Steve Kerr compares best era of Cavaliers basketball to the glory days of NBA history

The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors have some incredible history.

The 2010s were the decade of LeBron James as he went to the NBA Finals nine out of ten seasons. He led the Miami Heat there four-straight times, then returned to Cleveland and lifted the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals another four years in a row.

Unlike his Miami years, however, LeBron's foe in Cleveland was the same: Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors.

Four times in a row the two teams met in the NBA Finals, with LeBron and the Cavaliers coming back from a 3-1 deficit in 2016 to win the first championship in franchise history. Curry and the Warriors got the banner in the other three seasons, but the rivalry between the two teams was something not usually seen between foes from separate conferences.

The Cavaliers - Warriors rivalry has one comparison

In fact, it perhaps has just one other comparison throughout NBA history: the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.

The Celtics and Lakers have been foes since the 1960s, when the two teams first met in the NBA Finals. Since then, multiple generations have seen the league's two most storied franchises face off in the Finals a whopping 12 different times.

Someone else also made the comparison between the two rivalries: Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.

Speaking before the two teams played on Monday night, Kerr compared that run of four years between the Cavaliers and Warriors to the fantastic battles between the Lakers and Celtics in the 1980s. In that decade the two teams met three different times in the Finals and otherwise alternated titles, together winning eight championships in the decade. Each season for 10-straight years, either the Celtics or Lakers were in the NBA Finals.

Kerr also pointed to the star power; in the 1980s it was a number of all-time players, including Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Depending on how you rank the best players of all times, when the Lakers and Celtics met in the Finals they had three of the 10 best players in NBA history suiting up. The Warriors and Cavs, on the other hand, had three of the Top 12-15 when Kevin Durant joined Curry in facing off against LeBron James.

Just as there were some incredible individual plays and shots in those 1980s series, and some all-time individual performances, the Warriors - Cavs run featured them as well. From "The Block" to Kyrie Irving's shot to Kevin Durant's game-winners to LeBron James scoring 50 points in 2018, the magic was all there.

Kerr went so far as to predict the future, stating that "10-15 years from now, people will be doing documentaries on it."

Kerr is right. LeBron James has had the best career of any basketball player in the history of the sport. Stephen Curry revolutionized how basketball was played, was the first unanimous MVP and won four titles as a guard. The story of the NBA in the past 15 years is told by LeBron, and it is told by Curry.

LeBron James left for Los Angeles and won another title for those Lakers. Curry and the Warriors then made it back to the Finals in 2022 and took down those Celtics.

Now the spotlight is back on the Cavaliers. They are dominating the league without LeBron James for the first time in a very long time, if ever, and have their eyes set on a return to the NBA Finals. Their rivalry with the Warriors has not gotten in their way this season: they demolished the Warriors at home at Rocket Mortgage Field House, then just returned the favor and wiped them out at Chase Center in San Francisco. Their two wins were by an average of 18.5 points.

LeBron turned 40 years old yesterday; his star may be finally fading. Stephen Curry will be 37 before the season is over and the Warriors are mired at .500. The rivalary is over, at least for now, but it produced a lot of fantastic NBA memories for everyone involved and everyone watching.

Now it's time to see if the Cavaliers can start a new period of amazing championship basketball.