Randy Smith
I don't spend a lot of time watching NBA basketball. In fact this year I haven't watched a single game all season until the NBA Finals between Golden State and Cleveland. The game is almost too perfect. Ten players on the floor all doing amazing things with their bodies, scoring at will and making plays of every kind look so easy. The way players hit three point shots today reminds me of watching a high scoring pin-ball machine with a skilled player.
In the 2017 NBA Finals three players have emerged after the first two games who have been listed as three of the greatest players ever.
Lebron James from Cleveland and Kevin Durant and Steph Curry from Golden State. In fact one announcer following the Warriors big win in game two boldly made the comment that Durant and Curry could be the best duo on one team in NBA history. Really? You want to go there? I mean seriously.....have you never heard of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson? What about Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, or to go back to the 1960s, what about Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West? There are other duos who could be mentioned but I hope you catch my drift. It may be a bit early to be drawing that conclusion or opening up that can of worms.
All the talk about Lebron James being the greatest player ever is perfectly debatable. James is certainly a gifted physical specimen who has spent several years in the NBA and he's been on three NBA Championship teams. He's one of the rare talents who jumped from high school right into the NBA being taken as the number one draft choice by Cleveland in 2003.
Stephen Curry has rewritten NBA shooting records and is considered as the best pure shooter of all time. The two time NBA Most Valuable Player had thirty points as part of a triple-double Sunday night in the Warrior's win. The best player on the floor in the first two games of the series however has been Golden State's Kevin Durant. It should be against the law for a man that big to be that agile and to shoot the ball as well as Durant does. The seven-footer runs the floor as well as any big man to ever play the game. And he shoots almost as well as his teammate, Steph Curry. Durant is averaging better than thirty points per game after the first two games of the series and he appears to be the big difference between Golden State from a year ago and Golden State in 2017. Durant wasn't with the Warriors last year but the fact he's with them this year may be more than the Cavs can handle.
To mention Curry and Durant as the best duo ever is a bit premature. The two have yet to win an NBA title together, though they're just two wins over the Cavs away from doing so. The comment made on Sunday night by one of the announcers wasn't really that well thought out, just premature. My personal pick as the best duo ever on one team is Jabbar and Magic Johnson. Those two won five NBA Titles together, so when you talk about the best duo ever Durant and Curry have a few more titles to win before making that assumption, or as I mentioned earlier, opening up that can of worms.
* * *
Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for 30 years. He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga television for more than a quarter-century. In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith. They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.