Drive & Kick SB Nation NBA podcast

LeBron James and the Cavaliers have been on a collision course with the Warriors ever since last June and The Finals are upon us! Finally. This should be epic. Was it worth it, though? That’s a trickier question than it appears because the inevitability of this year’s matchup has cast a pall over everything else that’s happened in the league. Even the playoffs were a letdown. We get into that, plus the inevitable LeBron-Jordan question and what we’d like to see from both teams.

Do the Celtics have a path to competing with the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals? Well, sure. Maybe. Ok, probably not because it involves many things going Boston’s way. We get into all that on this week’s Drive & Kick, plus some Popology and combine talk.

Isaiah Thomas captured the imagination of everyone with his 53-point performance in Game 2 of the Celtics win over Washington. Flannery gives us more on the scene from an emotional night in Boston. Gonz is in Oakland for the Warriors series with Utah and he has more from Game 1.

Russell Westbrook and the Thunder were bounced in five games by James Harden and the Houston Rockets. Man, that’s a loaded sentence.

Everything about the season of Russ and Harden was condensed into those five games. The Rockets were clearly superior and had far more depth. Harden was excellent for the most part, but other Rockets had moments of glory. OKC was thin and too dependent on Russ, who may have tried to do too much.

We get into all that on this week’s Drive & Kick along with Warriors talk, the carnage that is the Clips-Jazz series, and the Cavs' inevitability.