Seventh game matched its hype

There’s something compelling about a game seven.
It doesn’t matter the sport, the last game of the season is exciting.
Sunday was no different.
There were plenty of storylines that made game seven of the NBA Finals worth watching.
First was the Golden State Warriors, a team that trumped its title from a year ago by winning 73 games, surpassing the record set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
Led by the league’s first unanimous MVP Stephen Curry, the defending champions opened the playoffs by beating the Houston Rockets in five games. The Portland Trail Blazers suffered the same fate in the Western Conference semifinals before Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder pushed the Warriors to seven games in the conference final.
But the defending champs prevailed and put themselves four wins away from back-to-back titles.
In the East, the Cleveland Cavaliers rolled through their first two playoff opponents, sweeping the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks. Unlike the Pistons and Hawks though, the Toronto Raptors put up a fight in the Eastern Conference Finals. But they eventually succumbed to the Cavaliers in six games.
The table was set. The best team in the East against the best team in the West for all the NBA marbles.
Golden State steamrolled to a commanding 2-0 series lead with home victories by 15 and 33 points respectively. Cleveland returned the favor with a 30-point win in game three at home, but the Warriors responded with a 108-97 victory on the road to lead the series 3-1.
I said before the NBA Finals started that the first team to win on the road was going to win the series. It appeared to follow that script, until LeBron James and Kyrie Irving played — until that point — perhaps the best game of their respective careers. James and Irving both scored 41 points in a 112-97 win at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, in game five with Warriors’ forward Draymond Green suspended.
After staving off elimination once, the Cavaliers returned to Northeast Ohio, but apparently the Warriors’ offense stayed in California. Cleveland opened a 20-point lead in the first quarter.
The Warriors found their offensive stride, shrinking the deficit to as few as eight points until the Cavs pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 115-101 victory to force game seven.
I’ve mentioned in this space before that I am not a big fan of basketball. While that feeling has since changed, I have the same desire to watch televised basketball as I do watching paint dry.
But midway through game six, I put it on the TV and watched until the end.
I then made a point to watch game seven.
It was too compelling to miss.
Could the Warriors complete their record-setting season with another title? Would the Cavaliers become the first team in the history of the league to erase a three-games-to-one series deficit and win the title? Could LeBron James deliver on the promise he made two years ago to bring a championship to Cleveland?
I didn’t know these answers. So I had to find out.
I’m glad I did.
With a game that had 20 lead changes and was tied 11 times, it was difficult to look away. I watched the first half from the office as I was getting some work done, then relocated to my apartment for the second half.
Sitting on my couch, phone with Twitter open in my hand, I watched the final 24 minutes of what turned out to be excellent basketball.
Kevin Love’s defense on Curry. Irving’s go-ahead 3-pointer. LeBron’s block. Green’s foul. James’ free throw to ice it.
It didn’t matter to me whether Golden State or Cleveland won. I just wanted to see a quality basketball game, which seems to be difficult to find in this era’s NBA.
But I got what I wanted. I watched from the opening tip to the final buzzer, when 50-plus years of dismay for the city of Cleveland was quickly forgotten.
It was the first NBA game I watched in its entirety on TV in 12 years.
Here’s to hoping it’s not another dozen years until I watch a game again.