CLEVELAND – Draped over a balcony overlooking E. 4th St. downtown on Tuesday was a banner that read simply: CLE Against The World. Go to any Cavs game during the regular season and you’ll see fans wearing shirts with a similar refrain. In a complex that’s equal parts Don Quixote tilting at windmills and Atlas holding up 50-plus years of a world of disappointment, people from here would make a compelling psychological study. And for good reason, with all the things that have happened in – or to – Cleveland over the years, there’s plenty of material to draw from.
Since the final horn sounded Sunday, Clevelanders were torn between two planes of existence: the reality that saw their favorite team down 3-2 in the Finals against seemingly insurmountable odds, and the dream that the self-proclaimed Best Player In The World, the conquering hero Odysseus finally home, could do enough to carry them to that all-elusive Championship. But once the national anthem was finished – and one of the better national anthems in recent memory by Marlana VanHoose, for that matter – they came alive. Doubt washed away. Hope took its place. And Clevelanders did what Clevelanders do; they believed despite all empirical evidence to the contrary that things could be different this time.
Things weren’t different this time. They were the same as they always are.
And yet this one felt different. There was no curse here. The montage is never going away, as evidenced by the fact that after the Warriors’ series-clinching 105-97 win, ESPN’s Bottomline said something along the lines of “Cleveland remains without a title since 1964.” But this series wasn’t about botched plays or heartbreak. The Cavs never quite had enough, but they never quit. If anything, this is one of the greatest Cleveland teams of all time. It was already the best Cavaliers team ever.
“Not every story has a happy ending,” Cavs coach David Blatt said after the game. “It doesn’t mean it’s a bad story. This was not. This was a good story.”
LeBron added his own thoughts on the story.
“We had many chapters in the season,” James said. “I don’t know. I mean, for me, it’s never a success if you go out losing. But I think we put ourselves back where this franchise needs to be, being a contender. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
It’s so easy to get caught up in the binaries of sports, with good reason. There’s a winner and a loser. If there’s anything in the world that should be able to be compartmentalized and put into a convenient box it’s sports. So because Cleveland lost in the NBA Finals, there’s this immediate expectation and rush to label the season a disappointment. LeBron was asked no fewer than seven questions about the end result and how he felt about said end result in his press conference following the game. And the old saying goes that nobody remembers second place. Still there isn’t anybody in Cleveland who is going to forget about this team or what LeBron was able to do in June of 2015.
Quite simply, this was one of the best ever individual performances in the Championships of a team sport. Spare the road it took to get here – a new coach, a roster filled with guys who had never had any playoff experience, three All-Stars trying to coexist without having played a single regular season NBA minute together, a 19-20 start, hot seat rumors, the trades that brought J.R. Smith, Timofey Mozgov and Iman Shumpert to the team, the injury to Kevin Love, the multiple injuries to Kyrie Irving, and others – this was a Finals in which the Cavs had no business winning two games in the first place. The Warriors were too deep, too healthy and had far too much firepower.
“I’ve had a lot of playoff runs,” James said Tuesday night, “been on both ends, and I know one thing that you’ve got to have during the playoff run, you’ve got to be healthy. You’ve got to be healthy. You’ve got to be playing great at the right time. You’ve got to have a little luck. And we were playing great, but we had no luck and we weren’t healthy.”
Somehow the Cavs were still two wins away. And that’s all because of LeBron James. He averaged 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds and 8.8 assists in the series. He’s the first player ever to average at least 35 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in the Finals. And he’s also the first player ever to lead both teams in points, assists and rebounds for the entire series. James averaged 45.6 minutes per game in these six games and completely transformed his game.
It bothered him to no end, as he referenced a bunch of times how he hates playing that way. But for the Cavs to have any shot at winning at all, it was what he needed to do. Imagine being the best impressionist painter in the world and suddenly being asked to be Van Gogh. You couldn’t do it, none of us could, but somehow James went from the LeBron James we’re used to – a virtuoso of efficiency – to a one-man wrecking crew who was equal parts Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant. James became another player entirely, a player he wasn’t comfortable with even in the slightest, and he still almost pulled it off.
“It was what I had to do,” James said. “It was what was needed. If I could have gave more, I would have done it, but I gave everything I had.”
James was despondent in the locker room following Game 6. He barely moved, with a towel over his knees and his head down. He was surrounded by his Kingsguard, including Cavaliers shooting consultant Damon Jones, who was with the Cavs in 2007 when they were swept by the Spurs in the Finals. A practically untouched spread of fruit, salad, sushi, smoothies and other food sat in the corner. Even with dozens of TV cameras and microphones smashed into a far-too-small space, James may as well have been alone.
The LeBron James that Jones played with is long dead. In his place is this version of LeBron James, one who has now been through six Finals (four on the losing side) and had an individual performance for the ages. If Cleveland is finally going to win a title in James’ second tour of duty with the Cavs, the LeBron James that existed for these few weeks in 2015 needs to be shed as well, with another to take his place.
James finally came out of the game with 10.6 seconds remaining, earning a comically short rest after playing almost 47 minutes in Game 6. As he walked off the floor, the crowd roared with cheers of “M-V-P.”
The Return didn’t have a fairy tale ending in Year 1; things in this city rarely do. As James wrote in his SI essay, “In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned.” It still might be Cleveland against the world, but Cleveland has the world’s best player. And with a little help, that might be enough, curses be damned.
