When LeBron James returned from his midseason Miami vacation, his back was feeling better and his activity level was ramping up. He’d rejoined the team in San Francisco, the start of their longest road trip of the year, but wasn’t ready to play yet. As the team prepared to depart for a morning workout ahead of that evening’s game with the Golden State Warriors, the elevator doors opened and a giant human being ducked his head out.
David Griffin brought Timofey Mozgov over to James and made the introduction. James cursed at the size of the man. He’d played against Mozgov for years but had forgotten just how big he was. As the team left, Mozgov went to Stanford Medical Center, where the team had arranged for him to have his physical to complete the trade. When Mozgov got on the treadmill he was too tall and a ceiling panel had to be removed so he could stand and run. Alterations made, he passed and the deal was finalized.
The team opened the road trip with an 18-point loss to the Warriors, who were blitzing through the league with a 29–5 record. The concept that the two teams would be possible playoff combatants in the Finals felt far-fetched at the time. Smith had a terrific game in his first start, scoring 27 points and showing some of the flashes that the Cavs were hoping might come from their gamble.
Mozgov, whom teammates quickly began calling by the nickname “Timo,” started at center two days later and immediately played well, scoring 14 points with 12 rebounds. But the Cavs were still deep in a funk as they were miserable defensively in a 19-point loss in Sacramento. It dropped the team to .500 at 19–19 and happened against a Kings team that was in the midst of losing 11 of 13 games. With James and Irving in and out of the lineup, Love had put together several games with good stats. This was another one, 25 points and 10 rebounds, but he was being transported back to his Wolves days when he put up big numbers on a bad team.
At this point, despite James still being out, the questions were growing about what was going on. Defensively the team remained lifeless, and Blatt remained unable to shake them from the slump. He was asked afterward how a team that still had two healthy maximum-salary players, Irving and Love, was unable to play better.
“Kevin’s not a max player yet, is he?” Blatt said.
These sorts of exchanges had become typical with Blatt, who often challenged reporters’ questions. But this was not the best answer, because indeed Love was earning a max salary for that season. Whatever Blatt meant to say, it came off sounding like the coach disputing Love’s salary and standing as one of the league’s best players.
Love also had been getting crushed defensively during the losing streak. Kings power forwards Rudy Gay and Carl Landry combined to score 34 points on 67 percent shooting that night. So Blatt had underlying reasons for being lukewarm on considering whether Love was playing like a star. But in the delicate world of dealing with NBA players, that was a needless slipup. With Love headed for free agency, media and fans seized on such commentary and it quickly became a topic on talk shows.
It was a comment that the Cavs ended up having to address internally. After the game, the team flew to Phoenix. The next afternoon before practice at Grand Canyon University, Blatt met with Love and tried to smooth over his comment. He then gave a half retraction, explaining that his words had been taken out of context.
“I was simply saying that with our team, he does not have a max contract because we aren’t allowed to talk to him about anything until after the season is over,” Blatt said. “I just wasn’t clear in what I meant, but I hope he now understands exactly what I meant. Kevin Love for me is a player of the highest order.”
Again this was not accurate, because Love was indeed playing at that very moment on a max contract. The exasperation with Blatt not simply openly admitting he’d insulted the player, on purpose or not, only furthered some growing angst.
“I wanted to get the context of it all,” Love said. “He’s right. We can’t talk about anything about this summer or contracts or anything of that nature so I just let it roll off.”
All of this was a distraction. While Blatt was trying to clean up the mess, the team had one of its best days in weeks. James returned to practice and for the first time took the floor with Smith and Mozgov. The rest and treatment clearly had made a difference as he looked explosive. For a team that had lost eight of nine games, it was uplifting.
James announced he would return the next day against the Suns and then hurried out a back door to go to the airport, where he’d chartered a jet to fly to Dallas and watch the college football national championship game between Ohio State, his favorite team, and Oregon. He was a guest of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and sat in his suite.
James’s return was an unhappy one. That night the Cavs lost again to the Suns to fall below .500 on the season, giving up 53 percent shooting. Midway through the second quarter, James was called for an offensive foul and Blatt stormed onto the court to protest. James came over and pushed Blatt back toward the bench so he could argue with the referee. Under another circumstance, the act might’ve been ignored. But with James’s public dismissiveness of his coach throughout the season, it came off looking to some like another belittling act.
“Coach Blatt was getting a little fired up about it and he was on his way to a technical foul. So I just got him up out of the way before he got a T,” James explained. “Just protecting my coach.”
Explained Blatt, “I just thought my guy was taking a lot of hard hits and I didn’t like it and I was expressing my opinion, and LeBron stepped in to I guess protect me in that situation, which is more than fine. But what I really wanted to do was protect him.”
It illustrated just how off course the season had gone. James and Blatt were both trying to protect each other, but because of all the team’s unrest it became another controversy.
As the Cavs tried to make a comeback late in the game, Blatt once again chose to bench Love throughout the fourth quarter. It was a tactical move that helped, since Love’s defense was again an issue. Suns power forward Markieff Morris scored 35 points in the game and Love struggled against him. But because of the events of the previous two days, it again took on a political layer. All the things that Griffin had tried to defuse with his public vote of confidence for Blatt were coming up again.
Moments after the game ended, Love and Griffin held an impromptu meeting. The two went into the practice court next to the Cavs locker room, Love still wearing his uniform. One of the Suns’ players, Miles Plumlee, came to the practice court to work on his shooting after not having played in the game. He ran into Love and Griffin in the middle of the discussion and immediately turned around and left, knowing he’d just accidentally walked in on something.
When it came to talking about it, Love stuck to James’s edict from the start of the season and kept it in house. “If you told me I was going to sit out the fourth quarter, maybe I would have thought it would have been tough. But we had a great rhythm going tonight. I thought the group that we had out there was doing a great job of getting us back into the game,” he said.
Amid that sideshow, James looked excellent. He had 33 points and three explosive dunks, saying, “I couldn’t make those moves two weeks ago.” Smith, in his first game playing with James, drilled eight three-pointers. Had Love played a little better on defense or Irving, who had eight turnovers, played just average, the story might’ve been different. Instead, it was another stressful night.
After the game, the Cavs made the short flight to Los Angeles. They scheduled a practice for the next afternoon. When the team boarded the bus at the Beverly Wilshire, the players were expecting to go to Westwood to practice at UCLA as teams had done on off days in L.A. for decades. But they went toward West Hollywood instead and pulled up at a bowling alley. In an effort to blow off some steam, Blatt as a surprise had set up a team bowling trip instead of practice. It was well received by the players, who hit the lanes.
Later, this day was referred to as a turning point. The laughter and bonding was a relief, but of course it was more complex than that. As guys in basketball shorts threw gutterballs, they discussed a rumor that was going around. The origin was unclear, but the players were hearing it from their agents: If the Cavs didn’t turn things around in their two games in L.A. to end the road trip, Blatt was going to be fired. Whether or not it was accurate, the players were discussing it, and how they responded would be an indication of where they were with their coach.
The team, however, was feeling positive. Getting James back was a major boost, and the new players were delivering. In addition, in practices on the road trip Blatt had been installing a new defensive strategy. With Mozgov and his rim-protecting ability, the team was working on changing its scheme. Some of it was aimed at making things easier on Love, who had been getting roasted as the previous strategy required him to cover more ground than he was used to.
When the team arrived at Staples Center they were confident they’d end the losing streak. They did, beating the Lakers by seven points. James looked healthy and active again, racking up 36 points. Irving bounced back as well, scoring 22 points. During the game, Cavs players openly discussed with some Lakers players the prospect of their coach possibly being fired.
Late in the game, there was a pivotal moment in a timeout huddle. After sitting much of the second half, Kobe Bryant had scored seven quick points and the Lakers had cut the lead from nine to four. Blatt wanted James to switch over to defend Bryant, who had been scoring on Shawn Marion. James declined. Blatt was silent. Assistant Ty Lue stepped in and barked at James, “Bron, you take him. Shut that water off!” James reversed course and agreed. The Cavs closed out the game without more damage from Bryant.
Moments like this had been happening for weeks: Lue stepping in at practice to calm a situation; Lue stepping in during a film session when Blatt ignored a mistake James had made; Lue helping Blatt with substitution patterns and timeout management.
It was a crucial win and everyone had a piece—even Love, who was still dealing with a sore back. He suffered another bout of spasms during pregame warmups but played through it and scored 17 points. In the fourth quarter he made a key defensive play, taking a painful charge when the Lakers’ Jeremy Lin ran over him. He would end up sitting out the next night because of the back issue.
But the Cavs won that game too, beating the Clippers, 126–121, for their best victory in weeks. James had a third straight strong game with 32 points and 11 rebounds. Irving scored 37 points, nailing five three-pointers with five assists.
At the start of the season, Irving and James clearly lacked chemistry playing together, and then James purposefully reduced Irving’s ball handling. It was a frustrating time for Irving, who was being shoehorned a bit into a role he wasn’t familiar with.
Over the following months, Mike Miller had spent time with the young guard and they had many conversations on how to play alongside James and where to pick his spots. Miller wasn’t having a good season. The Cavs were thinking he was going to provide a significant contribution as a shooter off the bench after he’d hit 46 percent of his three-pointers the season before and didn’t miss a game. But he didn’t arrive in great condition—neither did their other veteran pickup, Marion—and he was having the worst season of his career.
But Miller’s easygoing personality helped him connect with teammates throughout his career and he’d become someone for Irving to lean on—that was where he was making a contribution. Miller and Irving became regular dinner companions on the road. Miller knew the challenges of learning to play with James, of finding ways to succeed with star teammates. As Irving spent more time with Miller and more court time with James, he clearly started making progress.
Now that James was getting over his back issues and Irving’s knee was feeling better, they were getting traction playing together. The one-two punch they delivered against the Clippers was the best example yet of their budding partnership starting to form.
In the final minute there was once again some intrigue in the huddle. With the Cavs ahead by four, Blatt drew up a play for Irving where James would be a decoy. James wanted to change the play, saying he wanted to take the ball out and inbound it to Irving. Blatt agreed. When the play went in motion, James looked to Irving and froze the Clipper defense, which allowed Tristan Thompson to make a backdoor cut. James fired a perfect pass to Thompson, who scored and was fouled to finish off his own 24-point night. It was a perfectly executed play that sealed the win.
James immediately pointed to Blatt, letting everyone know he was to get credit. This was quite a moment, because they both came up with the play and it was James who’d made the great read. Blatt had been the subject of so much undercutting by James, both within the team and in the media, that it was a surprising turn—all part of the seesaw experience of coaching James.
“The play was good, the pass was much better,” Blatt said. “LeBron made the play.”
The two wins made the long flight home enjoyable. Blatt had been pulled back from the edge, the pressure around him easing, James’s public praise helping. The changes Griffin had made were starting to bear fruit.
After two days off, the Cavs opened a homestand by crushing the rival Bulls. In his first game in Cleveland as a Cav, Mozgov had 15 points and 15 rebounds and was an effective defensive presence. Smith nailed six three-pointers as the crowd started to like his ability to get hot.
The three-game win streak had Blatt pulling back his shoulders and rediscovering some confidence. After going into a bit of a shell during the losing streak and the faux pas with Love, he began to exude confidence again. His turn in attitude was personified by his return to admonishing the media for negative stories during the team’s struggles.
“Despite all the crap that has been said and written, a lot of it unfair and a lot of it ugly, we stayed the course and didn’t pay attention to that and locked in on basketball,” Blatt said. “Eat all that crow.”
Over the next several weeks, the Cavs started ripping off victories and piling up momentum as their new players and new schemes started taking hold. Love, James, and Irving combined for 63 points and Mozgov had 16 points and 11 rebounds in a win over the Jazz. Smith nailed seven three-pointers in a victory over the Hornets in which Shumpert made his debut. The Cavs beat the Thunder as James had a duel with Kevin Durant, James scoring 34 points and Durant 32. At a game in Detroit, Irving put up 38 points and James had 32 as they continued to demonstrate their progress learning to find ways to succeed playing with each other.
James missed a game with the Trail Blazers because of a sprained wrist. Irving missed his first seven shots and it appeared the winning streak might be coming to an end that night. Then he had one of the most impressive shooting runs in NBA history as he made 11 three-pointers and showed all of his offensive mastery. His wizardry with the ball on dribbles, change-of-direction moves, and quick releases had the crowd delirious. He made two three-pointers in the final 75 seconds, one to tie and one to win with six seconds left over the much taller Nic Batum. He’d scored 55 points, a new career high and one off James’s franchise record, set in 2005. The 11 three-pointers were a franchise record. He even had five assists, leading the team.
James sprinted to meet him after the game-winner as Irving flexed at center court. As he drove home, James tweeted about what he’d just seen. “Just watched one of the greatest performances by a person and he happens to be my teammate/runningmate/brother Kyrie Irving,” he wrote.
The Cavs ended up winning 12 in a row. Their defense was improving. The Shumpert and Smith additions had provided a huge lift on the perimeter, and Matthew Dellavedova, recovered from his own knee issue, was turning in quality performances. James and Irving were racking up numbers and both were selected for the All-Star team in New York in February.
This was closer to the situation that James had envisioned when he made the choice to return to Cleveland—his supporting cast executing their jobs. He had prepared himself for a breaking-in process both with teammates and coaches, but it had been worse than he expected. He didn’t realize how many bad habits there were. Not just in actual performance within games, where he had to try to break them of what he saw as selfish streaks, but in how few of his teammates acted as professionals. In his mind, there wasn’t enough extra work being put in after practice or in the film room, not enough guys taking care of their bodies in the weight or recovery rooms, and—this might’ve bothered him the most—a lack of punctuality. Time was one of James’s most valued possessions, and he hated, hated it when people were late and made him wait. It also miffed him that some of his younger teammates were slobs, leaving the locker room a mess and letting the attendants clean it up.
James hadn’t counted on dealing with his own injury issues. He’d never missed more than five games with an ailment, his durability being one of his greatest traits. When the knee and back slowed him down, it slowed the assimilation process he’d been trying to force through. He’d also not predicted spending so much time and effort with leadership. Perhaps he was overstepping conventional bounds with Blatt, but he was doing it because he felt it had to be done. In truth his plate had never been more full. He told people he felt like he’d already played two seasons because of how dramatic the transition had been.
His statistics suffered, with his shooting numbers sagging backward. James had been proud, at times obsessed, with becoming a more efficient player as he matured. He loved that he’d improved his shooting percentage in seven consecutive seasons. But this year the challenges had knocked him off his routines—he loved routines—and the injuries had hurt his performance. He always said he didn’t care about stats as long as he won, but that wasn’t true. He did care about stats, dearly, just not more than wins. Now that the wins were coming and he was feeling healthier, he was easing off a little. But he didn’t see a complete product.
One area where James and the rest of the team hadn’t made much progress was with Love. When the winning streak ended in Indianapolis, Love had just five points after getting only eight shots. Even as the Cavs found some success after half a season in a morass, Love often wasn’t much a part of it. Even as they ripped off victories, the loss to the Pacers was the fourth time in the previous 10 games that Love had failed to score 10 points. At times he was a major part of the game plan; the night before the Indiana loss he scored 24 points in a home win over the Clippers. But he was averaging nine fewer points and six fewer shots per game than a year before.
The Indiana loss was a low point for Love, who’d gotten frustrated with his role. Often the game plan would be to feature him, and it would happen for the first 10 or so minutes. He racked up shots and stats in the first quarter, only to be forgotten by the fourth. He’d stand in the corner waiting as James and Irving went to work. When he got yanked for his defensive shortcomings he wasn’t surprised. If they weren’t going to involve him on offense, it wasn’t worth having him out there.
“I think it’s one of the toughest situations I’ve had to deal with,” Love said after the game in Indianapolis. “There’s no blueprint for what I should be doing.”
Once again, the sentiment drummed up attention, because Love was a free-agent-to-be. He’d repeatedly said his future was in Cleveland, but he wasn’t thriving. The team took the next day off, but James, having read Love’s quotes, sent a message. It was done again in an odd and indirect way: on social media.
“Stop trying to find a way to FIT-OUT and just FIT-IN. Be apart of something special! Just my thoughts.”
It appeared on James’s twitter account late in the evening. The phrase was strange and it made its origin easier to identify. During the preseason, Love had used the same wording when explaining how he was trying to adapt to his new situation. “I’m comfortable and just not trying to, I guess, fit in so much,” he said after a preseason game. “I had a talk with the guys… and they told me to fit out. Just be myself.”
At the time, Love said he’d laughed at the concept because it didn’t fit the classic team-first approach players are usually taught. “You always say check your egos at the door, but we also need to bring our egos with us, because that’s what makes us so great. We wouldn’t be here without them,” he said.
But Love hadn’t really followed this advice. He spent much of the season becoming a wallflower, drifting at the edges. His personality had been tough to read. When he made a mistake on the court, he frequently looked down and avoided eye contact with teammates or coaches. The same went for some interview sessions when he was uncomfortable with the questions. It was hard to get to know him, which made it hard to help him.
Love had a cutting sense of humor and a broad set of interests. His background was fascinating. The son of an NBA player and the nephew of one of the founding members of the Beach Boys, he split his youth between the pristine suburbs of Portland, Oregon, and the basketball courts of Los Angeles. Obsessed with basketball history, he studied the style of 1970s star big man Wes Unseld, a contemporary of his father’s. When he was at UCLA he took advantage of access to Bill Walton and John Wooden, delving into conversations with both as often as possible. He later gave the university $1 million to help fund a basketball facility. Doughy as a kid and young adult, Love had devoted himself to training and remade his body, shedding lots of weight as he spent summers conditioning in the mountains near Park City, Utah.
Repeatedly when the topic of Love’s disappearance from offensive strategy was brought up, James or Blatt would reference how he needed to “demand” the ball more or “make himself more available” by getting teammates’ attention. It would seem like they wanted Love to “fit out” and not just go with the flow that often bypassed him.
It wasn’t that Love was having a bad season. His numbers were good, and frequently he was a major force in wins. But he was not the dominating player the team and perhaps James expected when it made a major trade for him. Some of this could’ve been because Love was dealing with rolling periods of back pain that kept him out of games intermittently throughout the season. When it came time to announce the All-Star reserves, the coaches passed on voting him onto the team. He’d been an All-Star three times in Minnesota when he was facing stiff competition among rival power forwards in the Western Conference like Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, and Blake Griffin.
James’s tweet seemed like a nefarious jab, one that wasn’t just opaque but came off as passive-aggressive—a James trait that sometimes was irksome.
The day after the tweet, Love exploded for his best game of the season, scoring 32 points with 10 rebounds in a victory over the Lakers in Cleveland. He hit seven three-pointers, three of them assisted by James. Irving had 28 points, making five three-pointers, and a season-high 10 assists. James had 22 points, meaning the three had combined for 82 points in the type of performance the entire enterprise was supposed to be about. Fitting in, fitting out, whatever—this type of triple threat had the Cavs looking like a championship-level team.
James admitted he was aiming the tweet at Love, which now seemed like a nice story with him responding so strongly. The only thing was Love said he hadn’t even seen it—it was an afternoon game and he hadn’t been asked about it earlier in the day. Then James put out an odd denial, reversing course.
“If I have a problem with a teammate or anyone I’ll say to their face and not over social media. That’s corny and wack!” James wrote in another tweet.
As he’d done throughout the season, Love took the high road. “I truly feel if LeBron had a problem with me or needed to talk to me, for good or for worse, he would have come up and talked to me,” he said. “There’s no problem with us. I’m going to keep saying that I’m trying to help this team. That’s all that matters. I don’t need any validation.”
The merry-go-round kept moving, eventually it led to wins in 18 of 20 games. Whatever James was trying to accomplish with the fit in/fit out message, it didn’t change much. Love continued his inconsistency. Though he had a few impactful games as the season went on, his teammates passed him the ball even less but he avoided complaining. The team just kept winning.
Timo Mozgov kept putting together nice performances. He scored 20 points in a blowout of the Heat. They blasted the Wizards by 38 points as J. R. Smith and Iman Shumpert combined for 27 points. The team put up 127 points that night, Love, James, and Irving combining for 68. It was 51 points more than the previous trip to Washington.
Smith had 17 points in a triumphant return to Madison Square Garden. Love made eight three-pointers in a win at Detroit, with James assisting on five of them. The Cavs then added veteran center Kendrick Perkins to the roster, another veteran voice in the locker room from someone with a championship ring.
It culminated with an II-point home victory over the Warriors, who’d become the championship favorite with Stephen Curry, who’d become the MVP favorite. James scored 42 points with 11 rebounds and five assists, his most forceful game of the season. The Cavs moved through March by winning 14 of 17 games. After once falling to as low as seventh in the Eastern Conference standings, they leapt into second place.
When the Cavs arrived in San Antonio for a nationally televised game against the Spurs, James’s world was totally different than when he walked out of the building after Game 5 of the Finals the previous June. He was on a new, younger, and up-and-coming team, and they were coming together in such a way that he was feeling good about his decision to leave Miami. Irving was hot, he was healthy, and he’d found a way to play with James that had both fulfilled and growing. The team’s new players, Shumpert, Smith, and Mozgov, were all thriving.
And Blatt was being Blatt, his bravado expanding with each win. His team was 23–5 over the previous two months at that point. Headlines in the Israeli media, which were closely charting the Cavs’ progress, were championing his efforts in turning the team around.
Before the game, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was reminded that he’d predicted the Cavs would eventually get themselves together. As he had in November when Blatt had coached a mess of a game in a close loss, Popovich praised his peer.
“I know what his system is, and if he had a group that was willing, I knew it would turn,” Popovich said. “But it takes a while to have a coach institute a system and have everybody buy in, understand it, feel good about it, gain confidence. He’s a good one. He knows what he’s doing. The guys figured that out and they’re playing great basketball.”
A few minutes later, down the hallway, Popovich’s remarks of praise were repeated to Blatt. Instead of just accepting Popovich’s compliment, Blatt again took an offensive posture in repeating his biography.
“I came back to the United States after thirty-three years speaking the same language,” Blatt said. “Don’t forget I coached in Russia, Italy, Turkey, Greece. That was a lot harder. Those are different languages, different cultures, and different worlds.” He said he was “one of the more experienced coaches in the world” and then compared his accomplishments to the Spurs’ success—five titles over the previous fifteen years—to the various championships he’d won in Europe.
On a roll, Blatt was asked when he knew he’d found his footing as an NBA coach as Popovich indicated he’d observed in recent months.
“The day after I signed,” he said.
As hot as the Cavs were running by then, Blatt felt safe doing some gloating. It did take some savvy to manage all the obstacles that had been put before him, and he was leading a team that was improving by the week. But those involved with the team, the people who were at practice, in film sessions, and around the bench, knew there was an elephant in the room no one really talked about. James did follow Blatt at times, but he frequently freelanced without concern. Blatt had yielded, perhaps out of survival, and operated around it. Meanwhile, James, and many of the other players, still seemed to connect better with Lue.
James had another good game in San Antonio, scoring 31 points. Yet he was relegated to a sideshow. Irving had one of the most remarkable games the NBA had seen in the previous decade, putting on a shooting and scoring display that was breathtaking and record-breaking.
He made 20 of 32 shots, all seven three-pointers he attempted, all 10 free throws he attempted. He again had five assists. He scored 14 straight points in the second quarter. At the end of the fourth quarter with the Cavs down three points, James acted as the inbounder and Irving got free to nail a three-pointer at the buzzer that forced overtime. The clutch shot was over Kawhi Leonard, the freakishly long-armed and giant-handed defensive beast who’d won Finals MVP the year before and was a month away from winning Defensive Player of the Year. Irving would eventually score 15 straight Cavs points in the fourth and overtime.
The Cavs eventually won, 128–125, and Irving totaled 57 points. It broke James’s franchise scoring record. It was the most points a James teammate had ever had. It was the most points a Popovich-coached team had ever allowed. It was the most points scored against a defending champion since Wilt Chamberlain put up 62 on the Boston Celtics in 1962.
It was a moment to celebrate Irving, but it was also graduation day in certain respects. His career had been knocked to a different track when James arrived and his mental preparations for it weren’t enough. Beyond the mechanics of going from the team’s primary scorer to operating alongside one of the greatest scorers of all time, Irving had struggled with James’s leadership maneuvers. Tough love, real love, coded messages, being caught in the middle of the James-Blatt seesaw—it had been a challenging season for Irving to find his place. He had always been a player who followed his instincts—usually, do whatever is necessary to get your team a basket—and he was suddenly in a world where there were so many more layers.
Slowly he’d found room to flourish. James wanted him to, he was invested in making it a partnership, but they were so different—their ages, their styles, their experiences—that it was a daily challenge. He hadn’t totally figured it out, but Irving’s willingness to work at it had won James over. And as he drilled shot after shot on the Spurs, he got something from James that he almost never showed. Awe.
“The kid is special,” James said. “We all know it. We all see it. For him to go out and put up a performance like he did was incredible.”
“As long as my elbow’s pointed at the rim, I feel like it has a great chance to go in,” Irving said, explaining how he’d hit some circus shots. He also was the beneficiary of Mozgov, who acted like a road grader in leveling Spurs point guard Tony Parker with screen after screen that allowed Irving to eat up the Spurs’ defensive scheme.
Irving gave teammate Miller, who’d become a valued mentor, supporter, and friend, his shoes from the performance as a gift, complete with autograph, date, and the number 57. Miller cradled them like a baby as he boarded the team bus.
As for the James-Love dynamic, that remained more of a work in progress. After a victory in Milwaukee a few weeks later, James gathered some teammates for a group photo in the jetway as the team was about to board their plane to head home. James, Irving, Shumpert, Smith, Mozgov, Tristan Thompson, and the newly signed Perkins were together. Again, James’s Twitter feed became a news item when he posted the photo along with the caption: “Clique Up.”
The implication was this was James’s clique on the team. That wasn’t even truly the case, as James Jones and Miller, two of James’s most adored teammates in his career, weren’t in the photo. But the focus immediately was on Love’s absence after he’d had another less-than-stellar game, scoring just nine points with three rebounds. Once again, relationships and the future were thrust to the forefront as chatter enveloped the team.
The next day, Love had scheduled a round of morning radio interviews as part of a marketing deal he’d signed to promote chocolate milk. Love, who had been guarded in so many interviews all season, was refreshingly honest in the discussions. As expected, his relationship with James came up.
“You know, we’re not best friends, we’re not hanging out every day, but we see each other every day,” Love told Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic on ESPN Radio. “If we have a chance at the end of the year to hoist that Larry O’Brien Trophy, then it’s all been worth it. There’s been times this season… that I fought [my role], but then seeing the end result it kind of changes everything. Had it been different, maybe I would’ve felt a different kind of way.”
Later, on Dan Patrick’s national radio show, Patrick asked Love who would get his vote as MVP. Curry and the Rockets’ James Harden were candidates, with the Cavs’ strong second-half surge making James an option too.
“Time spent on the court—LeBron took a couple weeks off. They’re both having an MVP-type season, but I’m going to go with Russell Westbrook because every single night you’re looking at his stat sheet,” Love said. “I think Russ is arguably having the better season.”
Love’s viewpoint was reasonable. Westbrook had been carrying the Thunder after defending MVP Kevin Durant was lost for the season with a foot injury. Love had been teammates with Westbrook at UCLA, and they had a long-standing relationship. Love also once again repeated he wanted to be a Cav long-term.
That didn’t matter. Headlines took off because Love’s comments were on the heels of James’s tweet. Love giving an honest answer instead of defaulting to saying his teammate should win MVP became fresh chum on the talk show circuit. Love’s 22 points and 10 rebounds on 10-of-13 shooting in the next game, yet another Cavs blowout win in Memphis, didn’t quell it much.
“I don’t really think too much of it, really,” James said, trying to defuse the matter. “Kevin has his own opinion, who he believes is MVP, no one should fault him for that.”
Several days later, though, James got in a playful dig. When he was asked for who he’d vote for in the MVP race, he smiled.
“Who would be my vote?” he said. “Kevin Love.”