Barring a historic collapse, the revamped Golden State Warriors should be well rested before the NBA Finals begin on June 2. With their road victory over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 3 of the West Finals this past weekend, the Warriors took a 3-0 series lead, and no team in league history has ever recovered from that deficit the in playoffs. Teams up 3-0 have gone 146-0 in playoff series.
Warriors superstar Stephen Curry told reporters on Monday that the team has been playing its best stretch of basketball, and his statistics against the Mavs support the claim. In Game 3, the two-time MVP scored a team-high 31 points with 11 assists, and he amassed 53 points, 20 boards, and nine assists in their first two wins. Curry's just one win away from his sixth NBA Finals appearance, and if Golden State beats either the Miami Heat or Boston Celtics, he'll be tied with LeBron James and 14 others as a four-time champion.
"For me, it's not Steph in the context of LeBron, because LeBron's legacy has been so different. You're carrying three different franchises at different times," The Athletic NBA writer Sam Amick told the Reiter Than You show on Tuesday. "You're such a transcendent talent, who does it in a way that, your style is so different than Steph's. But, [four titles] would put Steph up in that pantheon. And I think Shaq, the other day, talked about this a little bit.
"The idea that, [four] gets you up there, even more so with the big boys. And I think, in general, it wouldn't be as acceptable -- in this little NBA culture that we all live in -- to doubt Steph Curry's impact in his story, history, and legacy. You'd just finally have to realize that, what he accomplished is extremely rare and impressive... There's no asterisk on this at all. This is from the bootstraps, picking the franchise up again. Rediscovering his game again."
The Warriors, which earned the West's third seed with a 53-29 overall record, will play Game 4 against the Mavericks on Tuesday at American Airlines Center (9:00 ET tipoff). According to FiveThirtyEight's projections, the Warriors have a 95-percent chance to make the NBA Finals and a 25-percent chance to win their fourth championship since 2015.
The entire NBA conversation between Amick and Reiter can be accessed in the audio player above (interview begins at 11:00 a.m. mark).
You can follow the Reiter Than You show on Twitter @sportsreiter and @CBSSportsRadio, and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.