This LeBron-Curry Playoffs Showdown Is a Gift From the Basketball Gods

LeBron and Steph, Steph and LeBron … they were not grouped together as rookies, like Bird and Magic, and they do not play the same position like Wilt and Russell, so it took some time to see what should be obvious now. This is their generation of basketball. Every other great player is in the book, but LeBron James and Steph Curry belong on the cover.

That is why this Lakers-Warriors series is such a treat. It will be the fourth time James and Curry face each other in the NBA playoffs, but the first time we can watch the whole series with a firm appreciation of their historical significance—and do so while they are still at the peak of their skills. If the league held a draft of the remaining players for the rest of this spring, James and Curry might be the top two picks.

In 2015, the world was still adjusting to the idea of Curry being a true superstar instead of just a shooter. He didn’t even win Finals MVP. The ’16 Finals were framed, before and after, as a matchup of a great team (the 73-win Warriors) against an all-time great player (James, who was then with the Cavaliers). Both teams met again in the ’17 and ’18 Finals, but those series mostly served as a chance for Kevin Durant to prove what any intelligent observer already knew about him.

But now …. now we have a fuller picture. The few remaining LeBron James critics have been laughed off the stage. Injuries, age and free agency diminished the Warriors just enough to force Curry to carry them, which he has.

This will not be the best series of their five against each other—no second-round series could top the Cavs’ comeback from a 3–1 deficit to beat those 73-win Warriors. But this is the one that will give fans the feeling they will try to explain to kids in 20 years.

LeBron and Steph Curry usually face off in the regular season, but this is the first time they’ll clash so early in the postseason. 

Cary Edmondson/USA TODAY Sports

Whether James and Curry are the two best players of their generation is actually debatable. (We pause here to say that basketball generations are much shorter than human generations. Curry is only seven years older than Giannis Antetokounmpo, and both are millennials, but they belong to different basketball generations.) Durant would like a word and deserves one. So would, I suppose, James Harden, through his spokesperson, Daryl Morey, but we shall not grant him one.

There is no doubt, though, that James and Curry are the most important players of their generation.

James has been the most prominent player in the league for longer than any other player in history. He has led three franchises to championships, played in the Finals in 10 of the past 15 years, and—well, this is a matter of opinion and may sound nebulous—but James has helped teams win more games in more ways than anyone else. Come up with anything a basketball player can do, and James has probably done it at an all-NBA level.

James has also radically changed the way the league operates. Without him, would we have ever heard the words “player empowerment”? You still don’t hear it much in other sports. Before James, stars usually stayed with the team that drafted them, got traded or (this was still a fairly new development) left via free agency. Now the decisions and timelines are almost always determined by the player. Since he was in high school, James was expected to carry the league’s image. He has done a lot more than that: He has redefined it.

Curry has changed the game itself, in ways that are long lasting and profound. The quick-fire threes get most of the attention but only partly explain his influence. Curry controls the other nine players on the floor with a combination of shooting range, quick dribbling, passing will and vision. No one ever played like him before, and everyone seems to want to play like him now.

Curry probably has a higher approval rating than James—he has played for one team, avoided controversy, is smaller and more relatable, and still benefits from much lower expectations when he came into the league. Once James was tabbed as the heir to Michael Jordan, he could never exceed that. Even now, Curry is likely underrated historically by a lot of knowledgeable fans, though we really (truly!) do not need to debate that now.

Just enjoy it.

It’s not a referendum on their careers. It’s not really a celebration, either. It’s a gift from the basketball gods, and a rarer one than you might realize. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson faced each other three times in the postseason. James and Kobe Bryant never played against one another in the playoffs. James and Curry will meet for the fifth time despite spending most of their careers in different conferences. Those meetings, and these two players, have defined an era.

One changed the league, the other changed the sport, and they’re not done yet.