Barber: It’s Warriors vs. LeBron James again

OAKLAND

He is both sunrise and sunset. He is a season unto himself, as predictable as the falling rain or the sigh of shaking grass. He is as reliable as your birthday.

The NBA Finals are here, and so is LeBron James.

People talk about death and taxes, but everyone knows you can cheat either of them, at least temporarily, with a little guile and good fortune. You can’t cheat LeBron, at least not before June.

The last time the NBA Finals began without him was June of 2010. That year, the Warriors’ final regular-season contest fell on April 14; their starting lineup for that game at Portland was Stephen Curry, Monta Ellis, Anthony Tolliver, Reggie Williams and Chris Hunter. The Warriors have died and been reborn a couple times since then.

And so, in a way, has LeBron. (Please forgive the first-name usage; it makes sense for only a few people on the planet.) From Cleveland to Miami and back to Cleveland, he has evolved and matured as a basketball player. And not once been kept from his annual appointment.

Not even this year, when the finals should have been a fantasy. The Cavaliers were 5-7 on Nov. 9. They were a yeah-whatever 39-29 as late as March 15. And before that, on Feb. 8, ?they turned half their roster like a bucket of compost. Cleveland began the playoffs by falling behind Indiana 2 games to 1. In the Eastern Conference final series, the Cavs trailed Boston 2-0 and 3-2. They bobbed to the surface every time.

This is the NBA’s version of a zombie serial. The Cavaliers can’t be killed until the final episode, and then you find out they’ve been renewed for another season.

And it’s all because of LeBron. I don’t mean to denigrate his teammates. They’re not the mime troupe some are making them out to be. Kevin Love is an All-Star, and Jeff Green had the night of his life in Game 7 of the East final. But without LeBron, they are planets adrift in space, waiting for a star to provide their gravity.

Raise your hand if you were sort of hoping not to see LeBron playing at Oracle Arena in Game 1 on Thursday night. There’s no shame in it. I felt that way, too. Four years in a row? That same wine-and-gold uniform? More shots of Lake Erie from the blimp? The Celtics or Raptors would have injected a little spice into the NBA Finals.

How stupid we all were. We were rooting against continental drift. Against a force of nature.

So here we are again, with the same round of questions we propose every year. How can the Warriors stop LeBron? Who will take turns guarding him? Do the Cavaliers have enough other weapons to make this a real fight?

They are interesting questions, but no longer compelling. Fatigue has set in. It’s bad enough that we have begun to take the Warriors and their wondrous system for granted. Now we are taking their ultimate opponent for granted, too.

We’re like spoiled kids whose parents have taken them to Cirque du Soleil for four consecutive years. Again? Couldn’t we do laser tag this year?

Bob Myers doesn’t feel that way, though.

“We’re lucky. I’m lucky,” Myers said Wednesday, standing next to the Warriors’ bench at NBA Media Day. “Because he’s gonna play 10 feet from here tomorrow night, and that by itself is something to enjoy. And to have had a front-row seat to him for the last three years, for anybody who has covered our team, it’s pretty cool.”

Myers, like anyone else watching with both eyes, has noticed that LeBron is playing better at 33 than he was at 23 or 28. That he has absorbed 1,378 NBA games and 54,168 minutes (that’s regular season plus postseason) as if they were a warmup lap on the track. So far this year, LeBron has played exactly 100 games. In the most recent of those, Game 7 of the East final, he played all 48 minutes.

Teammate Kyle Korver is in awe of LeBron’s ability to recover, mentally and physically.

“He’s at the top of the scouting report for the other team,” Korver said. “Every night he deals with traps, he deals with double teams, he deals with scrutiny, he deals with so much stuff, but the next day he’s the first person at the gym. He does it every day.”

And LeBron keeps adding to his game. Warriors forward David West, who entered the NBA the same year (but is four years older), noted that LeBron has become more patient and intentional in his decision-making. Golden State coach Steve Kerr points to LeBron’s shooting. This season, he launched 406 3-pointers, the most of his career, and made 36.7 percent of them, his third best rate ever.

“It’s remarkable,” Kerr said. “You think back five years ago when he was with Miami, they were playing the Spurs in the finals, and the Spurs were going underneath on every screen just daring him to shoot. Contrast that to now, where he’s shooting fade-away threes from 30 feet to close games out.”

Cavaliers guard George Hill certainly has noticed that evolution. He is a 10-year veteran of the league, but has played with LeBron for less than four months. He was one of Cleveland’s midseason trade acquisitions.

Throughout LeBron’s career, critics have dinged him for hogging the ball and for deferring too much, for being too surly and for being too soft, for bailing on Cleveland the first time and for being afraid to come to the loaded Western Conference. Even now, as he does something remarkable virtually every week, they shrug and point to his three NBA titles and say he’ll never be the equal of Michael Jordan.

Hill might point out that LeBron came to his first NBA training camp when he was 19 years old, under immense media scrutiny from the start, and has never been accused of committing a crime or punching an opponent on the court or even misfiring a humiliating tweet.

“This guy’s an unbelievable father, unbelievable husband, unbelievable teammate, unbelievable role model off the court,” Hill said. “You normally don’t see that from guys of his stature and his fame. The little things are big with him - just checking, texting: ‘Hey, I’m just checking to see how your family’s doing. I’m just checking to see how the suits fit that I got you guys.’ I mean, you normally don’t get that, and I think that’s what a lot of people don’t give him credit for.”

So don’t complain about LeBron and the cameras that are sure to follow him like a loyal flock of sheep during this series. You might as well shake your fist at the sunrise. Just sit back and enjoy the spectacle. And if the Warriors win as expected, appreciate the force they overcame to do it.