NBA Finals 2015 Game 1: Warriors outlast Cavaliers in overtime to go up 1-0

Look at that. watch it over and over. Watch it until your eyes truly start to appreciate the poetic nature of it.

There are so many fun aspects to this. First, the spin. Arguably sports’ most gorgeous move when pulled off. But the half-spin -- the adulterous twin brother of the spin -- is just dirty and disrespectful. It’s deceitful. The half-spin forces you to see eye-to-eye with the person who’s trying to embarrass you. It forces you to confront the pain. It’s damn near sadistic.

Lacob also wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t him who invited the pop star:

In the end, it all worked out for Lacob since the Warriors won.

Just minutes later after his game-saving block, Kyrie crumpled to the floor, limped to the locker room and dropped his team into complete despair.

All that was true before it was announced that Irving’s season is over with a fractured kneecap. It’s especially true now.

Irving will have surgery and is officially out for 3-4 months, putting his status for next season in jeopardy. The new injury was discovered in an MRI taken early Friday morning.

Irving sent this message on Instagram after the news was announced:

This game was a testament to both players’ abilities, but everyone knew what sort of role James would serve in this series. He’s the best, most talked about player in American sports and proved it with so many great shots. Iguodala exerting his influence on this game in the way he did stands out more because it was unexpected -- or at the very least, not guaranteed.

It’s a testament to Iguodala’s adaptability that he’s a crucial cog on a great Warriors team. Before signing with the Warriors in 2013, Iguodala had started all 695 games of his NBA career. Besides his rookie season, he never played fewer than 34 minutes per game. He was a Team USA Olympian and one year removed from making his first NBA All Star game with the 76ers. By signing with the Warriors, where he’s averaging 29 minutes a game, and then accepting his move to the bench this season, Iguodala put all his previous accomplishments aside to focus on helping build a team that’s truly special.

The 2015 NBA Finals are off to a great start -- at least from a ratings perspective. Thursday’s opening game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors drew the highest Game 1 ratings ever on ABC with an overnight rating of 12.9, up 24 percent from last season’s Miami Heat-San Antonio Spurs series.

The impressive rating to start off the Finals is good news for the NBA, which has seen ratings decline for the past three years. The league’s three major carriers -- ABC, ESPN and TNT -- each reported this was their least-watched season of NBA basketball since 2007-08. The playoffs haven’t been kind to the NBA up to this point either, with 51 of 75 games declining from last year’s ratings entering the Finals.

LeBron James is on an island.

There are technically other Cleveland Cavaliers players on the court, but the Golden State Warriors are, at best, secondarily concerned with these players. A normal help defender stands with their body facing their man and their eyes on the ball, ready to stick their man should a pass come his way.

OAKLAND -- Pretty much everyone in the building thought Iman Shumpert’s shot was going down, and if it had we’d be having an entirely different conversation this morning.

This was the game the Cavs had to have. They did almost everything they needed to do to steal a victory on the road. They pounded the glass, defended the perimeter and limited transition opportunities. LeBron was brilliant, Kyrie was sublime. It was all there, right up until the moment when it wasn’t.

This is perhaps the best way to give your team a lead to close out the half:

J.R. Smith is the hero the Cavaliers need right now.

Ninety-nine out of 100 NBA players would have slammed home this alley-oop for two points, but Golden State has never been interested in baskets that are only worth two points. Thompson should have to run sprints at practice for ruining this perfect highlight.

Dang, Iggy. Guess you’re doing just fine with the whole world watching.

Iguodala wasn’t done. He forced a James turnover then finished with another massive flush to finish the third quarter.

Worried about Kyrie Irving? Don’t be. The long layoff between series seems to have been a blessing for Irving, who’s off to a quick start against the Warriors in Game 1.

Kryie coast-to-coast!

NEVER STOP SHOWING RILEY CURRY. Okay, thanks, NBA. We’re all on the same page here.

The NBA will look into changing the division seeding structure that decides NBA playoff seeds, and will make a decision “fairly quickly,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said before Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The league will look to seed teams 1-8 within conferences irrespective of division finish, according to Silver.

Currently, the seeding system guarantees a top-four seed to a division winner regardless of their record. That practice was called into question this season when the Portland Trail Blazers earned the No. 4 seed in the West for winning the Northwest Division even though they had the sixth-best overall record in the conference. That bumped Memphis to the No. 5 seed and San Antonio to the No. 6 seed despite both having three more wins than Portland.

I mean, come on. This is starting to look like a casual layup for Steph Curry.

Stephen Curry. Too good.

He’s so excited, he forgot to put his sunglasses on the BACK of his head!

Wait a second. is that ... JESSE JACKSON on the other side of Steph?!?!

“But I think now when you put my whole body of work, as far as how I approach the game mentally as well as my game, I’m very, very confident in my ability to be able to see the game even before the game is played.”

LeBron is off by a little on his numbers in the 2008/09 playoffs. He actually averaged 35 points, nine rebounds and seven assists on 51 percent shooting. He’s right that those monster stats dwarf his output from this year. James was just a wrecking ball back then, dominating everyone with his superior physical tools. Now, at 30, he’s found more subtle ways to affect the game.

The Golden State Warriors aren’t just a very good team: With 67 wins and an average point differential of 10.2 points per game -- eighth-most in NBA history -- the Warriors are statistically one of the best teams of all time. Over the course of the regular season, they were better than LeBron’s Cavaliers in pretty much every facet of the game.

This one passes the naked eye test. When people think about Golden State, they think about their high-octane, run-and-gun attack.