Early on Saturday morning, Kevin Durant sat in a room beneath the Quicken Loans Arena stands. Before him sat the trophy given to the Most Valuable Player of the NBA finals, an award he has now won twice in a row. His shirt was soaked, he smelled of champagne. He was happy.

His Golden State Warriors had just won the NBA championship, sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 108-85 Game 4 victory earlier on Friday night. It was their third title in four years, and their second in a row since a Warriors contingent convinced him to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder to build a dynasty built on trust rather than fame.

NBA finals: Golden State Warriors beat Cleveland Cavaliers to claim title – live! Read more

He sighed.

“We’ve got a bunch of guys in our locker room who are only worried about getting better and winning,” he said. “It makes everything easier.”

Durant scored 20 points on Friday, second on the team to Steph Curry’s 37, not that anyone seemed to be counting. Golden State’s balanced championship machine is different in culture to that of the Cavaliers, which is built around superstar LeBron James. And while James – almost single-handedly at times – pulled the Cavs to four straight finals (beating Golden State in 2016), his teams have never had the same togetherness.

On Friday, James’s Cavaliers collapsed, playing sluggishly, missing two-thirds of their shots and looking as if they wanted to be anywhere but on the court against the team that has dominated them the last four years.

Afterward, James said he had played the final three games of the series “with pretty much a broken hand.” He blamed officials’ calls and team mistakes in a Game 1 the Cavs should have won, implying the defeat ruined his team’s chances for the rest of the finals.

“I had emotions on the [first] game [that] was taken from us,” James said. “I let the emotions get the best of me.” ESPN later reported that James had broken his hand after becoming frustrated with the officials in Game 1 and punching a whiteboard in the Cavs locker room.

These finals felt over before Friday night but the teams still had to play Game 4. And so the Cavs cranked up the volume on the arena speakers one more time, blasting music and shooting flames out the side of the scoreboard. Their players tried, fighting hard for rebounds and keeping the score close for much of the first half.

They had no energy, however. Golden State started to pull away at the end of the second quarter. Curry hit a lunging three-pointer just before half-time to put the Warriors up 61-52. After that, the game quickly fell out of hand. Golden State scored three quick baskets to start the third quarter. During a time out, James sat on the bench, waving his arms and screaming at his team-mates. His cries were to no avail.

Cleveland were done and the Cavaliers knew it. They were powerless to stop the onslaught of Warriors players rotating into the game, hitting jump shots and driving for lay-ups. When Golden State’s Draymond Green shoved James midway through the quarter, something seemed to go out of the Cavs. James’s mighty shoulders dropped. He quickly picked up his fourth foul, the Warriors went on a 11-2 run and Cleveland never came close again.

James spent the first three minutes of what many expect will probably be his final quarter as a Cavalier sitting on the bench, draped in towels. After an incredible postseason in which he pulled the Cavs to these finals practically by himself, he looked defeated. He left with 4:03 left in the game to chants of “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!” His second homecoming had come to an end with just one title.

The night, just as this most-recent era, belonged to the Warriors.

They filled the tiny hallway outside their locker room with champagne, until the entire corridor smelled like a wayward New Year’s party. Though the Warriors had pulled off just the ninth finals sweep in NBA history, they spoke of this run as being their hardest. The ordeal of trying to put the same drive into winning that they had in previous years exhausted them.

“I remember sitting in this room three years ago, it seemed like a dream,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, referring to the 2015 title, the first of their run. “This feels more like reality … it’s a very different feeling. It’s still euphoric but three years ago was: ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ But it was hard and it gets more and more difficult as you go.

“Next year will be even tougher,” he added. “I might not show up until the All Star break because they’re not going to listen to me anyway.”

Then he left, disappearing back down the hall to celebrate what is becoming routine: a championship.