Steph vs. LeBron: The NBA’s Dream Duel Bounces Back

Steph Curry. LeBron James. It’s an unexpected playoff re-rendezvous for two NBA all-timers, pitting Curry’s Golden State Warriors against James’s new-look (and not as terrible as expected!) Los Angeles Lakers.

Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals is Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET. No whining, East Coasters. Plan your pregame naps, espressos and cocktails accordingly.

This surprise edition is happening because Steph went Full Steph Bonkers Sunday, ousting the perky Sacramento Kings with a historic 50-point performance and reminding both the basketball obsessives and the casual observers why he is the greatest show in sports.

“Full Steph Bonkers” doesn’t do it justice, actually. Curry was a ruthless tormentor. On an afternoon Sacramento seemed destined to light its purple victory beam, he punished the Kings with a barrage of layups, short-range jumpers and his customary didhereallyjustdothat 3-pointers. He took 38 shots, a personal high mark. The 50-piece is the best scoring performance in a Game 7, by anyone, in NBA history.

Ask yourself: Is there anything more fun to watch than Steph Curry on a heater?

Trick question. Of course there isn’t.

This edition of Curry vs. James features updated geography. The two met in four consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2018, back when James was on his second marriage to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Warriors took three of those, but the Cavs’ lone win in 2016—from a 3-1 deficit against a Golden State team that had won 73 regular season games—is considered the dramatic masterpiece of the foursome.

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As for this one, few saw it coming. Had you told me midseason that Curry’s Warriors and James’s Lakers would meet in the Western Conference semifinals, I would have cackled like a madman in a horror movie. Anyone would have cackled like a madman in a horror movie.

AHAHAHAHAHA. Not happening. Please.

That’s because the defending champ Warriors spent much of the season as an underwhelming mess—they couldn’t find rhythm, they couldn’t play defense, and they couldn’t beat a junior varsity bass fishing team when playing on the road. They were banged up, missing key players like Andrew Wiggins and nowhere near close to the club that blasted past Boston for a title last June.

Still, they were better than James and his chronically dysfunctional Lakers, who were riddled by injury, inertia, and a roster that appeared constructed via vodka, darts and a blindfold. It felt like another lost season in early February, when James toppled Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record and promptly went on the shelf with a bum foot. A flurry of deadline trades looked like a desperate shake of the snow globe.

Somehow, the shake worked. The Laker trades (and departures, like the miscast point guard Russell Westbrook) began to pay off, enough that James located a physician who told him he could return on his balky paw. “The LeBron James of feet,” he called the doc.) James joined a re-energized Anthony Davis and a large-bodied club that isn’t an easy mark. With new names like Rui Hachimura and confident sidekicks like Austin Reaves, the Lakers pushed through a postseason “play-in” game versus Minnesota and thumped a chirpy Memphis club to reach this point.

It’s a jarring reversal. Showtime, if not revived, is at least revived-ish. An 86-year-old Jack Nicholson has even surfaced courtside—in shades, of course.

LeBron isn’t peak LeBron. He is 38, settles for too many 3s, and there are defensive sequences when he looks ready for soup and an early bedtime. But there are far more sequences when he looks like the sharpest 38-year-old player ever, able to explode and elevate and occasionally bend the game to his will.

He isn’t to be dismissed. Ask Memphis pest Dillon Brooks, who chose to provoke his elder—“He’s old…I poke bears,” the dour Grizzlies enforcer said of James—and got himself a brisk ticket back to Tennessee.

As for Curry, he’s the entire spectacle, still. This Warriors team is his team, fully—the B-side of Kevin Durant is long gone, Draymond Green still self-destructs and confidante Klay Thompson has been up and down since his injuries. On Sunday Curry needed to put the whole season on his back, and while the Warriors got contributions like Kevon Looney’s 21 rebounds, they will only go as far as Curry takes them.

A Steph vs. LeBron series immediately eclipses every other story line in these playoffs. Phoenix and Denver have a zesty Western semi featuring a pair of fluid former MVPs, Durant and Nikola Jokic. Over in the East, you’ve got the deep defending finalist Celtics versus an old-school rival, Philadelphia, and a rowdy bar fight between the Knicks and the Zombie-tastic, eighth-seeded Heat.

None of it compares to Dubs-Lakers. Curry and James are as big as the game gets, still vital, still capable and suddenly back at each other.

Here we go, again. Espressos at the ready. Can’t wait.