2014-15 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Andre Iguodala. Iguodala averaged 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 4.0 assists per game and won Finals MVP after being moved into the starting lineup partway through the series, becoming the first player to win Finals MVP without having started every game of the series.

Series context

The 2015 Finals brought together the Golden State Warriors, who had finished the regular season a league-best 67-15 behind newly-crowned MVP Stephen Curry's record-setting three-point shooting, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who went 53-29 in LeBron James's first season back in Cleveland after forming a new 'Big Three' with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. Cleveland had started the season slowly before a midseason trade overhaul and late-season surge propelled the team to the Finals, while Golden State entered its first championship series since 1975 as the favorite. The series opened with two overtime thrillers: Golden State won Game 1, 108-100, but Cleveland stole home-court advantage back with a 95-93 overtime win in Game 2, a game in which Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving fractured his kneecap and was ruled out for the remainder of the series, joining an already-injured Kevin Love on the sidelines. Playing shorthanded, Cleveland nonetheless won Game 3, 96-91, to take a stunning 2-1 series lead almost entirely on the strength of a herculean effort from LeBron James. Facing a real threat of losing the Finals, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr made a pivotal adjustment ahead of Game 4, inserting Andre Iguodala into the starting lineup and shifting Draymond Green to center in a small-ball lineup that overwhelmed Cleveland's diminished frontcourt. The move sparked three consecutive Warriors wins, clinching Golden State's first championship since 1975, 4-2. LeBron James put together one of the most statistically dominant losing efforts in Finals history, averaging 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds, and 8.8 assists per game and becoming the first player ever to lead both teams in all three major statistical categories across an entire Finals series, but it was not enough to overcome Cleveland's depleted roster. Iguodala's selection as Finals MVP over James was notable and somewhat unconventional given James's statistical dominance, reflecting voters' recognition of Iguodala's decisive defensive matchup against James and the tactical significance of the lineup change that turned the series. This championship marked the beginning of what would become a dynastic run for the Warriors, built around the Curry-Thompson-Green-Iguodala core and the small-ball, three-point-heavy style that would come to define the league's next several years, while for Cleveland it set the stage for a rematch the following season that would go very differently. Golden State's path to the Finals was dominant, sweeping New Orleans in the first round before beating Memphis in six games and Houston in five in the conference finals; Cleveland swept both Boston in the first round and Atlanta in the conference finals, sandwiched around a six-game win over Chicago. The Finals' first two games both went to overtime, the only time that has happened in Finals history. Iguodala also became the first Finals MVP not to start his team's first game of the series, having come off the bench before Kerr's Game 4 shakeup. Golden State's Oracle Arena and Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena each played to a full house, drawing 19,596 and 20,562 fans per game respectively, and Game 1's audience of 17.8 million was the largest Game 1 crowd in ABC's broadcast history, with the first four games standing as the most-watched and highest-rated Finals broadcasts ABC had aired to that point. Golden State's combined regular-season and playoff record of 83-20 ranked as the third-best in NBA history at the time, behind only Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls teams of 1995-96 and 1996-97.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 2015 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 2015 NBA Finals
• ESPN - Iguodala named Finals MVP