The Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors is the NBA Finals rematch we've been waiting nearly 12 months to see. It will be the first time in NBA history the same two teams have met in three consecutive Finals.
As ESPN's Micah Adams noted earlier this week, the addition of Kevin Durant to the mix gives the Cavaliers and Warriors more collective star power than any Finals matchup in NBA history. But is this in fact the best Finals matchup ever? Are these the two best teams ever to meet in the Finals?
Best Finals matchups on record
To answer this question, I turned to the method I created to rank the 50 best teams in NBA history after Golden State won the 2015 championship. Teams' ratings are based on four factors:
regular-season point differential
playoff point differential, adjusted for the regular-season differential of their opponents
league quality
a penalty of minus-five points for each win short of the championship for non-champions
In terms of combined ratings, here are the best matchups among the past 70 NBA Finals.
Not surprisingly, what's considered the best team in NBA history -- the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, whose 72-10 record stood as the best in NBA history until the Warriors won 73 games last season before losing to Cleveland in the Finals -- also participated in the best matchup. Their opponents, the Seattle SuperSonics, won 64 games. That's tied for the second most by a Finals loser behind Golden State a year ago.
All told, the Bulls were part of four of the five best Finals ever by this measure. The Boston Celtics also participated in three consecutive top Finals matchups, losing two of them to the rival L.A. Lakers but beating the Houston Rockets in what ranked as the best of the three.
For a variety of reasons, including conference imbalance, no great Finals matchups materialized before the 1980s. The better clashes for the Boston Celtics' dynasty and the great teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s tended to come against conference rivals.
Along the same lines, we hadn't had a great Finals matchup by these terms in nearly two decades before last year's Cavaliers-Warriors Finals, far and away the closest great matchup ever. By virtue of a historic regular season, Golden State had the best rating for a Finals loser and Cleveland cracked the top 20 teams in NBA history by this measure. Their combined total ranked behind only Chicago and Seattle in 1996.
What about this year?
Where this year's Cavaliers and Warriors stand
The 118 combined wins for the two teams during the regular season are relatively modest and 12 fewer than they combined to win during the 2015-16 regular season. Yet because of their dominant runs to the Finals -- 12-1 for Cleveland, a perfect 12-0 for Golden State -- both teams rate as having among the best playoff performances in NBA history.
In terms of postseason point differential, adjusted for the regular-season point differential of opponents, the Warriors rate so far as having the best postseason run ever, just ahead of the 2001 Lakers, who are the last team to sweep its way to the NBA Finals, finishing their postseason run at 15-1. The Cavaliers rank third in NBA history by this measure.
This method can't take into account injuries that made the path to the Finals easier for both of this year's teams. Still, given the teams have two of the three best point differentials ever in a postseason, that shouldn't negate their success.
Since Golden State also posted the fifth-best regular-season point differential in NBA history, if the postseason ended today, the Warriors would surpass the 1996 Bulls (14.0) as the best team ever by this method with a 15.8 rating.
Cleveland's second-half slump, long forgotten in the wake of the team's romp through the Eastern Conference playoffs, hurts the Cavaliers' overall standing by this method. Their current 9.5 rating is slightly worse than last year's champions (10.1), though still good for a spot among the top 20.
Best Finals matchup?
The combined 25.3 rating for Golden State and Cleveland would easily surpass the 1996 Finals as the best combined matchup in NBA history. However, we're not comparing on a level playing field because the post-Finals ratings include the adjustment for losses. It's also not possible for both the Cavaliers and Warriors to maintain their lofty playoff ratings, because they can't both win each game anymore.
The final combined rating for this year's Finals will depend on how long the series goes, as well as who wins and by how lopsided a margin. (Because Golden State played one fewer game before the Finals, losing would hurt the Warriors' point differential more than Cleveland's.) Still, unless the Cavaliers dominate the series, my analysis shows the two teams probably will finish with a better combined rating than the Bulls and Sonics in 1996.
That honor feels appropriate after a postseason in which Cleveland and Golden State outclassed the competition in their respective conferences. While a top-heavy league might not make for the best playoffs, it should produce the best teams we've ever seen square off in the Finals.