Most Valuable Player Award voting percentage leader VS Most Valuable Player Award voting percentage runner-up.
Western Conference first seed VS Western Conference second seed.
16-game winning streak VS 16-game winning streak.
67 wins VS 69 wins...
On May 18, before the NBA Western Conference Finals began, ESPN aired an advertisement on its movie channel containing nothing but four simple lines of text.
Yet every one of those four lines carried immense weight—enough to drive basketball fans around the world crazy.
Ever since the first round of the playoffs, the Grizzlies and Warriors had been constantly clashing.
From the players' war of words to the media brawl between the two cities.
Now, they could finally settle things for real on the basketball court.
The Warriors had arrived in Memphis the day before the game. For them, Memphis was no unfamiliar city.
During the regular season, they had faced the Grizzlies four times, with each side winning two games. Even then, the two teams had been evenly matched.
Long ago, the Warriors had already regarded the Grizzlies as their greatest hypothetical enemy.
So when they came to Memphis for the Western Conference Finals, they were not surprised in the slightest.
That afternoon, the Warriors entered the arena early to warm up.
The moment the Warriors' team bus arrived at the underground parking lot of FedExForum, reporters swarmed in.
This year, the Grizzlies and Warriors were the two best teams in the league, while Curry and Link were the two best players.
In this year's Most Valuable Player Award voting, Curry had received 35% of the vote, while Link had received 50%. Former king LeBron James, meanwhile, had received only 11%.
That might not have proven that Link and Curry were far stronger than James, but it did show that Curry and Link