contingent of NBA followers believed someone other than James was the game's best player.
Curry, it bears stressing, wasn't himself in the 2016 playoffs, beset by a knee sprain he suffered in Game 4 of the Warriors first-round series against the Houston Rockets. Regardless, the symbolism behind James' lefty block of Curry, which he made look so alarmingly easy, and ensuing trash talk made it clearer than ever whose league this still was, no matter how the remainder of the Finals played out.
The Block – Game 7, 2016 Finals
“Blocked by James! LeBron James with the rejection!”
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