The 2019 NBA Finals could be so much better than they have been thus far, and that’s a shame for all basketball fans, including those from Toronto whose team now has a 2-1 lead after a Game 3 win in Oakland on Wednesday night.

Because the whole experience is being robbed by the injuries to two of the best players in the NBA- Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson.

While Durant has been out since late in the second round with a calf injury, Thompson was a game-time scratch Wednesday as his tweaked hamstring from Game 2 wasn’t ready for action.

We were then treated to an NBA Finals game that felt very much like a mid-January weekend matinee between a very good team from the East and a team from the West that might not make the playoffs.

And that’s a shame.

"They out-played us. They deserved it." – Steve Kerr reacts to the Game 3 loss. #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/kG49W2ck0z — NBA TV (@NBATV) June 6, 2019

You have to think that to a man the Raptors would prefer to go up against the best and try to beat the best in order to be the best. That won’t happen if Thompson and Durant can’t come back and play at their usual level at any point in this series.

One would have to think that if the Raptors are to go on and win this thing and those two stars don’t come back then just about everyone outside of Toronto/Canada would have to put an asterisk next to the title. Because yeah, they would have beaten the Warriors and they’d be handed the Larry O’Brien trophy, but they wouldn’t have really beaten the Warriors.

As NBA fans, we deserve to see the two-time champs, no matter how stacked they might be, put their dynasty on the line with all the stars in the lineup. Instead, we had to watch Steph Curry try to carry the team himself (Draymond Green wasn’t playing like Draymond Green in Game 3), which is a lot to ask in the Finals and which was often hard to watch.

We’re being robbed of what could be a legendary series of a team and a country trying to take down a greatness. But that’s not what this is right now.

The Warriors are in serious trouble. Who knows if Klay’s hamstring, which is a very tricky injury, will be ready to go for Game 4 on Friday. And who knows when KD will ever be ready to come back, as the team has been very vague with his status ever since he went down against the Raptors. Both could come back Friday, but what if they aren’t at full strength or what if the injuries get reaggravated early?

This is the Warriors' first NBA Finals loss at Oracle since Game 7 in 2016. pic.twitter.com/wVMUCyOHBq — ESPN (@espn) June 6, 2019

This all could have been a lot more fun. A lot more dramatic. But if things go the way they did in Game 3, these NBA Finals will not be what they very well could have been.

Which stinks.