2016-17 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Kevin Durant. Durant was unanimously voted Finals MVP in his first season with Golden State, averaging 35.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 5.4 assists per game across the series, including a decisive 39-point performance in the closeout Game 5.

Series context

After losing the 2015-16 Finals despite a 73-9 regular season, the Golden State Warriors made one of the most consequential free-agent signings in NBA history, adding Kevin Durant to a core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. The move was widely criticized by rivals and pundits as forming a 'superteam,' but it produced a historically dominant roster. Golden State steamrolled through the 2016-17 regular season and then went a record-setting 16-1 in the playoffs, sweeping through the first three rounds before meeting Cleveland in the Finals for a third consecutive year. Cleveland, still led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love under coach Tyronn Lue, entered as defending champions seeking a repeat title and finished the regular season 51-31. The Cavaliers were battle-tested but simply overmatched by Golden State's retooled roster. The series opened in Oakland, where the Warriors won Games 1 and 2 comfortably. Cleveland avoided a sweep by winning Game 3 at home behind a huge scoring output from James and Irving, but Golden State responded by winning Game 4 to move within one game of the title. Game 5, played in Cleveland on June 12, 2017, saw Durant deliver a signature 39-point performance, including a crucial late three-pointer over James, to clinch the championship for Golden State, 129-120. It was Durant's first championship after leaving Oklahoma City the previous summer, and it made the Warriors back-to-back Finals participants who had now won a title with essentially two different core rosters just a year apart. The 2016-17 Finals is remembered as the peak of the Warriors' superteam era, and it reinforced a broader storyline about player empowerment and superteam formation reshaping the league's competitive balance in the mid-2010s. It also set up a fourth consecutive Cleveland-Golden State Finals matchup the following year, extending what remains a rare four-peat Finals rematch in major North American professional sports history. Golden State's 16-1 playoff run that postseason produced a .941 winning percentage, the best in NBA playoff history, and included an opening 15-0 sweep of the first three rounds before Cleveland finally beat them once, in Game 4 of the Finals. That Game 4 also featured a Finals-record 24 three-pointers made by the Cavaliers in a single game. Durant's Finals averages of 35.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 5.4 assists made his MVP win one of the most dominant individual Finals performances of the decade, while on the other side LeBron James recorded his ninth career Finals triple-double in the series, passing Magic Johnson for the most in championship-series history despite the loss. For Durant personally, the title represented a measure of redemption after he had lost the 2012 Finals to James's Miami Heat as a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 2017 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 2017 NBA Finals
• Wikipedia - 2017 NBA playoffs