I am surprised Irving is being knocked so much. He has outplayed Curry who everyone thinks highly of in the 3 finals in a row they have played against each other. In fact Curry has never had a great finals appearance and kind of got carried to both his titles, but that is a different subject.
In the finals vs Curry Irving has averaged 3 more ppg on better shooting 46.8% vs 42.6% and has been better from 3 at 39.5% vs 39.3%. Irving also has more steals, blocks, fouled less and had almost half as many turnovers. Irving also showed in the finals how clutch he was with some big shots.
Lebron was brilliant the year they won the championship in Cleveland but Kyrie scored 1 ppg less than him. Obviously Lebron helped create for him but he was the #2 player on that team and it was a distant third. That team beat GS who had just set the record for best regular season ever and was being talked about as the greatest team ever. Little did we all know that they would get Durant the next year.