The Blueprint

by Jason Lloyd

  The more pressing matter was the health of Love, who had taken a forearm to the back of his head from Harrison Barnes while boxing out for a rebound and suffered a concussion. The Cavs knew it was unlikely he was going to be available for Game 3, which at least temporarily solved their riddle of what to do with him in this series. But they were going home with no momentum and no wins through the first two games of the series. Even in 2015, without Love and Irving, James and the Cavs had still salvaged a split in the first two games at Oracle. Now they were heading home in a deep hole.

  “It’s a must-win for us,” James said of Game 3. “We can’t afford to go down three-oh to any team, especially a team that’s seventy-three and nine in the regular season and playing the type of basketball they’re playing. So it’s a do-or-die game for us and we understand that.”

  Love’s absence in Game 3, however, provided Lue with a chance to change his lineup. He started Richard Jefferson at small forward and shifted James to Love’s spot at power forward. That meant James would have the assignment of guarding Green, who had punished the Cavs with twenty-eight points, seven rebounds, and five assists in that Game 2 beat-down at Oracle. James gathered his teammates together in the tunnel before taking the floor for Game 3. His instructions were simple.

  “Follow my lead and do your fucking job!” he said. Then he roared during the conclusion of the national anthem and roared again when Kerr was forced to take a time-out just two and a half minutes into the game, when the Cavs showed life for the first time in the series and stormed out to a 9–0 lead. James finished with thirty-two points, eleven rebounds, and six assists. Equally important, Green was neutralized to just six points on two of eight shooting. The Cavs pounded Golden State 120–90, handing the Warriors their worst loss of the postseason, and now were just one win away from tying the series.

  But just as the Cavs weren’t shaken by one loss at Toronto in the conference finals, neither were the Warriors concerned about one loss in Cleveland in the Finals.

  “They came out and played like a team with a sense of desperation, like their season was on the line,” Green said. “We came out and played like everything was peaches and cream.”

  The larger question that loomed over the Cavs and Lue was what to do with Love for Game 4. He was going to be cleared to play, but the new lineup with Jefferson starting and James guarding Green seemed to change the series. Lue stuck with what worked, and what the Cavs were privately wondering about in March was suddenly coming true in June. Kevin Love was going to be a bench player for the first time in six years.

  The lineup that worked so well in Game 3, however, sputtered in Game 4. The Warriors’ switch-everything defense on pick-and-rolls ground the Cavs back into their old ways of isolation basketball, with Irving and James dribbling far too much at the top of the key. That’s easy to guard for a swarming defense such as Golden State’s, and the Warriors swallowed up the Cavs in the fourth quarter of Game 4 for a 108–97 victory and a commanding 3–1 lead. Love’s role in the game was irrelevant, and the bigger detriment was James and Irving combining to take thirty-three of the Cavs’ thirty-eight shots in the second half.

  James was wrapped in a towel, soaking his feet in a bucket of ice, when I approached his locker. He is a student of the game and knew full well no team had ever rallied from a 3–1 deficit to win the NBA Finals. The Warriors hadn’t lost three straight all season. In fact, the last time they’d lost three consecutive games was November 2013. They had played more than 280 games since then. The Cavs’ and James’s quest to bring a title to Cleveland was officially on life support.

  I wondered how someone of his caliber could play forty-six minutes, spend most of that time in the lane attacking the basket, and shoot just four free throws. It didn’t seem possible. One of the biggest complaints involving James is how often he gets fouled and there is no call. Blatt had done his best to stick up for James while he was the coach, and Lue did, too.

  “He’s the Shaq of guards and forwards,” Lue said earlier in the postseason. “He’s so strong and so physical, when he goes to the basket, guys are bouncing off of him. Those are still fouls, but he doesn’t get that call. We used to tease Shaq all the time about soft fouls. He said, ‘Listen, if I pinch you, it feels the same way when you pinch me. No matter how big I am, it feels the same.’ I never thought about it like that. That’s kind of how LeBron feels.”

  James was furious with how Game 4 had been officiated. He felt Curry slap him on the forearm during one of his drives to the basket in the first quarter. No call. It would’ve been Curry’s second foul, forcing him to the bench and changing the entire complexion of the game. I told LeBron I was going to ask him about the fouls and officiating when he went to the podium for his postgame press conference. He laughed and said I could ask whatever I wanted, but he would be cooled off by then, so I shouldn’t expect a juicy response. Fine. But I wanted to give him the opportunity to address it. Sure enough, after James showered, dressed, and walked down the long corridor from the locker room to the interview room, I asked him about the officiating.

  “It’s been like that all year for the most part,” he started. “I’m not quite sure what I can do personally to get to the free-throw line. I’m getting hit, but the refs are not seeing it that way. But I’ve got to continue to be aggressive for our team. That’s who I am, that’s what opens up the floor for a lot of our shooters, and just worry about the results afterward. You know, it’s tough playing forty-six minutes and only going to the line four times, as much as I attack the rim. It’s just a tough situation for our team.”

  Lue had maintained since taking over as head coach that he didn’t argue with officials. He didn’t as a player and he wouldn’t get baited into doing it as a coach. Yet even Lue was fined $25,000 for complaining in his postgame press conference about how James was treated in that Game 4 loss.

  “He never gets calls,” Lue said. “I mean, he attacks. Outside of Russell Westbrook, he’s one of the guys that attacks the paint every single play. And he doesn’t get a fair whistle all the time because of his strength and because of his power and guys bounce off him. But those are still fouls and we weren’t able to get them.”

  The locker room was eerily quiet. It usually is when dreams are dying. The Warriors had won eight of the last nine meetings between these teams dating back to the 2015 Finals and now the Cavs were headed back to Oracle Arena, where they had lost four straight, facing elimination. In order to win, they had to do something no other team had done in the sixty-six-year history of the NBA Finals. The grave was dug and the obituary was written, but there was a path, a narrow, hidden path out of the wilderness. And it was up to the league office to help the Cavs find it.

  —

  In the final minutes of Game 4, James and Green became tangled near half-court and Green fell to the floor. James had plenty of ways around Green, but he chose the most direct route—right over the top. His step-over on Green remains one of the lasting images in the series. James said afterward that he was just trying to get back in the play and will forever maintain that, but incensed Warriors players believed he was trying to bait Green into losing his temper—which is exactly what happened. Green jumped up, called James a “bitch,” and punched him right in the crotch, something Green had shown a penchant for doing throughout the playoffs. James was incensed at the name-calling as much as anything else.

  “I’m all cool with the competition. I’m all fine with that, but some of the words that came out of his mouth were a little bit overboard,” James said. “And being a guy with pride, a guy with three kids and a family, things of that nature, some things just go overboard and that’s where he took it, and that was it.”

  Now that the Warriors were one win away from completing the greatest season in NBA history (they did, after all, win a record seventy-three games during the regular season), Green had placed both his team and the league office in a difficult spot.
After his kick to the Thunder’s Steven Adams’s groin during the conference finals, any sort of retroactive flagrant foul or technical foul now would result in Green’s being suspended. While NBA players maintained Green’s kick was not a typical basketball move, it at least had occurred in the midst of game action. Intent could at least be debated. On his punch to James, the intent seemed clear. Both men were far removed from the action on the floor. It seemed evident that Green’s punch was retaliation for James’s step-over. Much like with the kick on Adams, however, James steadfastly believed Green would not be suspended. He was wrong.

  The Warriors were nearing the end of practice the day before Game 5 when the league announced Green’s one-game suspension. Green’s teammates were furious. Many believed that James had concocted the whole thing and gotten exactly what he wanted.

  “It’s a man’s league and I’ve heard a lot of bad things on that court, but at the end of the day it stays on the court,” said Klay Thompson, the most outspoken of all the Warriors’ players. “Obviously people have feelings and people’s feelings get hurt even if they’re called a bad word. I guess his feelings just got hurt.”

  The Warriors practiced first that Sunday and did media right after. Then the Cavs followed the Warriors and did media first before practicing. James was in disbelief when he heard that Thompson had basically called the four-time MVP a wimp.

  “Oh my goodness,” James said. “It’s so hard to take the high road. I’ve been doing it for thirteen years. It’s so hard to continue to do it, and I’m going to do it again. At the end of the day, we’ve got to go out and show up and play better tomorrow night. And if we don’t, then they’re going to be back-to-back champions.”

  Indeed, even without Green, the buildup to Game 5 felt like the walk down the fairway on eighteen. The Warriors were tipping their caps and waving to the crowd already. Victory felt assured, and after dousing Dressing Room H at the Q the year before, players were dreaming of celebrating this championship with their home fans. Similarly, James’s dismal 2-4 Finals record seemed destined to drop to 2-5. The thought that it was somehow James’s fault infuriated Warriors executive Jerry West, who had befriended James in 2011.

  James called West after the Heat lost to the Mavericks in 2011, when he fell to 0-2 in Finals series. If anyone could relate to him, James figured, it was West, who had so often failed to topple Russell’s dynasty in Boston. West retired a ghastly 1-8 in NBA Finals, even becoming the only player to win a Finals MVP in a losing effort—something James nearly duplicated in 2015. The Finals losses are the only blemishes on West’s otherwise sparkling career. He remains one of the greatest players in league history and his silhouette remains the NBA’s official logo. But West stood on the court at Oracle, his team comfortably ahead in the series, defending James’s brilliance from what he thought were unfair criticisms over another losing Finals record.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing. If I were him, frankly, I’d probably want to strangle you guys [the media]. It’s ridiculous. He’s carried teams on his shoulders,” West said.

  Indeed, James had dragged the Cavs to the Finals in 2007 with a magnificent performance against the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals, scoring twenty-five consecutive points and twenty-nine of their last thirty in a 109–107 Game 5 win in double overtime. He was equally remarkable in 2015 against the Warriors when injuries ravaged the Cavs’ roster. In all of James’s Finals series, the only time he truly did not play well and could take the blame was 2011, when he responded by reaching out to West. Otherwise, James had been sensational in guiding his teams to the Finals for six straight years.

  “How many times have they been the favorite?” West asked. “None. Zero. Okay? Grossly unfair to him. I don’t want to sound like Donald Trump, but it’s hard for me to believe that someone doesn’t recognize his greatness. It’s hard for me to believe. This guy does everything. He’s like a Swiss Army knife. He does everything, and he’s competitive as hell. Frankly I wish people would leave him alone.”

  James said during the playoffs that his Finals record bothered him, though it wasn’t because of his critics. It was simply his competitive nature.

  “If I lose in a game of H-O-R-S-E to my son, it’s going to bother me,” he said. “But as far as how people look at it, that doesn’t bother me. My career will speak for itself when I’m done with it, no matter what my Finals record. Some people never get here at all. I’m at seven [Finals appearances] up to this point. Heck, that’s over half my career I’ve been in the Finals. So that doesn’t bother me.”

  Falling behind 3–1, however, certainly bothered Griffin. The Cavs’ general manager was inconsolable when he went to bed after the Game 4 loss. All the hours, weeks, and months to get back to the Finals were four quarters away from vanishing yet again. The Cleveland jokes would soon return, as would hecklers poking fun at James’s lousy record in the Finals. Since James had returned to Cleveland, Griffin felt the pressure not to screw this up, not to waste the years of his prime when he was trying so desperately to deliver to his city what it craved. These Warriors hadn’t lost three in a row all season and Griffin felt like the series was over when he went to bed. By the time he woke up, he was giddy with joy.

  “We’re going to win,” he told his wife, Meredith. “Think about it: Everything we’ve ever done is record breaking and history making. Everything we do is loud. We don’t do anything easy. We’ve basically put ourselves in the only position we should win from. You know how people say, ‘Why not us?’ This group is, ‘What the fuck else would we do?’”

  Griffin continued to ruminate on that as he showered and drove in to the office. When he arrived at his desk, he sent an inspirational e-mail to everyone in the organization, concluding it with: “I think all of this will mark the weight for our Game 5 victory in Oakland, followed by a Game 6 win at home and our ultimate triumph in an epic Game 7 in Oakland. More reality to you than a dream. This is going to happen.”

  As the team boarded the plane headed to California for Game 5, James read the e-mail to himself before he was even seated.

  “I knew in my heart,” Griffin said, “it was done and we were going to win.”

  —

  Opponents seemed to be targeting James throughout the Cavs’ playoff run. His reaction to Klay Thompson, however, was far different. Thompson is a great player, but he’s not in James’s elite class. Yet the Warriors felt so comfortable with their positioning in this series—and really, why shouldn’t they have?—that Thompson felt confident enough to verbally punch James in the groin again with his “It’s a man’s league” remark while reserve forward Mo Speights tweeted an emoji of a baby bottle.

  “Draymond being suspended fueled that whole thing. That’s really what helped us. The e-mail had jack to do with it. If I send the e-mail and Draymond’s not suspended, I don’t look very good right now,” Griffin said. “I don’t know that I necessarily think it would’ve been over in five, but they wouldn’t have had the same fractured effort thereafter.”

  Since he was suspended, Green was prohibited from being inside Oracle Arena during the game. But the Warriors wanted to keep him nearby so he could participate in a postgame champagne celebration, so they set him up in a suite across the walkway at an A’s home baseball game. How close are O.co Coliseum and Oracle Arena? Commissioner Adam Silver was made available to the media during the Finals in the baseball stadium. Green could walk, particularly with a police escort, from one venue to the other within minutes.

  That suspension, however, changed the dynamic of the series. Not only did the Cavs have the opening they needed, but the Warriors had committed the deadly mistake of provoking the game’s best player. James’s overall numbers were terrific: He had averaged 24.8 points, 11 rebounds, and 8.3 assists through the first four games of the series, but he was averaging nearly six turnovers a game and shooting just 31 percent from three-point range in the series. He
had not been at his best in these Finals. That was about to change.

  For days, the Cavs’ mantra centered around the fact they had to fly back to Cleveland regardless after Game 5. Why not make the Warriors get on a plane and come with them? Then James scored forty-one points, grabbed sixteen rebounds, and passed for seven assists in a 112–97 Game 5 victory to extend the series one more day. It was lost on most everyone in the moment because of Thompson’s comments, but James had arrived to practice prior to Game 5 wearing an Undertaker T-shirt from the WWE. The irony in the message seemed clear: Bury us if you’d like, but we’re not dead yet. Irving matched James’s forty-one points, making them the first set of teammates to score at least forty in a Finals game. The Cavs were indeed flying back to Cleveland. And now the Warriors were going with them.

  Even before Green was suspended, before Cavs players left the Q following that crushing Game 4 loss, there was a belief within the locker room that if they could steal Game 5 on the road, they weren’t losing Game 6 at home. Steal 5, get to 7. Now the Warriors were returning to Cleveland for an unexpected Game 6, and while they’d have Green back from suspension, they were going without their starting center. Bogut was injured during Game 5 and was lost for the rest of the postseason to a left knee injury.

  “[Green’s] being out of the lineup that day created the opportunity for us to win that day, but it also hurt them a little bit moving forward,” Griffin said. “They had to use up more of what they had left. The Finals are always a war of attrition and we won the war of attrition. Draymond being out and them having to pick up the pieces around him took more out of their other guys. So they had less in the tank for Games Six and Seven.”

  —

  Prior to Game 6, just as he did before every playoff game, James gathered his teammates in the tunnel between the court and the Cavs’ locker room. This time, however, his message was much more subdued: stay focused, stay together.