The Sixth Man

by Andre Iguodala

  And that alertness is maybe the most remarkable thing about him. I’ve heard fans criticize him for not having his head in the game, and I can’t think of anything more ridiculous. He is a quite possibly the smartest, most focused basketball player I’ve ever seen. He’s simply on another level. Almost a savant. He can remember plays from four years ago in their entirety, and he’ll run you through the entire thirty-second sequence moment by moment. He’ll remember his team’s plays and he’ll remember other teams’ plays. He can call out their plays in the middle of games just based on the slightest indications. The position of the point guard and the way the center is cutting will tip him off, and he’ll call it out to us. It’s like he has an entire film library stored in his head and he can call it up to us at any time.

  It can be said that he grew up in the hood, but with him you get the sense that the hood is what made him as attentive and focused as he is. He stays aware of his surroundings not only on the court but in the business of the game. He always knows the background on every player, what their salary is, when their contract or free agency is coming up. He pays attention to the college game, knows what players are coming out, where they’re projected to go. He’s one of those people who just enjoys everything about being in the NBA. There are some people who like this profession because of the fame and the money. I think Draymond enjoys his life in the league because he remembers where he’s come from and how hard he’s worked to maximize his potential, to gain the fruits of his labor. He’s made a life for himself and the people around him and he’s proud of that.

  And we’ve seen people around the league get mad at him. He’s become, nationally, something of an NBA bad guy, and as a team we understand why that is. We see the antics. Nobody’s perfect, but it matters if they are good. If they care. If they work. Draymond’s head is always in respecting the game of basketball, in knowing everything he needs to know and doing everything he needs to do in order to win. Does he stray off the path now and again? No doubt. But his intent is never to harm the team. It’s to win. Plain and simple. People ask if we get frustrated, but for us it’s like, “Man, that’s our brother!” Of course, you get frustrated with your brother, temporarily. But the respect, the love for him you have, is permanent. We all get frustrated with each other the way all families get frustrated. We get on Klay for taking fifty-foot jumpers when we’re up by three with ten seconds on the clock. We get on Steph for making lackadaisical passes. After we got Kevin Durant we would get frustrated with him for caring too much what people think. They get frustrated with me when I’m not aggressive or in attack mode. But at the end of the day, this is our family. And we will stay with it, no matter what.

  * * *

  —

  Early in that first season, 2014–15, under Coach Kerr’s offense, I started to know that we were potentially sitting on a championship team. The way the ball was moving, the way we were passing, the way Steph was shooting the ball—we were just wiping people out of the gym. And no one really saw it coming. Teams were still treating us like a small-market upstart. That was Steph’s first MVP year. Draymond was starting, and he had brought a force to the defensive end. But it was the perfect force, because for all his energy, he was still always one of the smartest players on the floor at any given time. He could see the game unfolding two or three moves ahead, and he was an incredibly quick thinker. Also Bogut had really embraced Kerr and his philosophy. I always felt like Andrew was one of the best centers in the league, especially defensively, but once he broke his elbow, it kind of ate into his confidence. When he was clicking, he and Draymond were an unstoppable defensive force.

  We got to the finals that year against Cleveland, and it seemed to happen faster than we could understand. We knew we were a good team, but I think all of us were surprised by the fact that we were somehow in the NBA Finals. It reminded me of the feeling in high school when I thought I might be good enough for my town, but I didn’t know if I could hoop with those Chicago boys. Or when I was in college and was finding out that I might actually be good enough for the draft. It was the first time anyone on our entire team had been to the finals and none of us knew what to expect.

  It’s a spectacle. You think you’ve been under the microscope with sixty-seven wins, but it’s nothing like the experience in a finals series. In our first practice, the media was let in about an hour or so after we started, as usual, and they get thirty minutes to watch us run. At that point, we’re of course not doing anything serious. It’s fluff—shooting drills, layup drills, that sort of thing. But I noticed as they began to file in, filling the seats and surrounding the court. Two minutes go by, five minutes go by, and I’m still seeing new people come in. I had never in my life attended a media event where it took five minutes for everyone to get in the room. There is an energy to it. You have to do NBA TV, ESPN, and local channels, and then you sit down in front of everyone for fifteen to twenty minutes. It’s hard to explain to anyone else, but something shifts inside of you. You begin to feel the weight of the moment and the electricity of it. You become aware of just how big a deal this basketball game you’re playing in is. It starts to feel like a world event. Reporters are there from Australia, China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil. It begins to seem odd that so many people the world over are watching what happens in a game that you’re going to be playing in.

  The night before the opening tip, I was just thinking about the game plan. I wanted to clear my mind but I couldn’t. I found myself imagining scenario after scenario. It would stay that way throughout the entire series. It was not possible to turn it off between games. I could think of nothing but basketball. I was getting treatments seemingly around the clock. Icing, massages, putting a machine on my legs to stimulate blood growth. You go home at eleven o’clock or midnight after the game, and all you can think about is every play. You are living at home, but it’s rough on your family, because you are essentially absent. I had to let my wife know that I appreciated how she puts up with me during the finals. Because as much as the regular season involves travel and commitments, the finals take over all aspects of your life in a much more complete way. There is no you left.

  We split the first two games, and both of them went to overtime. We lost the third and found ourselves in a 2–1 hole. After game 3, I ran into a VC, close friend, and company starter I knew named Clarke Miyasaki. I will remember this conversation as long as I live. “Clarke,” I said, “I figured it out. We’re gonna win this thing. Watch.” He thought I was crazy. On paper Cleveland had the advantage. But internally I had seen what was happening on that floor. Steph was picking apart their defensive scheme, and Klay was finding some open shots as a result. Which meant they were going to start doubling someone soon. I could see that I was about to get a lot more offensive opportunities, and I didn’t want to say it too soon, but my body was feeling, somehow, right for the first time all year. My shot was feeling good and easy, and I started to wonder if I was going to be able to have my own flow while I kept the team flow.

  Coach had recognized that late in game 4, when he went with a smaller lineup—Draymond at center, Steph and Klay in the backcourt, and me and Harrison Barnes rounding out the front line—which Cleveland had a very hard time defending. We could run pick-and-rolls out of that group, and they had to double Steph, which meant that I could shoot or make a play. Defensively we could switch up whenever we wanted, because their bigs weren’t really an offensive threat.

  And it meant that I was going to be guarding LeBron.

  Much has been made about that. I read an article where someone suggested that me guarding LeBron was the difference in the series. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that there is no such thing as shutting down LeBron James. He’s going to get his points, and he’s got the ball in his hand so much, and he’s such a smart player that he’s going to make the most out of every chance he gets. But I knew that if I played him just as smartly as he played the game, then we wouldn’t hav
e to send two people, which would stifle their offense.

  You have to be smart to defend LeBron James, or at least I had to. You have to understand his game and how he thinks and think alongside him but also ahead of him. I remembered my rookie year back in Philly, when I was given a tape with every guard in the East’s best moves, and how I learned those moves, studied them so I could think alongside them and therefore ahead of them. I had to do that in rapid time with LeBron. The key was to be quick, and I had to be ready to take the first hit. I saw that his first offensive move almost always involves some contact with you to get you out of the way. And because he is so strong, it usually works. But I realized that if I could withstand that hit without moving, then he would have to change his plan in mid-step. Next was to always know where the ball was going to be. So whichever way he went, I just got good at guessing where the ball was going to end up. I had to anticipate. If I missed, I missed. But if I stayed focused, I could get a strip about six out of ten times. But I was comfortable doing that because I knew that I had Draymond behind me, who was just as good as I was at anticipating LeBron’s moves. Then you had to know which way to send him based on what his rhythm was for that particular game. If you watched him for the first five minutes of a game, you could tell what was working for him that night and what wasn’t. If his jumper was falling, then you knew you had to be right up on him. If he was going to be forcing the issue and driving to the basket, then you wanted to set off him a bit, dare him to shoot. You were trying to get into his mind, make him second-guess himself. In that sense it was like high-speed chess. You were guessing what his move was going to be and you knew he was basing his moves on what he thought you expected.

  Once we went small and opened up the game offensively and shut it down defensively, we knew we had them locked. I had gotten my rhythm back at exactly the right time, and with about two minutes left in game 6, the reality started to dawn on me. We weren’t sure, we didn’t want to believe it, but we wanted to believe it. We were up by about 10 points, but still we knew it could slip away. We were terrified that some fluke thing would happen. Then they cut it to 7. Then to 6. We were up by about 7 with a minute to go. That had to be it. We couldn’t lose it now, could we?

  LeBron came over and started dapping everyone up. Good game, good series, congratulations. But still we needed the clock to wind down, and it just wasn’t winding down fast enough. Meanwhile J.R. Smith hit a ridiculous three with about thirty-three seconds left to bring the game to back within one possession, and none of us could believe it. It’s the most unnatural state you can think of. Are you about to celebrate the most important moment in your sports career? Or is it just another day at the office? We really couldn’t tell. We had no idea what to believe. I missed a free throw with about ten seconds left, but it was still a two-possession game. Out of the time-out, J.R. launched a thirty-footer that missed. Steph grabbed the rebound and there was just this moment where I was looking around for someone else to confirm what I thought was happening. It seemed like we had just won the NBA championship, but it was almost like I couldn’t be sure until I made eye contact with someone else. The clock wound down. Two seconds . . . one second. Steph threw the ball in the air. Confetti came down from the ceiling, and I could not believe anything that was happening. I grabbed the ball and made sure I would never let go of it.

  In an instant, the floor was crowded with NBA officials, celebrities, players from other teams. It was madness. I just remember Justin Holiday was hugging me. Everything was happening so fast. I was overcome thinking about everything I had gone through to suddenly get to this moment. This one right here. I was just screaming and yelling and hugging anyone I saw. I saw Kiki VanDeWeghe from the league office—a guy no one ever likes to see because he’s the one who delivers the fines—and for some reason I was hugging Kiki. I just didn’t care. All my friends were there, and it was a madhouse. Soon my wife brought my son up and I could see in his eyes how incredibly happy he was for us. That was the best part. He was lit up all over.

  Meanwhile they were setting up the stage for the presentation of the trophies, and everyone’s family was appearing. Draymond’s mom, Steph’s wife, Klay’s dad. Everyone is hugging and congratulating each other and there’s just this feeling that something really special was happening. I remember taking a moment to look at everything. Confetti in the air, music playing, everyone hugging and crying, sweat not even dried on your uniform. It was hard to believe that only minutes ago we were playing a game and now we were suddenly champions of the world. We were blessed. That’s all I kept thinking about. We were blessed in this moment. Seventy to 80 percent of players never even make it to the NBA Finals. Why us? How us? We hadn’t expected it. It was the most amazing thing. We had just put our heads down and played basketball. And when we looked up again, the air was filled with confetti.

  * * *

  —

  Maybe the parade should have been the first sign.

  We arrived early at the practice arena, around 8:00 a.m., with our families and friends, kids and childhood homies, and we were still celebrating. I had been in LA on some late-night talk show—I don’t even remember which. It had been a nonstop party. Assembling for the parade, we were still high-fiving and hugging. More speeches were made. Taking pictures with the family and friends of everyone in ownership. Signing hats and water bottles for people you’ve never seen around the facility before. Nike had sent over all the fresh new championship gear that we were excitedly putting on. Food was eaten from a luxurious spread. And then we were to mount our individual buses to go down the streets of Oakland like conquering heroes.

  But it took us half an hour just to get to the parade route—thirty minutes of sitting in the sun on the back of a bus on a random side street downtown. By 10:00 a.m. we were already exhausted. And we hadn’t even started. The day wore on. And on and on. The fans gave us energy, and that was the best part. Running side to side, high-fiving kids—there’s no joy like it. It was truly the most beautiful thing. But then once we pulled up to the grandstand, it would be another hour before all the buses arrived. At one point we were just napping. With a million people downtown, waiting for the rally to start, we were just sleeping. The parade was amazing at first and then exhausting. Maybe it should have been the first sign. Winning the championship was amazing. Being the champion could be debilitating.

  * * *

  —

  Year two with a coach is always a better year than year one. At least if the coach is not terrible, and Steve Kerr is not. He has a brilliant offensive mind and he is really good at teaching the game in all its forms. We had run through the first year, but now the offense would have extra layers. We were comfortable with each other, and people were coming into their primes. The 2015–16 season felt like going 90 miles per hour on cruise control. We’re coming at you, we’re running you over, it’s not going to be hard. We were taking joy in the game, and in the early part of the season the fame had not yet become a problem.

  We began on a twenty-four-game winning streak, which was amazing at first, but in retrospect I can see the seeds of our undoing in that first run. The media began to over-cover us. Our press conferences were going from five reporters to forty-five reporters. People were asking repetitive questions, about clothes and entertainment. Steph and Klay would end up on blog posts for just walking down the street. We had expected that to some extent, but Hollywood reporters were covering even the last guys off the bench as though they were celebrities. With that many reporters the questions get both stupid and repetitive because everyone is looking for a story. I did about five stories in a row on my sleep habits, because someone had heard that I was starting to get into sleep hygiene. After a major hit, media would just try to duplicate the story.

  On top of that, you start to become something of a traveling road show for the NBA. We got our schedule and it involved insane stretches on the road, crisscrossing time zones like we had never done bef
ore. Our streak ended on the last night of a seven-game road trip where we had gone from Utah to Charlotte to Toronto to Brooklyn, back to Indiana, back to Boston, and then to Milwaukee. That kind of trip would have been unthinkable for us even two years ago. Just as players have a short window to get everything they can, I started realizing that the NBA had a short window to get everything it could out of our Little Engine That Could feel-good story. Ticket prices were shooting up everywhere we played. I used to be able to get my homeboys tickets to games in Milwaukee for like $100 a pop. Good seats too. Now they were talking about $300 for mediocre seats. Friends who had been so happy before were now complaining about where they were sitting. Everywhere we went, arenas were sold out, and teams were playing us like it was an elimination game. When Milwaukee finally edged us out in our twenty-fifth game, they had confetti coming from the ceiling like they had just won a gold medal. All this and the season was only one-quarter of the way over.

  We were starting to hear talk about the Chicago Bulls and their seventy-two-win season. It was an impossible record to break. And it had stood for twenty years. Coach Kerr had played on that team, and he hated all the talk about us breaking that record. He knew how much that took away from the task at hand. But the thing gained a momentum of its own and soon it was bigger than him. Luke Walton was serving as interim coach, because Steve was out with back issues, and you could see that Luke was torn on what to do. He knew that the record would be valuable. And as the story grew, so, too, did Luke’s sense that he didn’t want to be the one to mess it up. Furthermore, there was a sense not only among the league at large but among ourselves that we were approaching invincibility. Slowly but surely the rotations began to reflect that we were trying to keep that streak going, rather than preparing for the postseason run.