NBA finals: How ‘King’ LeBron James led the remarkable Cleveland Cavaliers’ coronation

The 2016 NBA finals were supposed to be a coronation of the Golden State Warriors. Led by the loose-limbed, twinkled-toed, sharp-shooting Steph Curry, the Warriors had rolled through the regular season like a thresher in a wheat field, winning an NBA record 73 games while losing just nine. Not once did they lose two games in the row. Curry was voted the league’s first ever unanimous Most Valuable Player. Win the title, and they could legitimately claim to be the greatest (one-year) team in history. Instead, the NBA finals turned out to be a coronation of a different kind. LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and the scrappy second-thought Cleveland Cavaliers shocked the basketball world by coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the seven-game series to upset the mighty Warriors. It was the first time any team had come back from trailing 3-1 in the Finals and to do it, James and the Cavs beat Curry and the Warriors three straight times, including twice on their home court in Oakland. To put that in perspective, the Warriors lost just two games out of 41 at home all season and had lost only one game at home in the NBA Playoffs until the Finals. [caption id=“attachment_2845110” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  At the heart of the Cavs’ win was LeBron James, a transcendent once-in-a-generation player. AP[/caption] At the heart of it all was James, a transcendent once-in-a-generation player whose star has been eclipsed by Curry over the last couple of years. With Cleveland one game away from another finals loss, and Warriors one game away from back-to-back titles and legendary status, it seemed like James would taste bitter defeat yet again. Instead, the player who was reviled in Cleveland for ’taking his talents to South Beach’ in 2010, is now and forever more a hero for bringing the city their first ever NBA title and their first sporting championship of any kind in 52 long years. James famously returned to Cleveland in 2014 with a promise to bring a title to the city. His team lost to the Warriors in the finals last year, but Kylie Irving and Kevin Love, their second and third best players, were missing due to injury. This year they were all healthy for the most part, but the Cavaliers still battled plenty of adversity. They fired their head coach David Blatt half-way through despite being the best team in the Eastern Conference, promoting Tyron Lue, an assistant coach with no head-coaching experience to take his place. James was often cryptically critical of unnamed teammates on social media before shutting down his Twitter account as the playoffs approached so he could focus on the job at hand. That job involved “lugging his city’s championship dreams like a bag of rocks. The weight had only grown more cumbersome — the weight of history, of disappointment, of missed opportunities,” as Scot Caccicola put it in the New York Times. It was made harder still because this team is one that James assembled. After the Cavaliers lost the first two games by a combined 48 points, another article in the New York Times asked whether James would “accept the blame” if the Cavs lost the series “or put the cool sunglasses back on and turn an executive thumb down?” That question didn’t just turn out to be premature; the demise of these Cavs was widely exaggerated. With his team’s season on the brink, LeBron took over the series. He scored 41 points in Game 5 and added 16 rebounds and seven assists for good measure as his team won by 15. That win proved to the Cavs that they could handle these Warriors and, if they could win at home in Game 6, strange things could happen in Game 7. James backed that performance up with another 41-point effort in Game 6, including a ridiculous 18 points in a row during one stretch, this time adding 11 assists and eight rebounds, four steals and three assists. He was everywhere, doing everything. James even jawed with Curry after blocking a lay-up and he and his team, with a little help from some poor refereeing, got under Curry’s skin so much the league’s MVP threw his mouth guard into the crowd in frustration after fouling out, and was ejected for the first time in his NBA career. By the time Game 7 rolled around, James had come so far, he wasn’t going to let this turn into yet another heart-breaking loss for a Cleveland sports team. He posted a triple-double – 27 points, 11 assists and 11 rebounds – and while he didn’t score from open play in the last two minutes, he probably saved the game with a startling defensive play that only he could make. With the game tied at 89-89, Andre Iguodala appeared to be coasting to the basket for an uncontested lay-up after a Warriors fast break. Instead, James charged in from behind, closing the gap like a freight train, and blocked the ball into the backboard. One minute later, Irving got free on the other end and knocked down a three-pointer to give the Cavaliers a lead they would not relinquish. Fittingly, James then scored the final point of the game on a free-throw and seconds later the celebrations could begin. The Warriors , meanwhile, will have to settle for an ingominous honour: the title of best team not to have won the NBA championship. For the series, James averaged 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds and 8.9 assists and shot nearly 50 percent from the field. In a surprise to no one, he was named the unanimous Finals Most Valuable Player. He was so dominant, “he led all players on both teams in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots,” the first time any player has done that in any Playoff series. After the confetti had fallen and the hugging and screaming had begun, James was asked how he kept believing that his team could win it all despite losing three of the first four games against the Warriors. “I don’t know why the man above give me the hardest road, but … the man above don’t put you in situations that you can’t handle. I just kept that same positive attitude. Instead of saying why me, I said this is what He wants me to do. And, uh, Cleveland, this is for you." The city of Cleveland will party like never before to celebrate this win and will likely luxuriate in it for a long time. But make no mistake, it wasn’t just for Cleveland. It was a win James needed too; a win to silence to doubters and the critics; a win to prove to the world that James is not just a champion and man of his word, but that you count him out at your peril.