The Blueprint

by Jason Lloyd

  The Cavs followed through with a 115–101 victory to force a Game 7. They mauled the Warriors in the first quarter, outscoring them 31–11. It was the lowest first-quarter total by any team in the Finals in the shot-clock era. James was again magnificent, with forty-one points, eleven assists, and eight rebounds. He scored or assisted on twenty-seven consecutive points in the second half, including scoring eighteen straight.

  Curry scored thirty points and shot the Warriors back into the game in the fourth quarter, but he fouled out with 4:22 left on a questionable foul and was so incensed he uncharacteristically rifled his trademark mouth guard into the seats—striking the son of minority owner Nate Forbes on the shoulder. Curry quickly regained his composure and apologized, but the evidence was overwhelming: The Warriors were cracking. Maybe it was the pressure of the seventy-three-win season or the pressure of becoming the first team in history to blow a 3–1 lead. Regardless, the Warriors were unraveling with one game to go.

  CHAPTER 19

  Seven

  When the Cavs were chasing a championship during James’s final season in Cleveland in 2010, Doc Rivers quietly believed his Celtics were better. So after Boston beat the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center on February 18, 2010, Rivers demanded $100 from each of his players, coaches, the trainer . . . everyone. Then he stuffed $2,600 into an envelope and had security sequester the team in the shower so no one could see what he was doing. The only other person included in his plan was assistant coach Kevin Eastman. Together, they scoured the visiting locker room at Staples Center looking for a place with no plumbing, no wires, and no reason for anyone to go looking in the ceiling. When he found the right spot, Rivers called for the team to rejoin him.

  “There’s money in this arena,” Rivers told his team. “The only way we get it back is we have to return. This team is going to be in the Finals.”

  At the time, no one outside of that locker room realistically expected the Celtics to get through both the Cavs and the Magic in the East and make the Finals. But that’s exactly what they did.

  “I’ve got to tell you, when we got there for Game One and the bus pulled in, I watched all the guys sprint by me to get to the locker room. I just kept walking. I knew they’d never find it,” Rivers recalled. “When I got to the locker room, the place was in shambles. Those fuckers had looked everywhere. I knew exactly where it was at. I walked in and punched the ceiling and the money fell out. I wasn’t sure if someone had found it or not. When that money fell out, it was awesome.”

  Lue was in his first season as Rivers’s assistant when he pulled the money stunt. In the euphoria of the Cavs’ Game 5 win, standing in another visiting locker room in another California arena, Lue followed his mentor’s lead and did the same thing. He collected $100 from each player and staff member. If a staffer didn’t have $100 on him, one of the players covered him. Lue gathered all the bills and hid them in the ceiling of the coach’s office inside Oracle Arena, just as Rivers did in Staples Center six years earlier. The only way players would get their money back, he told them, was if they returned for a Game 7. The Cavs’ home victory in Game 6 sent them flying across the country again, four quarters from ending the city’s fifty-two-year drought. Rivers spoke to Lue a couple of hours before the game to go over his pregame speech.

  “I just told him to keep them focused on the fact that they were going to win and the dream that they’ve all decided, whatever that dream is. Keep them focused on that, not the game,” Rivers said. “The game will take care of itself. But you’ve got to be able to make them see where they were supposed to be at the end of the game.”

  Rather than take them to the end of the night, Lue instead brought them back to the beginning of the night before. The day before Game 7, Lue took some staff members and assistant coaches, like Larry Drew, Damon Jones, and James Posey, twenty-five miles north of Oracle Arena on I-580 to San Quentin State Prison. Lue barely knew his father, Ronald Kemp, who was a Missouri playground hoops star before he went to prison for drug trafficking. Now Lue regularly visits prisons and has done so for years.

  On the eve of the biggest game of his coaching career, Lue walked the yard at San Quentin. When the buzzer sounded and the doors opened, suddenly the visiting Cavs personnel were surrounded by convicts. Unfazed, Lue shot baskets alongside rapists and murderers. The prison warden told him 75 percent of the men imprisoned would never commit another crime, but what they did was so heinous that they needed to be locked up anyway. When he gathered his players in the locker room prior to Game 7, Lue told them of his trip and reminded them that any of them could’ve been in one of those cells.

  “Where we come from, the environments we come from, it could’ve been any one of us in prison. One bad night, one bad car ride, somebody got drugs on them, or one bad night and you get into a fight and someone dies, whatever,” Lue said. “One bad night could change your whole life.”

  One good night could, too.

  One of Griffin’s favorite lines throughout this turbulent season was that the Cavs functioned their best amid dysfunction. It wasn’t the way he envisioned it when he assembled this $100 million payroll, the highest in the league and among the highest in the game’s history. Griffin thrives on peace, love, and joy, and this team was the exact opposite. By the end of the regular season, after the Blatt drama and the never-ending LeBron scrutiny, Griffin finally seemed ready to embrace it.

  He was standing outside the Cavs’ locker room before Game 5 at raucous Oracle Arena, with his team trailing 3–1, when I asked whether he had a good feeling about the game. Griffin never bothered to look up from his phone.

  “The only way this city’s drought can end,” he said, “is with the greatest, most historic comeback in NBA history.”

  I meditated on that brief exchange while watching the Cavs punch their way back in a Game 5 victory. Then Curry fouled out and threw his mouthpiece near the end of Game 6 and the Warriors were back inside Oracle, not celebrating a title but preparing for a Game 7. It quickly became clear that none of them had expected to be in that position when they were up 3–1 a week earlier.

  “Coming into Game Five, we just expected it to be over,” Draymond Green said prior to Game 7. “Fans, players, everybody just expected it to be over. And it wasn’t.”

  “I don’t think people imagined it this way, the route that we’ve taken, and that’s fine,” James said, laughing. “Like I always say: Every day is not a bed of roses and you have to be able to figure out how to get away from the thorns and the pricklers of the rose to make the sunshine. So we’ve put ourselves in a position to do something special.”

  The Cavs trailed the Warriors 49–42 and were twenty-four minutes away from making it a fifty-three-year drought, from adding another chapter of heartbreak to a city already devastated by championship-game miseries. The same team that had set a playoff record with twenty-five threes in a win against Atlanta shot just one of fourteen on three-pointers in the first half of Game 7. James had twelve points, seven rebounds, and five assists, but he also committed four turnovers. Green, meanwhile, was crushing the Cavs with twenty-two points. He made all five of his three-point attempts.

  When Griffin fired Blatt and gave the job to Lue, he did so believing Lue would hold his star accountable during the most important moments. “You gotta be better!” Lue barked at James during the half. “If we’re gonna win, you gotta be better. Your legacy is on the line!”

  James was exhausted and fuming. He vented at teammates and coaches. He’d scored forty-one points in consecutive games just to get the Cavs to this point, and now of all the guys in the locker room to go at, Lue had picked him. Lue knew exactly what he was doing.

  The Cavs and Warriors were tied at eighty-nine with 4:40 left in Game 7 when they began a scoreless four-minute duel that took them into the final minute. A beautiful series built on seismic momentum shifts came down to the final few minutes. Guys were exhausted and simply
out of punches. Curry flipped a lazy behind-the-back pass out of the reach of Klay Thompson and out of bounds. The Warriors’ terrific motion offense predicated on pace and space ground down on one crucial possession, with four guys standing around watching Thompson dribble frantically before hoisting a desperate three-pointer. Harrison Barnes, who struggled terribly throughout the Finals, missed an open three-pointer from the corner.

  Curry had become the first player in league history to make four hundred threes during the regular season and he was also the NBA’s first unanimous Most Valuable Player. He shot 48 percent from deep during the regular season and 45 percent in the postseason when the nearest defender was at least four feet away, but when the Cavs blew a defensive coverage and left Curry with a wide-open look with 4:06 left, he clanked it off the front of the rim.

  The Cavs, however, weren’t faring any better. With the game still tied at 89, James missed a contested jumper from just inside the three-point arc, the worst shot in basketball in terms of efficiency. They kept running pick-and-rolls with the ball in his hands, trying to create mismatches by getting either Festus Ezeli or Curry to switch onto him. Even when it worked, nothing was falling. James missed another jumper in the lane over Curry, then later drove past Curry but was blocked at the rim by Andre Iguodala.

  After Irving missed an off-balance runner in the lane, Iguodala grabbed the rebound and the Warriors had the numbers as the clock ticked under two minutes. Iguodala and Curry led the break, with nothing but J. R. Smith standing between them and a potential championship-winning basket. Just as he crossed the half-court stripe, Iguodala fired a pass ahead to Curry while James sprinted to catch up. Curry gave the ball right back to Iguodala on a bounce pass and Smith was helpless to stop the two charging lions. James was still trailing at the three-point line when Iguodala caught the pass from Curry at the free-throw line and attacked the basket. With 1:51 left, the Warriors were poised to regain the lead.

  This is the moment when television executives teed up the Cleveland heartbreak reel. From Sipe’s interception in the end zone to Byner’s goal-line fumble in the AFC Championship game, Mesa gagging away Game 7 of the World Series and Michael Jordan’s buzzer-beater jumper over an outstretched Craig Ehlo, Cleveland sports fans can sing about heartache better than Sam Smith.

  Iguodala jumped from the right side of the lane toward the basket while LeBron took flight from the left, soaring across the lane and pinning the ball against the backboard for a championship-saving block with one-eighth of a second to spare. It was one of the defining moments in James’s brilliant career.

  Had Iguodala’s layup touched the glass before James’s right hand arrived, it would’ve been goaltending and the basket would’ve counted. ESPN’s Sport Science group calculated that Iguodala was seven feet closer than James was to their eventual meeting point when he caught the bounce pass from Curry, but James closed the gap by sprinting twenty miles per hour down the court and soaring so high his hand was eleven and a half feet above the floor when he blocked the shot. Smith disrupting Iguodala’s direct line to the basket bought James an extra 0.15 seconds, which is all the time he needed to close the gap. Flight 23 was a tourniquet blocking fifty-two years of scars and sadness. Cleveland had waited two score and twelve years to celebrate a major sports championship. Now the Cavs were one score away. This was why James came home. This was why Lue pleaded with him at halftime to be better.

  A pair of misses by the MVPs, one each for James and Curry, left the ball in Irving’s hands. James inbounded to Irving coming out of a time-out, but Lue was out of magic ATOs. This time, the plan was simple: Get the ball to Irving and get the hell out of his way. Smith set a screen, forcing Curry to switch onto Irving and creating the matchup the Cavs wanted. After the defensive switch, Cavs players spread the floor. Smith stood on the wing opposite Irving while Love, James, and Richard Jefferson flattened out the baseline. The wide spacing prevented the Warriors from switching a better defender into the play.

  At twenty-four, Irving had already won six games with baskets at the buzzer and had made enough clutch shots that television play-by-play man Fred McLeod nicknamed him “Mr. Fourth Quarter.” Irving ended the regular season tied with Kevin Durant in scoring with the game on the line, which the league defines as a game within three points and with twenty-four seconds or less to play. He led the league in clutch scoring (last five minutes and the game within six points) his second year in the league and is third in his career in clutch scoring behind Durant and LeBron.

  “He’s special. He’s that special, man. He’s much better than an All-Star. Much better than an All-Star,” James had said after Irving returned from knee surgery earlier in the season. “If he continues to play the way he’s been playing, he can do something that’s very special around this league. I know in my head what he can become.”

  Irving received the inbounds pass from James and worked his way over to the right wing as time melted off the clock. He took six dribbles before Smith set the screen on Thompson, forcing the Curry switch. He dribbled eight more times with Curry defending him, first backing away from the basket before reversing direction and inching closer and closer to the three-point line. He dribbled between his legs once, then twice, followed by a quick crossover and a jab step. He was home. With fifty-five seconds left in the game, Irving raised up high above Curry and released one single shot to erase fifty-two years of darkness.

  The best players in the league make the biggest shots at the most important times. Irving had barely slept since the Game 6 win. He had lain awake in bed, rolling over every scenario his mind could conjure. This was his first Game 7 experience, and advice from Game 7 veterans like James Jones or LeBron helps only so much. But if James truly can see things happen before they develop, as his teammates have always insisted, he proved it in that moment in Mo Williams’s Dallas gym back in January.

  “At the end of the day, late in games, the ball is going to be in our hands,” James had said. “We’ve got to be able to trust each other and our teammates have to be able to trust us. . . . And then we have to come through for them.”

  Swish.

  Irving’s shot in the final minute, off the wrong foot, touched nothing but the net. The Cavs were less than a minute from victory.

  James had delivered his moment with the block and Irving had delivered the game-winning basket. Now the Cavs needed one more stop. The action was coming right at Love, their maligned former All-Star who was concussed and forced to come off the bench in this series. The Cavs had dreaded for months how he would fit against the high-powered Warriors, if his defensive shortcomings would be exposed at the worst possible times. Now in their switch-everything defensive scheme, Love was about to be given the defensive test of his life.

  Iguodala set the screen that left Love on Green, and Green set another screen that sent Love onto Curry. One of the team’s weakest defenders was now stuck guarding the game’s best shooter. Curry moved left, then stepped right. He crossed over and stepped back. Love stayed with him stride for stride. Curry passed off to Green, who gave it right back. Love had been great once, but now he had to do it again. Curry started left, then crossed over. Love’s hands were up the whole time, first the left and then the right.

  Throughout our postgame conversations during the regular season, particularly after embarrassing losses, Love was adamant. “When it’s win or die,” he said repeatedly, “we will win.”

  As precious seconds ticked away, Love stayed with Curry stride for stride. It was indeed time to win or die. Love was winning. Curry launched and missed.

  “Everything that happened from the concussion to him sitting out, to be able to respond like he did in Game Seven, that’s what real men do,” James said. “They respond in the most adverse times.”

  After the final second ticked off the clock, Love ran into James’s arms. Then James collapsed to the court, sobbing. He had not cried after either of his champions
hip celebrations in Miami, but now the emotions came roaring out of him. He had come home to lift up his hometown, to give the inner-city kids of Akron a chance at a better life, and to give his truest fans a taste of the greatness they deserved. It was a heavy burden for one man to carry, but in that moment he accomplished it all. On his hands and knees, James pounded the court. Lue, whose mother and grandmother had missed the entire postseason because they were both fighting cancer, sat alone on the bench and hid his face in a towel, sobbing.

  James eventually made his way to the podium and clutched the trophy. This was his third championship, but this one felt different. Yes, this one meant so much more. He ended it with a triple-double, with 27 points, 11 rebounds, and 11 assists. After nearly winning the MVP in a losing effort in 2015, this time James was the unanimous choice. He averaged 36.3 points, 11.7 rebounds, and 9.7 assists over the final three games of the series.

  “I knew what we was capable of even being down three to one versus the greatest regular-season team ever. Everyone counted us out and that’s when we strive the most, when everybody counts us out. That’s definitely when I strive the most, when everyone counts me out,” James said. “This is what I came back for. I’m home.”

  For Mesa and Ehlo, Sipe and Colavito; for Bernie, Belle, and Byner; for the Drive and the Dawg Pound, the Shot and the Fumble; for burning jerseys and burning rivers; for the blue collars and the rust belt. Cleveland—yes, Cleveland—was a city of champions.

  CHAPTER 20

  Larry

  Jeff Cohen navigated the champagne-soaked visitor’s locker room carrying a three-liter bottle of Moët & Chandon made specifically for him. Cohen, Nate Forbes, and Dan Gilbert had each received a giant bottle with their name embossed on it, compliments of Moët, when James returned to Cleveland in 2014.