Warriors-Cavs rivalry needs LeBron and K.D. to hate each other, starting on Christmas
The only thing that can take this rivalry to Lakers-Celtics level is good, old-fashioned hatred
By
Bill Reiter
•
3 min read
It's time for Kevin Durant and LeBron James to hate each other.
Put that friendship on hold. Trade two-hand touch, offseason football games for bruised feelings and frantic competition. On Sunday, when the Warriors head to Cleveland, don't root for one team or the other. Root for Durant and LeBron to begin a deep, long, league-changing falling out.
The Christmas Day game and rematch of last season's epic NBA Finals has the power to turn the Cavs and Warriors into our own version of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s. If only LeBron and Durant will channel their teams' dislike for one another into a more personal animosity for their fellow star player.
Like with Magic and Bird, LeBron and K.D. are the two most talented players in the game, transcendent players with few equals, from any era.
As with the Celtics and the Lakers, they represent vastly different parts of the country and, also similarly, these two teams flat-out hate each other. Openly. That angst and resentment is great for the game, and was a big reason the 2016 NBA Finals were among the best ever.
What's missing is the ill will between those teams' two biggest stars, the kind that brewed between Magic and Bird and served as an enhancer for their prodigious basketball talents when they faced off against one another.
It's easy to forget now, but Magic and Bird were the furthest thing from friends when the rivalry between their teams first took shape. Bird was obsessed with Magic's box scores and excellence, and in both directions those two all-time greats resented the other's encroachment on their own place in the game, level of greatness and shot at NBA championships.
Yes, when Bird and Magic shot a Converse commercial together several years after entering the league, a friendship began that blossomed into deep respect and affection once their careers were over. And that too was cool, but only because the hate came first.
Here's hoping we look back at Christmas Day, 2016, and see it as the reverse of that -- the moment two friends put aside that respect and affection, at least for their playing careers, and decided the other was more problem than pal.
It could happen. LeBron was overly resentful of Steph Curry's success last year. It was almost manic at times. He felt insulted by the love and adulation Curry got -- resulting in the unanimous MVP vote -- and a sting from losing to Steph and the Warriors in the 2015 NBA Finals. Kings don't like people encroaching on their domain, and for LeBron that means not just the league, but its history and his place atop it, always.
And it's not like the Warriors have warm feelings toward the Cavaliers after suffering a 3-1 Finals collapse courtesy of one of the most incredible playoff performances of all time. LeBron in that Finals was a man on fire, and the result is that these teams are 1-1 against each other in the Finals, they are on a collision course for one another again this season, and they can't stand each other.
Which is where the Christmas game, and K.D.'s place in it, comes in.
Now, the second-best player in the NBA the last 10 years is also a Warrior. The No. 1 player is a Cav. And while Curry has sublimated his own ego and stats to allow K.D. to transition easily onto this team, K.D. has mostly been the same dynamic player he was in Oklahoma City.
Which means K.D. also needs to take on the responsibility of looking LeBron and the Cavs in the eye as a Warrior -- and enemy -- and not a friend. It's old-school time, when teams hated each other and future all-time greats understood that games, championships and legacies could be won or lost by besting one another.
It's the holidays, and all I want for Christmas is Durant and LeBron to stop being friends and start being rivals who take it so personally we'll remember their battles for decades.
