Why you need to watch the 2015 NBA finals

The 2015 National Basketball Association (NBA) finals are due to begin Friday morning, June 5 (IST). The Cleveland Cavaliers will be pitted against the Golden State Warriors, both teams having brushed aside their opponents in over three rounds of playoff action. While Golden State has made its way to the finals after dominating the season all through, the Cavaliers battled through all kinds of odds, expectations and injuries to come out top of the Eastern Conference.

Consider that in its opening game of the 2014-15 NBA championship on October 30, the Cavaliers featured LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Anderson Varejao and Dion Waiters as its starting five against the New York Knicks. It lost that game to a team, which finished bottom of the Eastern Conference by the end of the season. Two of the Cavaliers' current players, JR Smith and Iman Shumpert, played for New York that night. And yet, seven months later, here the Cavaliers is, having recovered from a 19-20 start to the season, without the services of Varejao and Love and has taken only 14 games through the playoffs to reach the NBA finals. By the time it played the Atlanta Hawks in game four of the Eastern Conference finals, its starting line-up only had James and Irving (the latter incidentally sat out games two and three of the series) as the common links from that opening game against New York.

As against this, the Warriors has been at the top of its form throughout; its starting five of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut against Sacramento Kings on October 29 being no different from the unit that put it past the Houston Rockets in game five of the Western Conference finals a few days ago. Their only hiccup this season was when it trailed 1-2 against the Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference semifinals, but Curry, the league's "Most Valuable Player" (MVP), upped his game to deliver the Warriors from its temporary moment of crisis.

And nowhere are the contrasting fortunes of these two teams in the lead up to these finals better showcased than in the different histories of their respective star players. LeBron James has always ridden a crest of expectations ever since he emerged as a basketball prodigy at the age of 12. He has been the best individual basketball player in the league for the last decade and in the last five years, it's not even been close. His impact on a team is best understood by the fact that when he left Cleveland in 2010, the Cavaliers didn't make the playoffs in any of its next four seasons. Now, when he returned to Cleveland in 2014-15, the team that he left - the Miami Heat - hasn't made it to the playoffs. The acclaimed basketball journalist and writer, David Aldridge, called James "sui generis" for good reason.

On the other side is Stephen Curry. In terms of lineage, Curry is basketball blue blood. His father, Dell Curry, played 16 seasons in the league, and finished with "Sixth Man of the Year" honours in 1994. But Curry was lightly recruited as a teenager and was the third point guard taken in the 2009 draft, after Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn (where is Flynn now makes for great trivia). Even after making it to the league, injury kept Curry from coming into his own. Given his diminutive frame, questions were asked of his ability to compete in a physical game over the long-term. Curry isn't even the highest paid member of the Warriors, with at least three other players in his team making more moolah than him. And yet Curry emerged as the league's MVP this season in one of the most keenly contested MVP races edging out James Harden, Russell Westbrook and, well, LeBron James to the award. That Curry displaced James as the leading vote-getter for this year's All-Star game, also gives the match up between the two the extra edge in these finals.

But there are similarities to James and Curry, too, which make these finals even more riveting. Both ball players have a shared Akron, Ohio connection, with Curry having been born there and spending the first five months of his life there. James, as we all know, was born and raised in Akron and has such close ties to the city that he made it the reason to quit the Miami Heat in 2014 by simply saying, "I'm coming home".

Beside the Akron connection, it's what James and Curry have done as players that makes them so fascinating. James is unlike any basketball athlete before him. He can play in positions one to five and can influence a game on both the offensive and defensive ends of the court. He is a unique physical, athletic specimen that the game hasn't seen before. Not since the Celtics teams of the 1950s and 1960s had a player been to five consecutive NBA finals and the small fact that James has managed it, is a testament to his greatness. In the Eastern Conference finals against the Hawks, he averaged an almost triple double - 30.3 points per game, 11.0 rebounds and 9.3 assists - a statistics line so rare yet so entirely probable from James that we no longer debate his talent.

Curry, too, has been exceptional in his pursuit of basketball greatness. This season he improved his own record of most three-pointers in a season (from 272 in 2012-13 to 286 in 2014-2015). Where the great Reggie Miller needed 22 playoff games in 2000 to set the mark for most 3s (58) in a single playoffs, Curry took only 13 playoff games in 2015 to improve the mark. By the time the Golden State finished with its 15 playoff games, Curry had made 73 3s. He is lithe and agile on his feet, with the basketball bouncing off his fingers like a yo-yo from a child's hand. Curry can launch the ball from anywhere on the court, with the time taken to shoot the ball off the dribble or in the act of catching and shooting faster than you can say "three". If James makes history for a living, Curry makes 3s as a lifestyle statement.

So whether it's something about the Akron water or pure kismet that brings James and Curry to face-off in the 2015 NBA finals, sit back and enjoy these two singular talents for what they bring to the game. Chances are that you will be treated to greatness no matter which side wins!