This is a great exchange. Lots of good points.
Recency bias is everywhere, but also, players are getting better and better. (In objectively evaluated athletics, e.g. running & swimming, this improvement is obvious. For reference, my splits as a high school swimmer would've won me Olympic medals in the 1950s. I think we should assume that sports science, better training, more money in the system, etc have all led to major improvements in NBA player quality/skill in 2010s compared to 90s/00s, let alone 60s Celtics.)
Nitpicking Padraig here, but treating "James & the other Cavs" like they're a bunch of scrubs is misleading—sure, by the time the SNL skit came out, this had become the case, but Cavs balled out in the 16/17 series, and James is still the 2nd best player of all-time lol. They had historically good offensive numbers, and James/Love/Kyrie, while not quite a Heatles-level trio, is still a very strong core. Sure—Jefferson, Shumpert, Crowder, Frye, Green, Hill, Korver, Perkins, JR Smith, Thompson—these players aren't all-stars (or weren't during their Cavs tenure) but they're not anonymous G-leaguers either. There was serious fire power, even if their defensive rating left a lot to be desired. Ditto with the bit about GS getting bailed out by a Houston choke job—not questioning the choke, but that is a championship-level Rockets team nearly any other year. None of the eliminated playoff teams in either the West or the East this year were as strong as those Rockets. Moreover, the Rockets were a team constructed solely to beat the Warriors. Yes, GS got lucky pulling off that series—but their road was tough. 2016/2017 playoffs were not waltzes for GS. This Western conference was much, much easier—compare Mavs to 2016 OKC.
Also, compare those Rockets/OKC/Cavs teams to some of the 6ers/Nets squads Kobe/Shaq went up against.