OAKLAND, USA – A look at the NBA Finals by the numbers ahead of Thursday’s start of the league’s best-of-7 championship final:
2: Cleveland’s Tyronn Lue is trying to become only the second coach to win titles in his first two NBA seasons as a head coach, following John Kundla of the Minneapolis Lakers in 1949 and 1950.
3: The number of consecutive years that Golden State and Cleveland have played each other in the NBA Finals, a first in the league’s 71-year history.
4: The number of back-to-back-to-back finals rematches in major North American sports leagues, once each in the NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball now joined by the NBA.
7: Four-time NBA Most Valuable Player LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers will become the seventh NBA player to compete in his seventh consecutive NBA Finals. The only other players with at least seven NBA Finals appearances in a row played for the Boston Celtics in the 1950s and 1960s, with Bill Russell making the record 10 in a row.
11: The Warriors and Cavaliers feature a combined 11 players who have been named NBA All-Stars, the most in an NBA Finals matchup since the Los Angeles Lakers faced Philadelphia in 1983.
12: The Warriors are the first team in NBA history to win their first 12 playoff games.
30: Two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry’s No. 30 jersey leads the list of most popular league jerseys for the second consecutive year.
61: The number of years since the last North American major sports league had teams meet three times in a row in the final, that coming with Detroit and Montreal in the NHL Stanley Cup Final from 1954-56.
90,000,000: The number of combined followers of Cleveland’s LeBron James, the most followed NBA player on social media, on Facebook (23.1 million), Twitter (36.4 million) and Instagram (30.5 million). – Rappler.com
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