by Jason Lloyd
“It’s on them now,” Love joked of the Warriors. “It’s not like we’re going out there saying we’ve got to beat them on what they’re doing or play their type of game. We’re just going out there and playing our game.”
J. R. Smith made seven three-pointers in the game, including one off one foot while spinning and falling out of bounds. James made four. Even Moondog, the team’s mascot, made a half-court shot by heaving the ball underhand, with his back to the basket, on his first try. And after it was over, after the assault was complete, James insisted the Cavs weren’t really a three-point-shooting team—even though at the time they led all teams in three-point shooting in the playoffs.
“We’re not a three-point-shooting team. We don’t want to be labeled that,” James said. “We’re a well-balanced team that’s capable of making threes. . . . Obviously we’ve got guys that can knock down shots from the perimeter. It’s been key to our success, but we have to continue to understand that we have to be very balanced offensively.”
Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer was named the Coach of the Year in 2015. He is a disciple of Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, one of the greatest coaches in NBA history, and shares the same philosophies regarding ball movement and defense. Lue may not have liked being ranked fourteenth in the league at the start of the playoffs, but he clearly was the underdog in coaching going against Van Gundy and Budenholzer. Yet Lue made moves that left both coaches spinning.
After his ATOs and lineups caught Van Gundy off guard, Lue surprised Budenholzer and the Hawks with another lineup combination they never prepared to see. Lue was hesitant to play reserve center Channing Frye next to Love because of the defensive issues it caused. Neither player was known for being a strong defender. As a result, they’d appeared together in a game just nine times counting the regular season and playoffs prior to Game 3 of the series against the Hawks. They totaled just thirty-eight minutes together on the court.
With the Cavs trailing 91–85 entering the fourth quarter, Lue rested James and paired Frye and Love together with Irving. The result was an offensive eruption. Frye and Irving scored Cleveland’s first fourteen points of the fourth quarter and the Cavs beat Atlanta 121–108 to take a commanding 3–0 series lead. It was their tenth straight win over the Hawks and pulled them within one more win of yet another sweep. Afterward, the Hawks appeared emotionally and mentally defeated. By that point, they knew they couldn’t compete.
“We didn’t prepare for that,” Hawks center Al Horford said of the Love/Frye pairing. “They took advantage.”
The Cavs finished off the sweep in Game 4 and ended the series by making 77 three-pointers—easily the most any team has ever made in a four-game series. They made 134 three-pointers through the first two rounds, the most of any team in the league, and they did it in the fewest number of games (eight). And after storming out to a 2–0 lead in the conference finals against the Toronto Raptors, winning the two home games by a total of 50 points, James’s sixth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals seemed inevitable.
“We’re not giving up until they put us under, until that final buzzer goes off,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said after the Cavs beat Toronto 108–89 in Game 2. “If we do that, we’re in the wrong business. Why are we here? I don’t see quit. They beat us two games, okay, but it’s not over with yet.”
Lue’s ten consecutive wins to start the postseason was the most in history for a rookie coach, surpassing Pat Riley’s nine straight with the Lakers in 1982. James orchestrated a sneak attack in the Cavs’ locker room to celebrate the achievement. Before Lue entered, James instructed all of his teammates to grab two water bottles and wait for his signal. After Lue addressed the team following the Game 2 victory, he told the players to meet at the plane at one P.M. the next day to fly to Toronto. They’d watch film at the hotel. As Lue started to leave, James said only, “Congratulations to Coach Lue,” and Lue was mauled by at least thirty water bottles. His designer suit, and the carpet in the locker room, were both drenched.
“There are a lot of nights we don’t get a lot of rest, a lot of sleep,” Lue said. “You’re dreaming of ATOs and plays you can run and things that happen, so a lot of sleepless nights, but the way things are going right now, it’s worth it.”
They were also dreaming of another trip to the Finals, but Casey was right. The Raptors weren’t giving up. They won the next two games at home to end the Cavs’ momentum and return the series to Cleveland tied at two. No one on the Cavs seemed overly rattled by the consecutive losses.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Richard Jefferson said. “We’re fine.”
—
Love, yet again, took the brunt of the criticism for the two losses. Often the target of scrutiny since arriving in Cleveland, Love had been terrific through the ten-game winning streak, but he struggled badly during the two losses at Air Canada Centre. He shot just five of twenty-three, including three of eleven from three-point range in games the Cavs lost by a total of twenty-one points.
On an off night in Toronto between Games 3 and 4, a few of the writers went to Real Sports Bar in Toronto, which boasts a thirty-nine-foot HD television. We arrived during the first half of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s impressive 133–105 dismantling of the Warriors in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals. James, Love, Dahntay Jones, and a few other players and Cavs personnel watched the game from Real Sports, too, reserving a walled-off portion of the restaurant just above us for a private viewing. Love and James sat together throughout the night and watched midway through the second quarter as Draymond Green swung his right leg wildly while going up for a shot. He kicked Steven Adams in the groin for the second time in their series, leaving the league with a difficult decision to make.
The NBA had already suspended Jones for one game following his nut shot on the Raptors’ Bismack Biyombo the day before in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, but no one on the Cavs—including James—expected the league to suspend Green. Sure enough, his kick on Adams was ruled a common foul during the game and upgraded to a flagrant 2 by the league the next day. More importantly, it allowed Green to avoid a suspension. It did, however, leave him one more flagrant foul shy of an automatic one-game suspension. Green knew he had to be on his best behavior for the rest of the Warriors’ postseason run.
When the Eastern Conference finals shifted back to Cleveland, Channing Frye told Love to stay positive, that no one is immune to struggling at times in the playoffs. In order for the Cavs to be successful, Frye told him, Love needed to be aggressive. He responded with twenty-five points in twenty-four minutes and the Cavs reestablished their dominance with a 116–78 victory at home in Game 5—their most lopsided postseason victory in franchise history. They broke a record that stood for only eight days. The old mark was set during the opening game of the series, a 115–84 win. The Cavs finished the series outscoring Toronto by a staggering eighty-eight points in the three games at the Q.
“I give [Frye] a lot of credit for staying on me and staying vocal,” Love said. “Just needed to respond.”
Now one win away, another trip to the Finals seemed inevitable. James, after all, has never failed to close out a series throughout his sparkling career when given more than one chance to eliminate an opponent in the postseason. The Raptors were no match for them in Game 6, either.
James was terrific again, scoring thirty-three points for his first thirty-point game of the postseason. He played thirty-five of the first thirty-six minutes and left the game for good with three minutes remaining, when he could begin hugging teammates and opponents alike in celebration of what was to come. James advanced to his sixth consecutive Finals, the longest streak in the NBA since Bill Russell carried the Celtics to ten straight appearances in the 1950s and ’60s.
Irving, Love, and James combined for eighty-three points, twenty-seven rebounds, and nineteen assists in the closeout game. James had said since returning to Cleveland that the Cav
s would go as far as their Big Three would take them. For the second straight year, the stars shined all the way to the Finals. Lue helped guide them there. With the pressure of knowing his future beyond the season wasn’t guaranteed, Lue dazzled throughout his first postseason with rotations and lineups that befuddled opposing coaches. He drew up key inbounds plays at critical times and, most importantly, he empowered Love to play like an All-Star again. There were mistakes along the way, sure, but Lue quickly proved that indeed, that ranking of fourteenth on the coaches’ list was far, far too low.
“It was tough at first because taking over midway through the season, you really don’t have a chance to have a lot of practices and no time to really put your stamp on this team,” Lue said after winning the East. “But I thought every day my coaching staff really did a great job of just keep honing in on, ‘Let’s be a team, playing the right way and playing together and moving the basketball and trust.’”
James, meanwhile, has never been one for reflection in the moment. Ask him about his dizzying list of accomplishments and James will always revert to some form of the same answer: He has been fortunate to play for two great organizations and alongside a number of wonderful teammates, and one day when he’s old and retired, he’ll crack open a bottle of his favorite red wine and sit on a porch somewhere reflecting on all the good memories with his closest friends. Until that time, however, there is still work to be done.
And so it was in the visiting locker room at the Air Canada Centre, when the Cavs didn’t have champagne with which to celebrate so they improvised with water instead. Just as they bathed Lue for winning ten straight to begin his coaching career, they baptized each other now with ice buckets and water bottles. For guys like Jefferson, it was the capstone to a long wait to get back to the top. Jefferson had gone to the Finals (and lost) each of his first two years in the league with the New Jersey Nets. He’d never come close to reaching the Finals again.
The only reason he was in Cleveland now was because DeAndre Jordan changed his mind and re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers after committing to the Mavericks. Jefferson agreed to re-sign in Dallas when he learned Jordan was coming, but after Jordan changed his mind in a dramatic theater scene played out over social media, the Mavericks were gracious enough to let Jefferson out of his verbal agreement with Dallas owner Mark Cuban’s blessing. At thirty-five years old, Jefferson was running out of time. He wanted to find a place that gave him a legitimate chance to win a championship and chose Cleveland.
“This is the most talented team I’ve ever been on, and just really built for what you need,” Jefferson said. “I’m the one guy that probably didn’t have the biggest smile on my face. I’ve been here before. It’s been thirteen years since I’ve been here and I’m enjoying this, I’m definitely having fun, I’m relaxed. But you want to see a smile on my face and tears in my eyes? Talk to me after four more wins.”
The trophy for winning the East is a silver statue in the shape of a basketball. Players took turns celebrating with it and cradling it in the locker room. When J. R. Smith was done holding the trophy, before he headed off to the shower, he placed it above his locker as onlookers cautioned him not to drop it.
“I’ll be right back,” Smith told the trophy. “I’m going to get your sister next.”
CHAPTER 18
Go West and Strangle the Media
Those men who had last witnessed a Cleveland sports championship, those watched Jim Brown storm through the Baltimore Colts in 1964, many of them were dead by 2016. Those who remained, those who could vividly recall Frank Ryan’s touchdown pass to Gary Collins, were old and gray. Pain and scars had stained most of those memories, wounds from failed regimes and terrible ownerships, from Red Right 88 and the Drive and the Fumble and José Mesa and John Elway, from Kevin Love’s dislocated shoulder and from Kyrie Irving’s broken knee. The common denominator in the lineage of Cleveland sports was always heartbreak and defeat. No matter how the plot twisted and turned, ultimately it ended in some sort of magnificent disaster.
But Richard Jefferson grew up in Arizona. He didn’t give a damn about any of that when he signed in Cleveland and he certainly didn’t care about it on the eve of the NBA Finals rematch with the Warriors, who had stormed back from a 3–1 deficit for a stunning victory against the Thunder in the Western Conference finals. Jefferson was six months old when Sipe threw the interception in the end zone. He had just learned to drive when Mesa blew the World Series. He was in Dallas playing for the Mavericks when Love’s arm was in a sling and Irving was on crutches. None of it mattered to him now.
“That means absolutely nothing to me,” Jefferson said of the city’s title drought. “I mean no disrespect to the city of Cleveland. We’re doing this for the team. We’re doing this for our guys. We’re doing this for our families. We’re doing this for the people that believe in us, and we’re happy to be doing it in Cleveland. We’re happy to be doing it for the fans who want it as bad as we do. People say, ‘Are you doing this for the fans?’ It’s like, ‘Man, I’ve been working my entire life. I grew up in Arizona. I don’t know what the Cleveland history is.’ Yeah, it’s great to be a part of that. It’s great to do it for fans who want it as bad as we do, but for the most part, when you’re locked into the battle, when you’re locked into the guy next to you, picking him up, that’s what we’re really doing it for. We’re doing it for our families. We’re doing it for ourselves. We’re doing it for our teammates.”
For twelve months, Cleveland had wondered how the 2015 Finals would’ve transpired if James had had a little more help, if Love and Irving hadn’t been injured. James had dragged the Cavs to six games essentially by himself. The city of Cleveland believed adamantly that with three stars, even just two healthy stars, the Cavs would’ve toppled the Warriors and ended the city’s title drought the year before. Now they had their chance. The Warriors may have stormed to a 73-9 mark during the regular season, the best in NBA history, but the Cavs weren’t intimidated. They knew they’d led this same team 2–1 in the Finals the year before with a wounded roster and now they were healthy. Steph Curry had suffered a knee injury earlier in the playoffs, but other than that, both teams entered these Finals relatively healthy. Privately, however, the Cavs remained concerned about Love.
Love’s second season in Cleveland was better than his first, particularly after Lue replaced Blatt. He finally had a role now. He was creating a comfort zone. Against twenty-eight other teams in the league, including Detroit, Atlanta, and Toronto in the playoffs, Love was a devastating weapon. Even with the two bad games at Toronto, Love averaged 17.3 points and 9.6 rebounds throughout the postseason. He was shooting 45 percent on three-pointers. But the Warriors were the one team that gave him fits. Love had never been known as a great defender and the Cavs were convinced he couldn’t guard Draymond Green. They might be able to slide him over onto Andrew Bogut on the defensive end, but when the Warriors went to their famous Death Lineup of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, and Green, there was nowhere for Love to hide.
“He may have to be our David Lee,” one team official told me in March in anticipation of a Finals rematch with the Warriors. It was in reference to the ’15 Finals, when Lee, the defensively challenged former All-Star, made $15 million to come off the bench for the Warriors. He didn’t play in either of the first two games of those Finals against the Cavs, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr turned to him in Games 3 and 4. Now, three months before the Finals, Cavs executives were already contemplating whether Love would have to accept a similar role and how he would respond to the idea.
After the Warriors won the last three games of the 2015 Finals, they extended that streak by winning the first two games at home again. Neither Curry or Klay Thompson played well in Game 1, but Shaun Livingston scored twenty points and the Warriors’ bench outscored Cleveland’s 45–10 in a choppy game that lacked much rhythm. It was the first time Livingston led the Warrior
s in scoring all season and it was particularly painful because he was a former Cav the organization let slip away.
Livingston had rejuvenated his career during the second half of the 2012–13 season after he was released by the Clippers. He appeared in forty-nine games for the Cavs and played well, but they moved on from him because they believed they could do better. So they signed Jarrett Jack, which turned out to be a mistake, and they had to give away a first-round pick and a young center in Tyler Zeller just to get out from under his contract and clear the necessary space to be able to offer James a max-level contract. Now Livingston was back to punish the Cavs for their mistake, but he wasn’t the only one whipping them.
The Warriors mauled the Cavs 110–77 at Oracle Arena in Game 2 to take a commanding 2–0 series lead. Curry was a nonfactor yet again, making the losses particularly deflating. He totaled twenty-nine points through the first two games, which is how many he averaged in the nine previous playoff games since returning from that knee injury. The Cavs were determined to make others on the Warriors’ roster beat them—and they were. The cumulative forty-eight-point difference was the most through two games in Finals history. The Warriors were simply too fast, too long, too strong, and too athletic for the Cavs to match them. Writers who follow Golden State scoffed at the results, insisting the Thunder gave the Warriors a more competitive series than anything Cleveland could muster.
“We didn’t win anything,” James said while surveying the stats sheet after Game 2. “No points of the game did we beat them in anything. They beat us to fifty-fifty balls, they got extra possessions, they got extra tip-ins. They beat us pretty good.”