When LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers visited the Cavaliers in January, flashbacks to Cleveland capturing the 2016 NBA championship were unavoidable for virtually everyone at Rocket Arena.
Even for the league’s all-time scoring king who hails from Akron.
“Looking up in the rafters, I seen our championship banner, so, yeah, of course it was a lot of reflecting, for sure,” James said then.
The 10th anniversary of the Cavs completing their historic comeback from a 3-1 series deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals by defeating the Golden State Warriors 93-89 in Game 7 at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, is on June 19.
The victory ended a nearly 52-year title drought among Cleveland’s major professional sports franchises.
“One of the things I always gravitate to when I talk about that team was, first of all, start with the greatest player of his generation is from Akron, Ohio,” former Cavs general manager David Griffin told the Beacon Journal shortly after James and the Lakers visited the Cavs. “Nothing I’m going to say afterward matters if that’s not true.”
The Cavs drafted James first overall out of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in 2003, but he took his talents to the Miami Heat in 2010. He proceeded to win back-to-back championships with the Heat in 2012 and 2013 before returning home to rejoin the Cavs in 2014.
In the second season of James’ second tour with the Cavs, Cleveland won it all.
The Warriors had won an NBA-record 73 games in the 2015-16 regular season, but it didn’t matter because the Cavs became the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals.
In the end, James dropped to his knees and sobbed tears of joy. And during an on-court interview with ESPN, he shouted an iconic line: “Cleveland, this is for you!”
How the Cavs made history in 2016
With the Cavs trailing 3-1, Griffin famously sent an email to members of the organization about adversity the team had previously conquered and how it possessed the requisite makeup to mount an unprecedented rally.
How daunting was the task? Entering Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the 2015-16 Warriors had lost just three times at home (twice in the regular season and once in the playoffs). Yet, the Warriors did not have Draymond Green for Game 5. He hit James below the belt late in Game 4, drawing a Flagrant 1 foul. Green was suspended for Game 5 because he had accumulated too many flagrant fouls in the playoffs.
The Cavs capitalized.
“There were more talented teams than ours and certainly will be,” Griffin said. “Everything is more difficult than you anticipate it will be, but that group, they had a feel to it that they understood the magnitude of what was there, and they weren’t afraid of it.”
Former Cavs coach Tyronn Lue played a crucial role in motivating the team. Lue was promoted from an assistant to head coach when Griffin and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert fired coach David Blatt in January 2016 despite the team leading the Eastern Conference with a record of 30-11.
After the Cavs defeated the Warriors 112-97 in Game 5 on the road, Lue collected money from players and other team personnel. Then he stashed it in a locker room ceiling at Oracle Arena. To retrieve the cash, the Cavs would need to prevail in Game 6 at home and thereby earn the right to return to Oakland for Game 7.
The Cavs followed orders with a 115-101 triumph in Game 6, yet they trailed 49-42 at halftime of Game 7. In the locker room during halftime, prominent Cavs figures challenged each other. Lue gave James a strong dose of tough love and demanded more from him.
“I think it’s the culmination of a season, and it’s that group loving each other enough to tell each other what they needed to hear,” Griffin said. “There were some very raw, real things said to each other in that room. James Jones was a big part of it. Ty Lue was a big part of it.
“LeBron was on the receiving end of most of it, and guys doing what they did to pick one another up and galvanize each other coming out of that, [they had the] awareness of, ‘Yeah, that’s what it is. Now what?’ Their grit and toughness is unlike anything I’ve been around, and I think there’s just an overwhelming gratitude I have for watching it all come together and work the way it did.”
It worked because Cavs made a habit of responding.
Remembering key moments of the Cavs’ Game 7 win over the Warriors
James’ chase-down block on a layup attempt by Andre Iguodala kept the score tied 89-89 with 1:50 left in the fourth quarter.
Kyrie Irving’s 3-pointer over Stephen Curry gave the Cavs a 92-89 lead with 53 seconds remaining.
Kevin Love conducted a defensive clinic on the perimeter while guarding Curry during the ensuing possession.
James crashed to the floor in pain on a foul by Green but split two free throws with 10.6 seconds left to push the Cavs’ advantage to 93-89.
During the most monumental game in Cleveland sports since the Browns defeated the Baltimore Colts for the NFL title on Dec. 27, 1964, James produced a triple-double (27 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists). He was named Finals MVP.
Then Northeast Ohio partied — a celebration highlighted by a parade for the ages in downtown Cleveland and, as Griffin said, “J.R. Smith refusing to put on a shirt for days on end.”
LeBron was key to Cavs’ NBA championship: ‘Everything he did made it possible’
Whenever Griffin looks back, the sacrifices and chemistry of the 2015-16 Cavs return to the forefront.
Signing Richard Jefferson during the 2015 offseason and trading for Channing Frye in February 2016 improved relationships on the team.
“What Channing and Richard did in the locker room to bring that group together and to help them get over themselves a little bit and to shed some of the burden and the angst and sort of replace it with joy and opportunity, I think of that a lot because I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a group galvanized in a way they were as individuals by the presence of one other individual making it possible,” Griffin said. “Channing and RJ were clowns together, and Channing freed RJ to be that clown. So, I think as good as they were on the court, and they both had huge moments in those playoff runs, what they did off the floor to bring us together was bigger.”
Acquiring Smith and Iman Shumpert from the New York Knicks in a three-team trade sending Dion Waiters to the Oklahoma City Thunder in January 2015 gave the Cavs other key ingredients to their eventual championship run.
“J.R. Smith, at that particular juncture in his career, was not somebody somebody thought was going to be a core piece of a championship team,” Griffin said. “When we talked about the value of bringing him in, LeBron said, ‘I know what you’re concerned with. I got him. I’ll take care of it.’
“To have somebody be that much of an alpha leader that you felt comfortable giving him any collection of personality types, if they had skill set and fit, and know that he could get them all galvanized, I mean, you don’t get that opportunity very often in your life.”
After James’ most recent game in Cleveland, he said the band would be getting back together to reminisce about winning the 2016 title. Earlier this week, Love posted photographs and videos on Instagram showing old Cavs teammates (Love, James, Frye, Smith, Jefferson and Tristan Thompson) on a golf trip in Great Britain.
“A lot of us are still on a group chat — myself, Channing, RJ, Tristan, K-Love,” James said.
Ending Cleveland’s championship curse a decade ago required a group effort, but it also would not have come to fruition without a kid from Akron.
“Everything he did made it possible,” Griffin said.
Nate Ulrich is the sports columnist of the Akron Beacon Journal and a sports features writer. Nate can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: David Griffin cherishes Cavs, LeBron James winning title 10 years ago
Reporting by Nate Ulrich, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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By Nate Ulrich, Akron Beacon Journal | USA TODAY Network
