Cavaliers vs. Warriors Game 1 TV Schedule, Live Stream Guide for 2016 NBA Finals

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors are repeat conference champions, but the two teams that will meet in this year’s NBA Finals are far different than their predecessors.

On paper, the parts are the same. Stack up the roster pages, and you’d think we were in for a by-the-books sequel. The Cavaliers subtracted one Anderson Varejao and the Warriors added one, but a layman without historical context would wonder what’s so different from 2015 to 2016.

The answer: a metric expletive-ton. 

A year ago, Cleveland was a full-steam-ahead locomotive that saw its wheels fall off at the worst possible time. Kevin Love suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in the first round, and Kyrie Irving followed him out the door late in Game 1 of the Finals.

The Cavs won two games and stayed in the series entirely on the back of a Herculean effort from LeBron James, who killed himself on both ends of the floor in an all-time performance.

Andre Iguodala is your reigning Finals MVP because he prevented another player from winning a title all by himself. That’s how great LeBron was last year.

This time around, the Cavs are fully healthy. They rampaged through the first two rounds with sweeps before going six games against the Toronto Raptors in a series that was never in doubt. There hasn’t really been a question about who would be the Eastern Conference representative since about last July. The Cavs have even settled their own internal turmoil after firing coach David Blatt, as Ty Lue has taken the reins without missing a beat.

Lue points to a fateful March …

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