Now we get to answer the what-if. The Cavaliers are healthy, and the Warriors mostly are too, though they just had to outlast the Thunder in a grueling seven-game Western Conference finals — and Curry missed time with a knee injury earlier in the playoffs. That all sets the stage for the 73-9 Warriors not looking like such heavy favorites against the 57-25 Cavaliers as one might expect. Consider that Cleveland breezed through the Eastern Conference with a 12-2 playoff record while Golden State went 12-5 against the West. 

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Sporting News’ Sean Deveney and Adi Joseph are here to tell you what to think. And though they both agree on who gets the Larry O’Brien Trophy, the paths are different.

Sean Deveney’s NBA Finals prediction

The meeting of the Cavs and Warriors — call it NBA Finals 2.0 — figures to be so much more than a rematch. Both Golden State and Cleveland are on this stage for the second straight year, and this time around, each is a much better team. The Warriors return with much the same lineup, but are back as a group that has been hardened by the travails of a 73-win season and a grueling Western Conference finals.

The Cavs are completely different, back with a healthy Kevin Love and, they expect, a version of Kyrie Irving that will be around for the duration of the Finals this time. Their coach, Tyronn Lue, is new, and their bench has undergone a serious upgrade with hot-shooting big man Channing Frye and veteran forward Richard Jefferson.

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And yet, the Warriors figure to successfully defend their championship, largely because their two star guards, Curry and Klay Thompson, have figured out how to withstand the many different looks and waves of defensive pressure they typically get. Remember that Thompson struggled in last year’s Finals (40.9 percent shooting) and Curry was good, not great. Andre Iguodala was the Finals MVP.

The Cavaliers will test the Warriors’ defense, no doubt. The Cleveland offense is humming, averaging 106.9 postseason points and shooting 47.5 percent from the field and 43.4 percent from the 3-point line. Irving and Love finally have become the complementary stars to James that the Cavs imagined they’d be.

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But beware the Warriors defense. Except for two hiccups in Oklahoma City, the Warriors are capable of defending better than any team in the league, throwing a wave of versatile athletes at James, Love and Irving. If the Warriors can protect the rim (hello, Andrew Bogut!), limit turnovers and keep their 3-point barrage going, they should be able to earn a championship repeat. 

The call here is Warriors in 7. 

Adi Joseph’s NBA Finals prediction

Is it possible that the 2016 NBA Finals version of the Cavaliers is a much, much better team than the 2015 NBA Finals version of the Cavaliers, and that might be a bad thing? Last year, the Cavs managed to bully the Warriors. They were starting Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert, James, Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov, so their only real option was to push and shove and hope that Golden State stopped making all those shots.

Meanwhile, they let James carry the offense in the way that only he can. He gave a Herculean effort, even though it wasn’t nearly his most efficient work.

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These Cavaliers have upgraded from Dellavedova to Irving and Mozgov to Love while choosing to replace Shumpert, who has not looked himself this season because of injuries, with J.R. Smith. The result is a significantly more skilled lineup that ripped apart every Eastern Conference defense with its sharpshooting. The Cavs would make the Warriors blush with their 3-point rate in the playoffs: 40.8 percent of their field goal attempts are from behind the arc, to the Warriors’ 35.2 percent entering Game 7 of the West finals.

These things are not necessarily good. Mozgov is almost entirely out of the rotation for Cleveland, which has turned to 6-9 Thompson and stretch-bigs Love and Frye to handle duties at center. That’s going to be a big problem against a Warriors team that never seems to struggle against small-ball lineups.

Draymond Green can run Love off the court. Thompson may not be able to hang with Festus Ezeli and Bogut for the same reasons he struggled with Bismack Biyombo: Bigger, stronger centers who focus on rebounding and defense give him trouble. And then we’ve got the issue of how to hide Irving on defense. Put him on Curry, and you get torched. Same with Thompson. So you slide him to Harrison Barnes, but then he’s giving up a ton of size, plus Iguodala may start again anyway at small forward.

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The Thunder — tall, long and ridiculously athletic — were a recipe for disaster for the Warriors, and they still averted it. The Cavs are a bizarrely similar team to the Warriors, aside from the disparity of the teams’ stars. They want to shoot — no one out-shoots the Warriors. This could get ugly if Golden State is feeling fresh.

I’m going with Warriors in 5.