by Jason Lloyd
The Cavs erupted, ripping off a twelve-game winning streak shortly after Smith and Mozgov arrived (Shumpert didn’t get on the court until a few weeks later since he was still recovering from a separated shoulder). The winning silenced the rhetoric around Blatt, who had been under fire basically since the day he was hired, but the players still never really bought into their coach.
“At the end of the day, when we hired David he was hired to coach a different team, and that fit became increasingly bad as we went along,” Griffin said. “When you’re around our team as much as I am, I wasn’t seeing any accountability. When we made the J. R. Smith trade, that didn’t get any better, we just got a whole lot better. Guys were joyful being part of the process again, which masked some of those issues. But those issues were there the whole time. And they continued to be throughout the playoffs.”
As the Cavs were about to discover, making it to the playoffs for the first time since 2010 wasn’t enough. The plan was almost complete, but the weeks and months ahead would show there was still much to do, and big questions to answer.
CHAPTER 14
Shoulders, Slings, and Fighter Pilots
It was only fitting that the first playoff opponent the Cavs faced upon LeBron’s return to Cleveland was the Boston Celtics—the same Celtics who ended the Cavs’ postseason in 2008 and then chased James out of Cleveland in 2010. Both teams looked vastly different, particularly since Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett had all left Boston. Still, it was the green-and-white and the Garden and all the memories of past clashes. The Cavs, after all, had ended Larry Bird’s career in the second round of the playoffs in 1992.
For all of the problems and dysfunctions with Blatt, the Cavs still entered the playoffs 53-29. They caught fire after obtaining Smith, Shumpert, and Mozgov and went 34-9 to close the season with their new pieces, the best record in the East over that stretch, after bottoming out at 19-20 in January. James downplayed the significance of facing the Celtics, the team with which he had so much personal postseason history.
“I think we’re past that. Both cities,” he said. “Both teams are extremely different from the battles that we had in the past.”
For all the problems Love had fitting in during the season, he was terrific against the Celtics. He had a double-double in Game 1 with nineteen points and twelve rebounds; then he made six three-pointers and scored twenty-three points in Game 3, breaking the game open late with consecutive three-pointers to give the Cavs a commanding 3–0 series lead. He averaged 18.3 points and nine assists through the first three games of a series that was growing more and more physical. Almost overnight, the Cavs’ Big Three finally began playing the way it was envisioned they would when this team was assembled.
“He’s been highly criticized this year,” James said of Love during the Celtics series. “When you have a Big Three, they’ve got to find someone. When I was in Miami, Chris Bosh was that guy at one point. I’ve seen it before. When you’ve been in a position where you have your own team, and now you come and join forces, at one point in Miami we were nine-eight and they start pointing fingers at anybody. They’ve got to find somebody. Kevin was the guy they tried to find and tried to tear him down. The one thing about him, he’s always stayed positive. I’ve always believed in him.”
James’s comments were laced with revisionist history. It was reminiscent of the cult favorite football movie Varsity Blues, in which head coach Bud Kilmer spent all season destroying Mox, his backup quarterback, right up until the moment he needed him. “I’m behind you,” Kilmer told Mox. “Let’s go!” Now that the Cavs’ Mox was starting to shine, their Kilmer finally stopped whipping Mox’s helmet with a whistle.
On the off day prior to Game 4, Love sat on the scorer’s table inside the Garden stretching his legs and tying his shoes. He was talking to me about his future again, something that was a recurring talking point throughout the season. Yes, Bosh was right. Yes, his transition into this system was more difficult than expected. Yes, James seemed to be hard on him at various turns. The relationship between the two stars had been scrutinized almost to silly lengths, such as skeptics wondering why Love never seemed to appear in the group photos James posted to social media throughout the season. Of course, Love didn’t help his case when he went on a national radio show and selected his college teammate Russell Westbrook as his MVP instead of James.
“It hasn’t been as bad as you think,” Love said about his season of scrutiny. “Sure, there are times I fought it or it might have been a little tough because I’m so used to playing efficient and consistent, but it never wavered my love for basketball or playing with these guys. We have a great group. We have a fun group. You guys don’t see that every day, but we’ve got some really good people here. It’s been great.”
Love was unwavering that day on his commitment to re-sign with Cleveland. Things were looking up, and no one had any idea in that moment that his season was about to end. Jae Crowder missed a three-pointer badly during the first quarter of Game 4 and Love, tangled up with the Celtics’ Kelly Olynyk, chased after the rebound. Olynyk had no real chance at getting to the ball, so he pinned Love’s left arm between his arm and chest and yanked Love away from the ball. Love’s shoulder immediately dislocated, and in excruciating pain, Love grabbed at his arm and ran directly to the locker room. The Cavs were furious with Olynyk—most notably Love.
“I thought it was a bush-league play,” Love said after the game, his arm in a sling. “I have no doubt in my mind that he did it on purpose. That’s just not a basketball play. The league will take a look at it and it better be swift and just.”
Love was incensed that after waiting seven years just to make the playoffs, his postseason was over after less than four games. Tension on the court was high, and the Cavs appeared to take their frustration out on Jae Crowder, who irritated Cavs players after just two games in the series.
“Nobody on their team is intimidating,” Crowder said despite being in an 0–2 deficit. By the time Love was out in Game 4, the Cavs were ready to fight. Kendrick Perkins clobbered Crowder while setting a screen and J. R. Smith knocked Crowder out when he hammered him with a closed fist while fighting for rebound positioning. Crowder crumpled to the court and fell so awkwardly that he sprained his knee.
Following that sequence, the Cavs’ locker room after the game was somber. Griffin quietly strolled through, his arms folded and a tired look on his face. By then, he knew Love was going to miss a fair amount of time and assumed Smith would likely be suspended, too. The Cavs were advancing, but no one could feel particularly good about it in that moment.
Smith was ultimately suspended the first two games of the conference semifinal series against the Chicago Bulls, a series the Cavs trailed 2–1, and they were in danger of falling behind 3–1 when Blatt nearly ruined the season and bought his own ticket back to Israel. James Jones burned the Cavs’ last two time-outs during the final minute of Game 4 while trying to get the ball inbounded. After a basket by Derrick Rose tied the game at eighty-four, Blatt stepped onto the court with 8.5 seconds left and signaled for a time-out he didn’t have. The entire coaching staff saw it, but only Tyronn Lue was close enough to grab Blatt and pull him back before the officials saw him.
After so much attention was paid to the Cavs’ bench throughout the season and the way Lue was calling time-outs instead of Blatt, it was ironic that Lue had to save Blatt and pull him off the court over a time-out fiasco. Had the officials spotted him, it would’ve been a technical foul and the Bulls would’ve received a free throw and possession of the ball. That would’ve been the end of the game—and likely the Cavs’ season.
“I almost blew it,” Blatt acknowledged afterward. “Good thing they caught it, my guys.”
And yet the time-out issue wasn’t even the most embarrassing thing to happen to Blatt that day. James drove the length of the floor on the ensuing inbounds play, but the ball went out of bounds wi
th eight-tenths of a second remaining. Officials had to stop play to review the call, giving Blatt an opportunity to huddle his players and draw up a play despite not having a time-out. Blatt wanted James to be the inbounder. Most everyone in the huddle rejected that idea—including James, who was quick to out his coach.
“To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it,” James said. “I told Coach, ‘Just give me the ball. It’s either going into overtime or I’m going to win it for us.’ . . . There was no way I’m taking the ball out unless I could shoot it over the backboard and go in. I told him, ‘Have somebody else take the ball out, get me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.’”
Seconds later, James shot a buzzer beater and the Cavs tied the series 2–2. The scratched play was still a hot topic the next day. Blatt was forced to address it again and grew defensive, offering a ridiculous comparison that only added to his trouble.
“A basketball coach makes one hundred fifty to two hundred critical decisions during the course of a game, something I think is paralleled only by a fighter pilot,” he said as the organization collectively groaned and grimaced. He’d managed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time yet again.
The Cavs won Game 5 at home and the series shifted back to the United Center for Game 6. Coincidentally, the NBA combine was in Chicago at the same time, meaning the rest of the league was in town to interview all of the prospective draft prospects and watch them work out. The combine was buzzing with league folks talking about Blatt’s tough week. Flip Saunders, who only a few months earlier had traded Love to Cleveland, agreed that James should never be the inbounder in that situation and instead suggested Mike Miller, a little-used veteran who is widely considered one of the league’s smartest and best inbounders. An agent at the combine laughed at Blatt’s fighter pilot remark.
“For who?” he asked. “Malaysia Airlines?”
Blatt was clearly under fire and so were the Cavs, who beat the Bulls in six games. Along with Love’s shoulder injury, Irving was now hobbling around on a bad knee. He played just twelve minutes in a decisive Game 6 victory. Cleveland won easily, 94–73, after the Bulls seemed to accept their fate. It was a stunning turnaround for a team that had trailed 2–1 in the series and was one blown time-out away from going home.
—
It was Matthew Dellavedova who had helped save the Cavs when Irving was fighting tendinitis in his left knee. Dellavedova was a gritty guard who went undrafted in 2013. The Cavs held two first-round picks that year, yet it was the little-known Dellavedova who turned out to be their best find. After the ’13 draft was over, Chris Grant had reclined in his chair when one of his assistants, Trent Redden, ducked in to talk about which undrafted players they should pursue and who they should sign for their Summer League team. Dellavedova was the name scribbled atop the whiteboard in Grant’s office that night. “I love that kid,” Grant said with a wide smile.
Dellavedova was a bruising, physical Australian guard out of St. Mary, which is coached by Randy Bennett, who was an assistant at the University of San Diego when Grant and Brown were there. Bennett was the one insisting to Grant he needed to take a look at Delly, who left St. Mary as the all-time leader in points and assists. When the Cavs brought him in for a predraft workout, they paired him with guys more talented and more athletic. Yet Delly’s team won all of the three-on-three scrimmages. So the Cavs changed up the teams. Dellavedova’s team still won.
“By the end,” Brown said, “every one of those motherfuckers was looking at Delly and doing what he said. Delly was leading them.”
Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown coached the Australian national team when Dellavedova was on it. He twice cut Dellavedova from the national team before he was ignored and went undrafted by the NBA.
“I count that as being cut,” Dellavedova said.
Grant and Brown knew Dellavedova was likely to be ignored on draft night because the NBA is always seeking athleticism and high ceilings with their draft picks—guys who have room to develop and grow. Delly had neither, but he had a toughness that allowed his teams to win.
“When you start talking about the character and DNA of people, he ticks the right way,” Brett Brown said. “He’s a country Victorian, a true Aussie that is a headbanger. He plays with reckless abandon. There’s a physicality to him and a toughness you fall in love with. He at times might not be pretty, he’s a little bit Neanderthal in how he goes about his business, but he’s for real. I loved coaching him.”
Yet the Cavs spent the trade deadline in 2014 trying to upgrade the position. Dellavedova was the only backup point guard behind Irving, but Griffin wanted a point guard more offensive-minded who could score. He also didn’t want to be one injury away from elimination, and at the time an injury to Irving seemed devastating. So they looked around the league and overseas for another playmaker. When they couldn’t find one, they were left with only Dellavedova. It turned out to be a blessing. He played thirty-four minutes and scored a career-high nineteen points to close out the Bulls, but Irving’s availability against the Atlanta Hawks in the conference finals was unknown.
Irving had six days off to rest his ailing knee between the semifinals and the conference finals, but it was still bothering him. He’d had an MRI earlier in the postseason, which revealed nothing wrong structurally. Still, Irving was tentative, to the frustration of the organization. The strong inference was that Irving just had to suck it up and play through the pain, which he wasn’t doing to their liking. When he reaggravated the knee on a drive to the basket in Game 1 against the Hawks, he wound up sitting out three of the game’s last eighteen minutes.
Instead of playing Irving in Game 2, the team flew him to Dr. James Andrews in Florida for another opinion, to again reassure him there was nothing wrong structurally with the knee.
“Everyone’s pain tolerance is different,” said James, who was dealing with an ankle injury of his own. “My responsibility is much higher than a lot of guys’, not only this team but a lot of guys in professional sports. I take it very seriously being out there with my guys. If I’m able to play at seventy, sixty, fifty percent I feel like I can give something to the team. If I’m hurting the team then I’m gonna sit down, but if I can give something to help them I’ll be out there for them. I think my presence alone can help us more than anything.”
Even with Irving hobbling, the Cavs made quick work of the Hawks, who had won sixty games during the regular season but seemed to peak too early. Irving played a total of forty-nine minutes in the series, but Cleveland swept Atlanta, including a dominant 118–88 win in a clinching Game 4 celebration at home that sent the Cavs back to the NBA Finals for the second time in their history and first since 2007. The sweep, coupled with Irving’s knee problems, took the focus off Blatt about the time he could use a reprieve. NBA analyst and former front office executive Isiah Thomas ripped Blatt to me prior to the series and even picked the Hawks to win because of the imbalance in coaches.
“As we saw in the last series, there’s a learning curve that is still going on and the players on the floor are compensating for it,” Thomas said, referring again to the time-out gaffe against the Bulls and James’s scratching Blatt’s play call. “But how long does it happen before you can’t compensate for it?”
Apparently, it turned out, at least one more round. As the Cavs celebrated in their locker room for winning the East, James walked toward James Jones and Mike Miller and put one arm around each of them while holding a bottle of champagne in his left hand.
“The Big Three,” James whispered quietly before taking a swig of champagne. The three stood together, silent. These were the two veterans James had handpicked to come with him and help turn around an ailing franchise. These were the two he relied on to teach a young roster how to be professionals. They’d advanced to the NBA Finals together as teammates in Miami; now they were going back as teammates in Cleveland.
“Th
anks is a powerful word,” Miller said. “I thank him every time.”
—
The sweep of the Hawks meant more time off to get Irving’s knee healthy. He had nine days from the end of the conference finals until Game 1 of the NBA Finals at Oracle Arena against the mighty Golden State Warriors, who had come out of nowhere to win sixty-seven games and win the Western Conference. Cavs officials did their best to sandbag before the game, insisting to any reporter who would listen that Irving was still hobbling and would be limited.
Privately, however, Griffin was optimistic the knee problems were finally behind them. Irving had been compared to a Ferrari throughout the postseason, and it seemed the torque he generated on his cuts was causing a lot of the problems. Plus the location of the tendinitis, the Cavs said, was a bad spot in the back of the knee. Add it all up and Irving had been limited in every round. Now, however, the Cavs were hopeful he was healthy.
He was sensational in Game 1, scoring twenty-three points, grabbing seven rebounds, and passing for six assists. The Cavs had a chance to win the game in regulation, but James missed a fadeaway jumper from the wing with 3.9 seconds left. Iman Shumpert gathered the rebound and flipped up a second attempt at the buzzer, but the shot missed by inches. Luke Walton, a former Cavs player under Scott and now a Warriors assistant, was standing directly in line with Shumpert’s shot and was convinced it was going in. “I don’t know how it rattled out,” Walton told me.
