:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46551906/usa-today-8240977.0.jpg)
The Golden State Warriors can win an NBA title for the first time in 40 years ... in Cleveland of all places. Cleveland has never won a professional basketball championship in 19 playoff appearances. It really puts into perspective the success the Pistons have had over the last 26 years.
This NBA finals have certainly been entertaining. Pinning this year's MVP Stephen Curry against "the best player in the world" and self-proclaimed King LeBron James will do that. The ratings are some of the best since Michael Jordan's last championship run. For me, this finals was one I've looked most forward to since Pistons-Spurs in 2005, and it goes a little deeper than MVP vs. LeBron.
As some of you know, I went to college with Stephen Curry. I was a senior during the improbable Elite 8 run, friends with most of the basketball players, including the starting seniors with whom I still keep in touch. Every time the team advanced and came back to campus, the team would celebrate with us in an apartment across from mine. Coincidentally, the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 would happen in my hometown of Detroit at Ford Field. When the school bused a third of the 1700 students up to Michigan, my parents were driving down to watch my baseball series and passed the buses.
It was there in Detroit LeBron James would become friends with Curry as Curry went off on Wisconsin. "Folks, we got a star!" Gus Johnson would exclaim after Curry finished a ridiculous reverse and James cheered.
Curry's first college games actually happened in Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan and then Michigan. He turned it over 13 times in his first game. Then he dropped 32 points on UM.
This one is very personal for me and my alma mater. We're proud of him, because of how he rose to these heights. Everything you read about him from journalists during these greatest times in his life are true as can be -- he's an outstanding basketball player and just as good of a person.
During Curry's rookie season I went to a Pistons-Warriors game and messaged Curry on Facebook that I'd be there in a Davidson jersey, but pulling for the Pistons. He responded, though I certainly didn't expect him to, "that's what's up. Let me know what section you're in so I can look for you in the sea of whatever colors the Pistons are lol"
Red, blue and white is what I bleed, but I hope the Warriors close it out tonight. That's what's up.