Four questions that Game 7 of the NBA Finals will not answer

For some people, it is this black and white:

LeBron James is either going to pull off the greatest comeback in NBA history and we're going to think of him one way, up with the greats, or the Cavaliers are going to lose and on a whim his whole "legacy" is going to change to that of a choker who has now failed to close the championship deal five out of seven times.

This, of course, is crazy.

No matter what happens Sunday in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, anyone who can't see that James is an all-time great player needs some combination of their eyes and brain checked. Look at the evidence (as if we should really even have to go through it), which our Bill Reiter laid out so clearly following James' masterful Game 6 performance, which somehow upstaged his Game 5 performance, which somehow upstaged his Game 3 performance:

James is within reasonable striking distance of becoming not just the NBA's all-time leading postseason scorer, but the all-time leading scorer, period. He could finish with the best Player Efficiency Rating of all time, ahead of Michael Jordan, who currently reigns in that department. James' four MVPs are two two shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record six, and along with Bill Russell he is the only player to ever win four MVPs in a five-year span. He could finish in the top five all-time in career assists, and most importantly, when it's all said and done, it's a pretty decent bet that he'll have played in 10 or more NBA Finals.

Which brings us to the point of his current 2-4 Finals record and the maddeningly prevalent theory that this somehow confirms his status as a choker.

Stop with this. Nobody that gets to six straight Finals and seven overall is a choker. Furthermore, if you're waiting for Game 7 to determine how you feel about LeBron's big-stage legacy, then you don't know what you believe in the first place. One game doesn't determine these sorts of things. His body or work speaks for itself, which is to say nothing of how unbelievable he has been in both this year's Finals and last year's.

If he is to lose Sunday, it will be to a team that many people will consider to be the greatest team of all time, and it will be through no fault of his own. I do think he could've been more aggressive to score in Games 1 and 2, but seriously, what more could any player possibly do than what LeBron has done in these last two games to pull the Cavs even? Nothing. That's the answer. In the real world, people do their best, the best that anyone could have done, and still lose.

The first rebuttal to this, of course, will be that Jordan never lost in the Finals, and that's true. It's also true that Jordan was on the better team in each of his six Finals appearances. This is not true of LeBron. The only Finals he has lost that, on paper, he probably clearly should've won, was in 2011 when his Miami Heat fell to the Dallas Mavericks. The Heat were better than the Mavs that year. LeBron, in some ways, did pull up pretty lame in that series, particularly in Games 4 and 5, the latter of which he scored eight points on 11 shots and was all but invisible in the fourth quarter. That was a learning experience, I suppose -- his first year with the Heat and all the hoopla that came with that.

In each of his two appearances with the Cavs prior to this year -- a 2007 sweep at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs to go with last year's team that lost in six to the Golden State Warriors -- LeBron has not, by any measurement, been on the better team. In fact, both of those teams never would've been anywhere near the Finals without LeBron. If we're being honest, they might not have even made the playoffs. If the Cavs lose on Sunday and LeBron falls to 2-5 for his Finals career, it will have nothing to do with him. If they win, it will have everything to do with him. Either way, he is anything but a choker, regardless of what the haters are currently sitting back just waiting to say.

Did Curry deserve the unanimous MVP?

It's crazy to me that we have to even point this out, but we do. People are talking about it. At every turn of these playoffs, the majority of which Stephen Curry hasn't looked like his normal self, people have wanted to use his less efficient production as a "See, I told you he didn't deserve to be the unanimous MVP" platform. Newsflash -- the playoffs have nothing to do with what is a regular season award. And that would include Game 7.

No one can make a reasonable argument that Curry should not have been the MVP this year. Curry was far and away the best player on the best team. The problem people have, I think, is that he was the first unanimous MVP, but that has nothing to do with Curry either. Take it up with whatever smart writer didn't vote Shaq as the MVP in 2000 or LeBron in 2013 when he was a man among boys, even by his standards.

So when Curry comes out and scores 40 and leads the Warriors to the title on Sunday, don't get on your soapbox and say that it proves he was the MVP. Likewise, if he lays an egg and the Warriors end up blowing a 3-1 lead by losing Game 7 and the title that comes with it, it won't be a validation that Curry shouldn't have been the unanimous MVP. This game has nothing to do with that award. Remember that.

Steph Curry hasn't looked in MVP form in the Finals. USATSI

Is this 3-point shooting thing truly reliable or was last year's Warriors title a fluke?

Crazy as it may be, if the Warriors lose Game 7, there will be a rather loud group of people, led by Charles Barkley, proclaiming last year's title to be more an aberration, more a product of everything breaking just right for the Warriors, than any sort of true evidence that a primarily jump-shooting team can win at the highest NBA level.

Everyone always wants to question champions that seemingly come out of nowhere. But if the 67 wins last year and the 73 wins this year weren't enough evidence that this is a championship team (to say nothing of, you know, the championship they actually won last year), then what they've done in these playoffs, regardless of what happens in Game 7, has completely ended the discussion.

Consider what they've accomplished just in getting to this point. In the last 20 years, not a single team has won the title with its best player missing more than two playoff games. Curry has missed six, and the games he has played have been at less than a hundred percent as reports are that he may need surgery in the offseason.

Still, they lost just two games through the first two rounds and then made an incredible comeback from down 3-1 in the Western Conference finals that no lesser team could've pulled off with the way the Thunder were playing. This is to say nothing of another key player, Draymond Green, being out for Game 5 of the Finals, Andrew Bogut missing Games 6 and 7, and Andre Iguodala possibly being a shell of himself on Sunday if the back spasms that limited him in Game 6 continue.

Yeah, the Warriors have overcome plenty, win or lose on Sunday. The luck thing is over.

As for whether a three-point shooting team can win (again, if last year was some sort of fluke for you), that question was actually answered long before the Warriors even came along. That aforementioned Mavericks team that beat the Heat in the 2011 Finals was the best 3-point shooting team in the league. The Spurs, whether this is the way you think of them or not, relied heavily on 3-pointers in their last two Finals trips, one of which, of course, ended with a championship. Hell, this year's Cavs ran through the East on the strength of a huge increase in 3-point attempts and makes.

The difference is, the Warriors simply shoot better than any team in history, so we act like they're the first shooting team to come along. They're not the first to come along, and they're not the first to win a title that way. No matter how Game 7 goes, that theory is toast. Has been for some time now. The only question we should be asking ourselves at this point is if a non-3-point-shooting team can win a title.

Does Kevin Love fit with the Cavs?

I can see it now. Kevin Love goes out and has a great Game 7, the Cavs win, and now suddenly he's a great fit when everyone has been complaining about him for the last two years. Or, he is largely invisible, the Cavs lose, and Love must be dealt immediately. This is another one of those cases where if the outcome of Game 7 dictates your feelings, your feelings don't really have much merit.

By now, you should know how you feel about Love in Cleveland because of the way things have looked for the past two seasons. You may think he's slowly figuring out his role and eventually he'll get it and the Cavs will be better for it. For me, he could go for 50 and 20 in Game 7 and I still won't think he fits. I think the Cavs can deal him the day after the Finals and be pretty much the same team, maybe even better. That's not a knock on Love, though I never agreed that he was the true superstar some people think he was when he was in Minnesota putting up monster numbers.

Realistically, it's just a fit thing. You can see what LeBron and Kyrie Irving can do when they're not so concerned with having to find shots for a third option that functions best as a first option. The whole thing is just awkward, a guy who was once one of the best scorers in the league standing in the corner like Channing Frye. It's like one of those jigsaw puzzle pieces that you try to force into fitting because you really want it to, because it would all just be so much easier if it did fit, but deep down you know that piece belongs somewhere else.

Like, in Boston.