Steph Curry scored 34 points and his Golden State Warriors captured their fourth NBA title in eight seasons Thursday night, defeating the Boston Celtics, 103-90, on the famed parquet floor.
The best-of-seven NBA Final series ended in six games, with the Warriors winning the final three after falling behind, 2-1.
The San Francisco-based club has now won seven NBA championships in franchise history, with the Larry O'Brien Trophy most recently making its way to Northern California in 2015, 2017 and 2018 in this recent run.
Curry took home the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award, one of the few trophies that had been absent from his mantle.
“You know how long the road is to get back here because of how hard it is to win on this level," Curry said on the post-game platform.
"Boston is a great team, every (playoff) team we played in the West is a great team," he said. "But we found a way to just get it done."
The Warriors won the first of these four titles seven years ago Thursday, on June 16, 2015, as fresh-faced stars Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, along with first-year coach Steve Kerr, broke a 40-year title drought for Golden State.
Veteran backup Andre Iguodala was with the club for the three previous titles, before spending two years with the Miami Heat and then returning to Golden State this season.
Kerr, a former teammate of all-time NBA great Michael Jordan, now has nine championship rings, five as a player and four as a coach.
"This might be the most unlikely of all," Kerr said. "But I’ve just been blessed. I hang around superstars. You hand around superstars good things happen."
The franchise, which began as the Philadelphia Warriors, won the first Basketball Association of America — a forerunner to the NBA — title in 1947 before capturing the crown again in 1956.
After the club moved to California — but long before the "Splash Brothers," Curry and Thompson, arrived on the scene — Golden State's only other title came in 1975.
Before Thursday night, the Warriors were tied with Jordan's Chicago Bulls as the team with the third most titles in NBA history. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers (formerly from Minneapolis) each have 17 titles.
This latest Golden State title comes after a string of disappointing, injury-marred seasons for the proud franchise.
Curry missed virtually all of the 2019-20 campaign with a broken hand, while Thompson was sidelined for the entirety of 2019-20 and 2020-21 with career-threatening knee and Achilles injuries.
Golden State's latest crown is also the franchise's first since moving across the Bay Bridge from Oakland's Oracle Arena to the gleaming new Chase Center, 16 miles away in San Francisco.
