There has been a sense of supreme control to the Golden State Warriors’ run to The Finals, dating back to their extended winning streaks and third quarter blowouts from the regular season. The playoffs then broke perfectly with the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers facing each other in the first round on the other side of the bracket to go with a deluge of injuries to key players in both conferences while they remain exceptionally healthy. The Warriors’ title window will remain open for as long as Stephen Curry has some version of this current physical form, but they will never again have a title path this wide open.

The Warriors now get the Cleveland Cavaliers without Kevin Love, with an injured Kyrie Irving and of course a high-stepping, on a mission LeBron James. Injuries have very clearly compromised the Cavaliers’ title odds, yet they’ve found a more than workable Plan B with LeBron doing everything on offense surrounded by capable spot-up shooters in J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Matthew Dellavedova and James Jones, along with high energy bigs in Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov. Smith and Shumpert in particular are the Cavaliers’ litmus test guys game to game. This avuncular LeBron without a co-star is somehow succeeds rather easily in the short-term since he’s automatically the first, second and third option as there’s none of the “my turn, your turn” transition that limited the Miami Heat in 2011.

The way this version of the Cavaliers has been cultivated out of the shards of Kevin Love’s shoulder has been extraordinary.

Curry has a substantial edge with his supporting cast, playing with heaps of shooters on the wings and two bigs who are extraordinary passers. And nearly every player in the Warriors’ regular rotation can defend well and can also defend multiple positions. The Warriors are still in the quantitative stage of things rather than qualitative, but they are in historically great territory based on multiple metrics.

LeBron remains a physical menace and can fire up the jets to dunk on people on occasion, but there is a confidence in his mental approach to the game that developed in the wake of the Finals in 2011. LeBron is a more hardened leader and a certified champion.

James has struggled to score efficiently in the playoffs, but he’s continued to attack and be aggressive. James has simply and sensibly acknowledged hating being this inefficient, instead of letting it become a source of neurosis. James has still carried the Cavs’ offense with his distribution, creating wide open three-pointers out of his dribble penetration and mid-post game. James has scored or assisted on 53.2 percent of the Cavaliers’ buckets in the playoffs.

James reaching The Finals while shooting so poorly is a startling testament to the dominance of his all-around game (and the state of the East) that it nearly constitutes performance art.

But to defeat the Warriors without Love and with a limited Irving, James will have to be even better. James will need to be a hyperefficient version of James Harden; sticking to shot attempts at the rim, at the three-point line, drawing lots and lots of fouls, eliminating long two-point jumpers and drawing double-teams for kick outs into open three-pointers. LeBron could then slow down the pace, reduce the number of transition opportunities for the Warriors and reduce their depth advantage.

The talent gap won’t be at all like the 2007 Finals, but the Warriors are capable of running the Cavs off the floor the way the Spurs grotesquely did of the Heat in Games 3-5 last season unless LeBron consolidates every intelligent trick available to him. LeBron has ingeniously managed his fitness this season and he is ready for this final sprint in which he’ll see a potpourri of Harrison Barnes, Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green defending him with Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli waiting on the next layer at the rim.

The Warriors need to piece together four games of unstoppable shooting, wear down LeBron and watch out for the riders.

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We were wrong when Stephen Curry came out of Davidson in 2009 with the comparisons to Steve Nash on the high end and Steve Kerr on the low end. Curry has no predecessor. 

We were wrong when LeBron James came out of St. Vincent St. Mary’s with the comparisons to Magic and Michael. He developed signature characteristics of both players, but he also absorbed elements of Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird and even Shane Battier.

Curry is glorified for being relatable and for the precision and purity of his shooting. Curry transfigured his game with an obsessive drive for developing his handle to keep pace with the inventiveness of his mind. Everything Curry does on the court seems plausible yet virtuoso.

The giants on the floor always seem daunting to Curry, even when he makes impossibility look remarkably easy.

Curry will sometimes play off-ball and use screens to free himself for catch-and-shoot three-pointers, but his handle allowed him to be a self-reliant and fully formed offensive player. There are gyms all over the world with one-on-none perimeter shooters who never miss, but the difference is Curry only needs a microsecond. 

LeBron simultaneously has the highest basketball IQ of his generation and also is the most athletic. LeBron’s memory and textured feel for the game is practically computerized. LeBron dominates the game physically like nobody else of the past 30 years other than Shaq. His career has somehow exceeded expectations while still feeling like it was always preordained.

LeBron plays now with his basketball mortality in mind that simply didn’t exist in 2010, yet there is also more control. LeBron has the run of things again with the Cavaliers and there is a personal element to winning a title for Northeast Ohio that goes well beyond a Nike commercial.

LeBron never did face Kobe in The Finals, but he met Tim Duncan and the Spurs three times, Dirk Nowitzki in one he lost and Kevin Durant in the first one in which he was the victor. In this age of great point guards, Curry has too many rivals for a true rivalry to really form. Curry has to get past all four of his fellow All-NBA First Teamers to win these Finals, which will go a long ways in determining whether Curry is a very special trend or a lasting legend.

In LeBron’s first season back in Cleveland, the Cavaliers are an overnight success either four years or 12 years in the making.

No other players create the type of enormous gravity on offense like Curry and LeBron. Curry’s pull continues regardless of whether he has the ball or not, while LeBron is almost always with the ball in this postseason with complete autonomy.

It is very easy to get into hyperbole during the playoffs and to also forget this is still a team game not strictly decided by each team’s best player. But we’re still in a safe enough place to call Stephen Curry the greatest shooter of all-time and LeBron James the greatest all-around player of all-time.

There are so many surface contrasts of style and narrative between Curry and LeBron, but they’re remarkably related artists carrying their teams and transfiguring basketball. These Finals will be their competing compendiums.