Sit back and enjoy Game 7 of the NBA Finals

OAKLAND >> One game, one trophy. Nothing for the loser. It’s that cut and dry.

Except it really isn’t.

It’s not like this in sports. Not in the NBA. And, certainly, not in Game 7 of the Finals Sunday evening at Oracle Arena.

Someone will win the title, either LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers or Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors, and for the players on the court, that’s the lone goal.

“We’ve got one game,” Golden State forward Draymond Green said. “This is what you live for. I mean, Game 7 in the NBA Finals? That doesn’t happen often.”

But for the people on barstools, the people dialing into sports talk radio stations, the people getting into the chair at Charles Blades Barber Spa in Oakland or Urban Kutz Barbershop in Cleveland, it’s about so much more.

While the players are trying to win a trophy, the result of Sunday’s game will help so many more people win their arguments. Maybe no game in NBA history has carried this kind of weight.

Waverly “Big Wave” Willis, the owner of Urban Kutz, says the chatter in his shop has been going “all the time” since the beginning of the Finals.

“The stakes are just so high,” he said in a phone interview.

It’s all anyone is talking about in Cleveland or across the country in Oakland.

As Blades closed up shop Saturday in Warehouse District, every “Happy Father’s Day” was spiced up with well wishes for “the game.”

Even the participants in what’s essentially the NBA’s Super Bowl haven’t been able to duck all the talk about “legacy” and “greatness.”

“It’s all about winning the game,” Curry said Saturday. “I mean, we’ll worry about what either result means afterwards.”

But whatever the result “means” is what’s making this game so important, maybe the most important in league history.

It’s not capping some epic series with overtime games. It’s capping a series built for fan and media and opinions, one where people on both sides of the aisle have cried “rigged.”

Somehow without a single last-second shot, with more blowouts than last-minute closeouts, the Cavaliers and the Warriors have crafted a compelling series full of drama – the conclusion coming Sunday.

And when the buzzer sounds, the arguing, really can start.

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The Warriors are the greatest team of all time.

If Golden State can survive the Cavaliers push, they’ll have won back-to-back titles – just the 12th team to have done that. If Golden State can end their season with a victory, they’ll have won a NBA record 89 games in the regular and postseasons. No team ever has accomplished that.

They aren’t the dynasty of the 60’s Celtics, the 80’s Lakers or the 90’s Bulls, but facts are facts.

No team has ever won as much as the Warriors will have, and they’ll have gone through Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and LeBron James over 14 grueling games to get there.

And if they don’t?

“We broke the record but that don’t mean (expletive) if we don’t win it,” one of Blades’ customers put bluntly, an opinion Curry and Klay Thompson share.

“Yeah, pretty much because that was our goal from the beginning,” Curry said. “We’re here on Game 7 with a chance to do it. We’ve had two chances already and haven’t gotten it done. 48 minutes to do it. So if we come up short, we’ll all be very, very disappointed.

“No two ways around that.”

LeBron James is the greatest player of all time.

The walls of Charles Blades’ shop in Oakland have a poster of John Coltrane, a statue of Michael Jordan and a comic book with Muhammad Ali on the cover. That makes Blades an expert, or at least an aficionado, of greatness.

“I love this conversation,” Blades said.

While no one in the chairs or behind them was willing to go that far Saturday, they acknowledged the conversation is a worthy one.

If James can pull this off, he’ll surely be the Finals M.V.P. – an award he might even win if his team loses. He’ll have hunted the biggest game in NBA history, a 73-win team, and caught them. Sure, he’s had help with Kyrie Irving’s star-making tu in the playoffs, but otherwise, the supporting cast hasn’t done that much supporting with a couple of exceptions.

If James can finish this performance with an exclamation point, he’s still trailing Michael Jordan – but it won’t be by much.

He’s averaging 30.2 points, 11.3 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 2.7 steals and 2.2 blocks against a great defensive team that’s just won 73 games.

No one ever can say they’ve done that.

“LeBron is just LeBron being LeBron,” Tyronn Lue said, offering what’s actually incredible high praise. “We know he’s very capable of being special every single night.

“He’s been special for us.”

Stephen Curry is the best player in the world right now.

The question to Curry was simple enough on Saturday.

“Do you have to be great in this game?”

“I need to play my best game of the year if not my career because of what the stakes are,” Curry said without hinting that the task seemed too tall. “So that doesn’t mean scoring 50 points, though. That means controlling the tempo of the game. When I need to be aggressive, well, I need to be aggressive. But when I need to push the envelope, do it, but do it under control, do it within the schemes that we’re used to as a team. Focus on details on both ends of the floor.

“All those things go into having a great game, and I need to do that.”

Curry’s done those things for most of the year. He was the NBA’s first ever unanimous MVP after doing those things while his team won 73 games.

And he was probably going to keep doing those things in the playoffs if not for a knee sprain that’s certainly limited him since the first round.

While he’s not been as dominant as he was during the regular season, he’s still capable of a huge game, one he knows his team needs.

“Four out of the six games, I’ve played pretty well to my expectations, my standards,” Curry said. “So I need to take it up another notch for Game 7.

“And that’s what the greats do.”

Cleveland quenches its title drought.

Officially, Cleveland won a title in 1964 when the Browns won the “NFL Championship Game” two years prior to the invention of the Super Bowl.

So, it’s been awhile.

“A while?” Willis asked rhetorically with a laugh. “Try never.”

When it’s been as long as it has been for the major sports teams in Cleveland, a year or two?

It’s part of the reason why James decided to sign back with the Cavaliers two years ago. Still, on the eve of Game 7, James didn’t delve into the connection between him and his hometown.

“We’ve put ourselves in a position to do something special. You guys ask me the questions, but you guys know the answers to them,” he said. “I mean, if we win and we take care of business, that’s something that our city hasn’t had in a very long time. So that’s the obvious. You don’t need me to sit up here and talk about it…

“I came back for a reason, and that is to bring a championship to the city of Cleveland, to northeast Ohio and all of Ohio and all Cavaliers fans in the world. That’s been one of my goals. But I don’t add too much pressure on it. I go out and trust what I’ve been able to do, the work I’ve put into it, my teammates have put into it. And you go out there and see what happens.”

The Cleveland sports drought is littered with athletic tragedies, goal-line fumbles, late-inning blowups and even James’ own defection to Miami.

Now one man – an Ohio native nonetheless – can help put all that to an end.

This is the game that could make James the most beloved athlete in a city that claims Jim Brown.

If he wins, all is forgiven.

And then some.

This is the best comeback/worst collapse in Finals history.

No team in NBA history has ever come back from being down 3-1 in the Finals, and the Cavaliers are on the doorstep of making history. And, conversely, no team has ever given up a 3-1 lead in the Finals, and the Warriors are in position to do that.

“This series has been an emotional rollercoaster,” Willis said.

With so much at stake, how can it not?

When it ends, one team will be NBA champions. The season will be over. History will have been written.

“If you don’t feel pressure in a Game 7, you’re probably not human,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “I told our guys that. Of course they’re going to feel pressure. Of course there’s going to be some anxiety.

“But how lucky are we to feel that pressure?”