[panxing18]

If there is a glaring hole on Golden State’s championship resume Willie Brown Jersey , it’s that the Warriors have never gone back-to-back.

That will change.

The Warriors are about to win their second straight NBA championship and their third in the last four seasons – all of them coming at the expense of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who won’t have enough even if LeBron James plays to the absolute utmost of his capabilities. The Warriors have home-court advantage, and have three of the best four players who will appear in the series.

They’re just too good to lose.

If they were going to lose, it would have been in the Western Conference finals against the Houston Rockets. Houston was a team that was built for one purpose – beating the Warriors. And the Rockets might have done it, too, had Chris Paul’s hamstring not popped in the final seconds of Game 5 and forced him to the sideline for the rest of the series.

Golden State rallied in both Game 6 and Game 7, as Paul looked on helplessly. Yes, the Warriors caught a huge break. They won’t waste this chance.

The teams have changed mightily over the last four seasons. There were 20 players who appeared in first Cavaliers-Warriors game of the 2014-15 season – only eight of them will be in uniform during this series. Kevin Durant is in Golden State now, Kyrie Irving isn’t with the Cavaliers anymore, the benches are very different particularly in Cleveland’s case.

But the principals are still there: James, Stephen Curry Corey Liuget Jersey , Klay Thompson, Draymond Green.

And over these four years since James returned to northeast Ohio, the Warriors are 17-9 against the Cavaliers. Golden State needed six games to beat Cleveland for the title in 2015, five games last season and if Andrew Bogut didn’t get hurt in Game 5 of the 2016 Finals the Warriors – who ended up blowing a 3-1 lead that year – probably would have won that series as well.

James might be playing the best basketball of his life. That’s why Cleveland is still in these playoffs.

Even he won’t be able to save the Cavs this time.

Cleveland looked like a team that couldn’t guard anyone in the regular season, and to its credit has greatly improved on that end of the court during this postseason. But facing Golden State will be such a bigger challenge than Indiana, Toronto and Boston could provide. And if the Warriors get Andre Iguodala back, their spacing will be even better and put further demands on the Cavs.

The Cavs won’t have any pressure on their shoulders. The Warriors will have it all, but after Curry, Durant and Thompson found a way to rally from 15 points down in Houston to win a Game 7 on the road and capture the Western Conference, Golden State will come into this series brimming with confidence.

That confidence will keep growing until they get handed another Larry O’Brien Trophy.

The pick: Warriors in five.

—

The Dallas Cowboys want a do-over on hosting the Super Bowl after horrid weather and a seating fiasco ruined their first try seven years ago.

While the wait will easily be more than a decade and with no indication the big game is coming back soon, last weekend's draft at least showed the NFL that what is becoming its spring Super Bowl went off without a hitch in North Texas.

"Obviously we've got a little chip on our shoulder about that one because we had a snowstorm and it didn't go perfect Ryan Smith Jersey ," executive vice president Stephen Jones said last week, referring to the 2011 title game.

"There's a big school of thought in the league that these things should go to kind of vacational-type spots, South Florida and Southern California and Phoenix and New Orleans. I get that. We'd still like a redo there."

The Cowboys hosted the first draft in an NFL stadium, and the league said about 100,000 people showed up in and around AT&T Stadium in Arlington, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, for the first round Thursday night.

Crowd size was limited by the league to about 20,000 indoors, using just one end of the 80,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof, which was closed. The largest screens of the giant video board that hangs over the center of the field were mostly out of view.

The theater setup is still preferred by the NFL for an event that spent many years at Radio City Music Hall in New York before back-to-back drafts in Chicago and last year's popular stop in Philadelphia on the steps of the art museum in front of the Rocky statue.

This larger venue allowed officials to try something they'd been thinking about for a while. Groups of seats designated for fans of each team on the field in front of the stage were a hit. The idea derived from political conventions fed what officials thought was an energetic setting.

"It exceeded our expectations in terms of the energy down here David Bakhtiari Jersey ," said Peter O'Reilly, who oversees special events for the NFL. "It's been a terrific event for us as the draft continues to evolve."

As always, the Cowboys were worried about the weather. It was just about perfect, unlike the unprecedented ice storm that paralyzed the Dallas area most of the week before the Super Bowl. Of course, that was in midwinter.

On top of that, about 400 fans ended up without a place to sit when roughly 1,250 seats in temporary bleachers were declared unsafe hours before kickoff in Green Bay's 31-25 victory over Pittsburgh.

A lawsuit faulted Jerry Jones for trying to break the Super Bowl attendance record of 103,985 (it fell 766 short), and the outspoken Cowboys owner was forced to testify in federal court.

There was no such drama this time, and the draft accomplished what the Cowboys wanted: treating their fans while showcasing Texas as one of football's cradles.

"It's understated even, as big as it is Sam Mills Jersey , how much the fans love the draft and love the drama and uncertainty that goes with it," Stephen Jones said. "For our fans to be able to touch it and go out there and see what it's all about and see this firsthand ... this is football country."

Stephen Jones doesn't expect the draft to come back soon because the idea now is to move it annually. O'Reilly isn't sure it will be in a stadium again because each city has ideas about how to make the draft unique.

Super Bowls have been awarded through the 2021 season , including two with new stadiums (Atlanta, Los Angeles) and another with a renovated one (Miami, which will get its record 11th title game).

But the Cowboys have this much going for them: The NFL now has a fresher memory that has nothing to do with ice falling off the roof and hitting Super Bowl workers, or fans getting crammed into standing-room areas when they were supposed to have a place to sit.

"We're just thrilled with this week," O'Reilly said. "This draft certainly reflected really well on this market and its ability to put on major events."
Kevin Huerter Jersey