Rings alone shouldn't determine a player's greatness. Wilt had two rings. Does he not deserve to be top 5? Russell had 11. Does that automatically make him No. 1? Not only does Lebron have three titles, but the guy has been to seven finals and has three finals MVPs on top of all of his insane numbers, regular season accolades and impressive postseason production. The guy is unquestionably top 5 at this point, and I'm not sure you could make a competent case otherwise.
The point is that the Cavs had a much higher chance of making the Finals from the East than the West not that "there's always a chance". Your refusal to admit that the Cavs had a much higher chance from the East to make the Finals just lacks all credibility. And that's how this whole side conversation got started. Someone started this whole sub-thread that you joined in saying that the Cavs might not even make the Finals if they were in the West and the fact is that while the Cavs have the talent to make do so as a Western team, they would have had a much harder time. If you want to say that beating Hawks and Raptors back to back is equal to beating Thunder and Warriors back to back and your sincere belief is that you would bet your life on either scenario to make the Finals equally then I have nothing more to say. In that case you are either being completely insincere or completely delusional. The reality is that the Cavs are deserving champions but had an easy path to the Finals and some lucky breaks during the Finals and barely won. Those are facts. Of course the same could be said of the Warriors the year before and can be said in fact of many teams that win the championship. Two teams can be equal but someone has to win. If you perfectly cloned the Cavs into Cavs-A and Cavs-B, one of those Cavs teams is going to win. Does that mean that one Cavs team is a tier above the other team??? Saying teams are about equal just means that two teams are evenly matched and you would not be surprised if one team beat the other. That's all it means. But someone has to win and when two fairly evenly matched teams win, the team that won doesn't mean it is a "tier" better. And it is even possible that the worse team won because of luck or fluke events as well. I don't understand what is so hard to understand. Someone has to win. The team that won could be a lot better than another team. Or clearly better or about equal. The Cavs could beat the 76ers, Raptors and Warriors. They are a lot better than than 76ers, better than the Raptors and about equal to the Warriors. Also sports doesn't have this transitive property like you are stating because it is all about matchups. If A matches up well against B, and B matches up better against C, it is possible for C to matchup better against A. The Warriors beat the Thunder but barely and needed a tremendous performance from Thompson in WCF Game 6. So Warriors and Thunder are about equal despite Warriors winning. And since Thunder have a lot of good bigs, that weakness that the Cavs exploited of the Warriors would not be there if Thunder made the finals instead and Cavs might have had a harder time against the Thunder. It is a nonsense to say that since Cavs beat Warriors and Warriors beat Thunder that therefore Cavs would clearly beat Thunder.
