On a Tuesday morning in mid-October, LeBron James was lying on his stomach in an outpatient surgical suite at the Cleveland Clinic, and he was miserable. Not just because a doctor was putting a series of needles in his lower back, but because he also had a developing case of the flu.
For the second time in less than a year, James was getting an anti-inflammatory injection to help ease pain. The previous time, ten months earlier, it had worked wonders as he took two weeks off and had come back like a new man. With two weeks to go before the start of a new season he was having it done again, hoping the effects would last well into the season.
“My rookie year I felt fresh,” he said. “I haven’t felt fresh since. But I’ll get my back right and I’ll get stronger.”
Things weren’t going so well for the Cavs at this point, and James needing time off to recover from the procedure was only part of the issue. Two weeks into the preseason, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Anderson Varejão, Iman Shumpert, and Timofey Mozgov were all in various stages of recovery from surgeries. Then J. R. Smith and Matthew Dellavedova suffered minor injuries. Now James was shut down. Not surprisingly, the team was a mess, showing no rhythm and losing their first five preseason games.
“I’m not having fun right now,” David Blatt said after his team lost an exhibition game by 22 points to the Indiana Pacers.
Blatt had come into the season with an optimistic attitude, proclaiming himself better prepared for this job now that he’d been through a rugged first season. The belief that the team had been loaded up for another chance at a title had briefly buoyed him. The week in Miami for the minicamp had seemed productive too.
“I had a lot to learn. I didn’t always realize how much I had to learn about the game here and about the ways of the game here. I’m starting the season in a much better place,” he said, seeming more outwardly contrite than in his first season. “I’m certainly more confident in understanding the things that I need to do and the situations that I’m going to face, and that’s a good feeling.”
James wasn’t exactly feeling the same way. Several times during the preseason he and veteran teammate James Jones led players-only discussions. At one, James chided his teammates for their, in his opinion, relaxed attitude. It was understandable in a way; many of the players were on new rich contracts and also still enjoying the success of the previous season. Many others were on the sidelines or in the training room recovering from injuries.
The season opened in Chicago, and there was some good news. James was back and so was Love, who was cleared to return in time to play in one preseason game. Midway through the first quarter at the United Center, everyone’s attention turned when President Barack Obama appeared out of the tunnel to take a seat at center court with a friend, businessman Marty Nesbitt. It was not a surprise—the Secret Service had screened everyone in the building. Obama is an NBA fan and Bulls supporter. He had a relationship with James, who campaigned for him in both 2008 and 2012 and had visited at the White House several times.
James, though, was not at his best. When he was out of the game, he had to lie on the baseline to stretch out his still-recovering back. He scored 25 points but wasn’t himself. Late in the game he drove for what would’ve been a game-tying basket, but his lift was lacking. Pau Gasol, the Bulls’ center, blocked the shot. The Bulls, who’d had their season ended on the same floor by the Cavs five months earlier, eked out a two-point win.
James waved off concerns about his back and his balky jump shot and was more pleased that Love scored 18 points in his return. And seeing Obama. “For the president of the United States to grace opening night here in Chicago, it’s an honor,” he said. “Something I can tell my kids about a long time from now, and to actually be able to have the film. Kids don’t believe you sometimes.”
The year before, almost to the day, Blatt had taken what could’ve been an easy public relations victory, both to fans and his players, and tainted it when he dismissed the celebration for his first NBA win. This was different, but, standing in the same hallway, Blatt seemed to do it again when asked about playing in front of the president. “I’ve been in front of presidents in other parts of the world, actually,” he said. “But of the United States, yes, first time.”
Like with Blatt’s career wins point, again this was accurate. He had a personal relationship with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2013, Russian president Vladimir Putin awarded him a medal for “promotion of peace and cooperation between peoples” after his successful tenure as Russian national team coach. Blatt, very much a man of the world, was used to interacting with world leaders. So, no, coaching in front of Obama was not a unique moment for him. But again he passed on a chance at a layup opportunity and made headlines unnecessarily. Despite his hopes that the transition was behind him, he was still learning to navigate the landscape.
The team flew to Memphis for a game the next night. Despite the quick turnaround, they completely crushed a usually strong Grizzlies team by 30 points. After a miserable preseason, it was the first time in months the team felt the taste of a real win. Love had a strong night, scoring 17 points with 13 rebounds.
In the moment, James got excited about Love’s performance. He started talking about the meeting the two had the previous summer by the pool in L.A. Then he made some unusually bold statements.
“Kevin is going to be our main focus,” James said. “He’s going to have a hell of a season. He’s going to get back to that All-Star status. He’s the focal point of us offensively. I know I can go out and get mine when I need it. But I need Kev to be as aggressive as he was tonight.”
Love as a main focus? The player who was routinely forgotten about and sometimes seemed to disappear at the end of games?
Love talked a big game too. “We talked about that I can do more,” he said, referring to the pool summit. “I think that he knew that. Since then I think everybody has really stepped up and asked what they can do in their respective roles. From a comfort standpoint, I just feel a lot, a lot better.”
For a while, it actually happened. The victory in Memphis was the start of an eight-game win streak that restored the team’s swagger. Love had 24 points and 14 rebounds against Miami. In Philadelphia, James became the youngest player to score 25,000 career points, hitting the number on a dunk after a lob from Dellavedova that showed his back was feeling much better. “The man above reached out and touched me on that,” he said after barely missing a triple double that night.
Love had 22 points and 19 rebounds and James had 29 points in a win over Indiana. On a key play in the final 30 seconds, James hit Love for a layup to seal the game after a timeout where the play was designed. Blatt credited James for calling the play—always a sensitive topic.
“I suggested that we should run it and Coach allowed me to, allowed us to put it in the works,” James said.
It wasn’t a big deal but pointed to a larger trend. Whether out of a desire for harmony or a reaction to criticism, James was attempting to be more publicly supportive of Blatt. He’d complained about him for a year and likely wouldn’t have objected to Blatt’s firing. But he never asked management to make a change. He seemed to have come to a place where he wanted to try to make it work. During their first season together, he at times went out of his way to undermine the coach. This season, at least at the start, he was going out of his way to help.
To those around the team, though, it was still lip service. James still didn’t pay Blatt a great deal of respect, even if he was now sometimes polite about it. He still clearly had a connection with other assistants, specifically Tyronn Lue. And it was still Lue who was most likely to challenge James, even if it ruffled him.
The winning streak ended in Milwaukee with a double-overtime loss. With the game tied near the end of regulation, James asked Blatt not to call timeout if the Cavs were able to get a defensive stop. He wanted to catch the Bucks by surprise and go for a game-winner. The Cavs got the stop, and just as James was headed up the floor, the whistle blew for a Cleveland timeout. James fumed, pounding the ball against the court. Only Blatt hadn’t called the timeout. Officials mistakenly heard another player on the bench call it. James missed after the stoppage and eventually the team lost.
“We’re not a great team right now,” James said, frustrated by the loss. “We’re a good team, but we have to improve on a lot of things in order for us to get better and play at a high level every night.”
His mood worsened at the next stop on the road trip, a five-point loss in Detroit despite 30 points from James. The Cavs were 8–3, a respectable number considering Irving and Shumpert were still out and Mozgov’s knee was still bothering him. Mozgov was out of shape and not playing with confidence and several times openly complained that the knee was still hurting—all red flags.
Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors won that night, improving to 12–0 on the season, with Stephen Curry off to a scorching start as he racked up three-pointers. The Warriors were blowing teams out with regularity, and their new dedication to an ultra-small lineup, which they’d honed in beating the Cavs during the Finals, was proving to be devastating.
Some players didn’t watch the league on off nights, but James was obsessed with it. Sometimes he’d keep friends and family waiting outside the locker room after games because he was watching the end of games. On the road, where the visiting locker rooms often didn’t have TVs with access to all games, James would sometimes use an app on his phone to pull up live games. He was such a fan of the NBA’s phone app that he once complained to the league about its functionality. Changes were quickly made.
Though James had a lucrative sponsorship with Kia and commercials that showed him arriving at games in the company’s high-end sedan, he was frequently driven to practices and games in a specially outfitted van that had huge leather seats and tinted windows. It had a strong sound system, which James loved to employ at times, but he would often use the vehicle’s giant TV to watch games. At his home in Akron, he had a room outfitted with a matrix of flatscreens, which gave him the ability to watch numerous games at once.
He didn’t like admitting he was keeping such a close eye on the Warriors, to do so would give them a bit of a mental edge. In fact, as the season unfolded he sometimes posted on social media during Warriors games, commenting about shows or movies he was watching as if to imply he didn’t care about Golden State. It was all a cover; he cared deeply.
James knew Kobe Bryant was going to retire before Bryant made the official announcement in late November. When James came back after home games or on off nights after his kids went to bed or he was on the road in a hotel, he wanted to watch Bryant play in those West games that started at 10:30 p.m. He wanted to savor Bryant’s final days and even take some notes—someday that would be him on the swan song.
But he couldn’t help himself. His eyes would wander to the channel with the Warriors game. What were they doing? Often it was blasting another opponent, their drive both impressive and depressing to James. Whether it was their continuity, their talent, or their desire to shut people up about the “lucky” narrative, they were playing together like a philharmonic. Late in those nights James couldn’t help but compare, and he didn’t like how the Cavs were measuring up.
It spilled out in Detroit after the second consecutive loss. Not just at the way the team was playing, which was sluggish to his mind, but also how they were already lagging behind the team that was on its way to a record regular season.
“We haven’t done anything,” James complained. “We didn’t win anything. We lost. We lost in the Finals. That’s enough motivation for myself. I think we need to understand that. We lost in the Finals. We didn’t win. And the team that beat us looks more hungry than we are. It shouldn’t be that way.”
The team went home and avenged the Bucks loss, beating them by 15, with Love having another excellent game, scoring 22 points with 15 rebounds. James had 27 points and played more minutes than he needed to. In the absence of key players, James’s minutes were up over the previous year, which was not a trend the organization wanted. There was little choice, however, and matters grew worse when Mo Williams, who’d done a good job as a fill-in starter for Irving at point guard, began to have significant knee pain and skipped the game. During the game Mozgov hurt his shoulder and was headed to the Cleveland Clinic for an MRI. Mozgov’s knee, which Cavs doctors believed was healed, was really holding him back on defense, and now he had a sprained shoulder too.
Despite these challenges, James stuck with his plan to show leadership when it came to Blatt. Regardless of what was happening in the practices and huddles, he projected support. Even with the team not living up to the standard he was hoping for, he paid Blatt an unexpected strong compliment after the Bucks win. “He does his job as great as any coach can do in this league,” he said.
Blatt’s experience coaching James had been a roller coaster. He’d taken a lot of blows, both direct and indirect, and it was exhausting at times to manage. Blatt’s friends and coaching allies were continually surprised at how he dealt with James. The fire from his European days was missing. He had never been afraid to put a player in his place before. But with James, Blatt was consistently on his heels. He tried not to let this show; part of his personality was to always present an all-knowing attitude. That trait had its virtues in the ruthless environment of an NBA head coach. In this case, he knew to take the James compliment and return it.
“It’s pretty easy to team up with a guy like that and it’s also, it’s refreshing to come every day and to know that you’re about the same things with your best guy,” Blatt said. “LeBron is that. He’s a leader, he’s a great player, and he wants to win. You can’t ask for more than that from any player, particularly your star player.”
Neither of them were being truthful about how they felt about the other. But the quotes looked good on the screen and it minimized distraction. Evidence of the true reality came during the next game. The Cavs were pounding the Atlanta Hawks on their home floor, but James was still irritated by some of his teammates’ erratic play.
With the Cavs up by 26 points in the third quarter, James became enraged after the team committed a turnover. He got so angry that he walked off the court and sat on the bench, taking himself out of the game. Blatt didn’t know what was happening. James’s backup, Richard Jefferson, scrambled to get his warmups off to get in the game. The referees were not pleased and they gave James a technical foul. Blatt lightly admonished him, saying he was out of line, which he was.
“I blew a gasket,” James explained.
As the Warriors continued to rip teams to pieces on their way to a record 24–0 start, James’s anger with how the wounded Cavs compared continued to expand. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Cavs lost in Toronto to fall to 3–4 on the road. Dellavedova was dealing with an injury, Williams’s knee was aching, and Irving was still rehabbing, not close to playing. But James was still furious.
The team wasn’t flying after the game. They were staying in Toronto and having a team Thanksgiving meal before going to Charlotte the next day. James and Jones again called a players-only meeting.
“We got to have a bunker mentality when you go on the road!” James bellowed. “You’ve got to understand it’s you guys versus everyone else, versus the fans, versus the opposing group. Adversity is going to happen. It’s all mind-set. It comes from within. It’s either you got it or you don’t.”
The team responded with a quality win in Charlotte as both James and Love had double doubles. They came home and beat the Brooklyn Nets the next night, James scoring 26 points and nailing an impressive hook shot over the Nets’ giant center, Brook Lopez, with two seconds left to win. But the team did not play well as a whole.
It carried over as they lost their next three games. Washington Wizards star point guard John Wall crushed them, scoring 35 points in a win. Then the team lost in overtime in New Orleans. James was playing great but still playing with anger. He had 37 points in New Orleans and scored 23 of them in the fourth quarter alone, with basically no one else shooting. After his earlier comments about Love being the “focal point of the offense,” the big man took just nine shots in the Wizards loss and was a phantom against New Orleans. When asked why he felt like he needed to shoot so much, James snapped, “Who else was going to do it?”
James no longer cared about the injuries, his disillusion growing. Blatt seemed unable to do anything about it. Love remained inconsistent, as did James’s trust in him. The Cavs front office, especially general manager David Griffin, was taking worrisome notice. The team wasn’t playing great, but James’s dour mood was a real concern.
“It’s only one guy in the world, ever, where everything will be all right when he comes back, and that’s Jesus Christ,” James said, getting unusually biblical as he waved off the notion that things would be better when the team was healthier. “Other than that, you can’t bank on nobody being okay.”
The overtime game delayed departure. The Cavs’ charter didn’t leave Louis Armstrong Airport until after midnight, and by the time the Airbus 319 jet pulled into the private air terminal that James used to call home in Miami, it was very late on the East Coast. The team didn’t get into their hotel downtown until after 3 a.m. With all of that in mind, the Cavs decided to deactivate James for the game against his former team the next night so he could rest.
The Heat took the gift and smashed the Cavs by 15 points, meaning the Cavs were now 5–6 over their previous 11 games. Love’s slump continued, he made 2-of-11 shots. The crowd chided James as he sat on the bench in a suit, chanting “LeBron is tired” over and over. James held up his hand and extended his ring finger, an attempt to remind fans he’d led the Heat to two rings while he was there.
When the team got back to Cleveland, Mozgov and Williams went to doctors. Mozgov was concerned about his knee, and, as he was playing in the final year of his contract, he was worried how much money it was costing him. He got a second opinion, which again told him it was healthy. Williams got an MRI on his left knee, which continued to ache.
The team needed something uplifting. It happened when they came together to execute a comeback win against the Blazers, James scoring 14 of his 33 points in the fourth quarter. Then there was a boost when Shumpert made his season debut after missing 21 games and contributed as the Cavs blasted the Magic by 40 points.
The team flew to Boston in better spirits for what promised to be a charged game. It was the first meeting since the intense playoff series the season before where cheap shots resulted in injuries, suspensions, and bad blood. Kelly Olynyk had formally apologized to Love for the play that dislocated Love’s shoulder. But Smith never said a word to Jae Crowder, who’d suffered a sprained knee after Smith dropped him with an elbow in the same game. The Celtics forward made it known he was expecting Smith to do so in person.
“Yeah, he might want to wait on that. He can’t hold his breath for it,” Smith said. “I’ll give it to him sooner or later… It’s pretty ballsy, though, to ask for an apology from another man.”
Meanwhile, the Cavs had another strong performance as they won by 12 points, perhaps their best road victory of the season to that point. That was all forgotten, though, after what happened during the game.
For years, the Celtics have taken a moment during each home game to honor a citizen from the community. Called “Heroes Among Us,” the event often highlights the work of police officers and firefighters who have saved lives, plus those who work to improve the city. On this night the Celtics were honoring sixteen-year-old Aaron Miller, who was born with cerebral palsy that affected his right side. Despite the challenge, Miller had excelled and become a golfer and basketball player. As his story was being told during a timeout, James’s eyes floated up to the scoreboard to watch.
Miller stood with a smile on his face, wearing a Celtics jersey, as the crowd stood to applaud him. James got up and found himself running over to the boy. When he reached him he extended his hand, but Aaron’s right hand was limited. So James grabbed him by the head and shoulders. Aaron’s eyes opened wide and he screamed, “Oh my God!” As James turned, Aaron said something else: “Look at my shoes!”
James looked. They were James’s signature Nike model. It was a version that didn’t have laces but a strap instead. Part of the design was for people like Aaron who had difficulties tying laces. James was moved seeing how it had helped this challenged young basketball player. Aaron was so excited by the moment he instinctively hugged his mother, who was standing with him.
“I designed those shoes for kids with conditions where they’re not able to tie their own shoestrings, and he had a pair on,” James said. “When I saw that, when I saw his story, I felt like I was a part of him.”
After the game, James returned to see Aaron, who had been given courtside seats. When James arrived he was only in his socks. He’d taken off and signed his shoes from the game and handed them to Aaron.
“He congratulated me,” Aaron told the Boston Globe, “and said, ‘You deserve it. You’re an inspiration to all of us.’”
The excitement that night wasn’t over. The team flew home, arriving just before 2 a.m. When Shumpert got to his home he found his fiancée, well-known singer Teyana Taylor, in distress. She was eight months pregnant and suddenly in labor. Shumpert called 911. As he was being transferred to an EMT, Taylor gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, whom they named Iman but nicknamed “Junie.” Shumpert delivered her while listening to instructions as an ambulance was dispatched, including using a cord from a pair of headphones to tie off the umbilical cord. Both mother and daughter were okay.
“She did two pushes and the baby came out,” Shumpert said. “That was enough excitement for anybody. I’m good for the year. Junie just wanted me to catch her, that’s all. I’ve got the best hands in the business.”
The drama kept going and the Cavs kept winning. They had their biggest victory of the season, beating the Oklahoma City Thunder by four at home. The Thunder stars—Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Serge Ibaka—all played well, combining for 75 points. But the Cavs were just better. James had a huge game, with 33 points, nine rebounds, and 11 assists. Thompson was earning his contract as he grabbed 11 offensive rebounds. For the first time in a while, the Cavs were showing some championship-level form as Irving neared his return.
But with five minutes to play, James was chasing a loose ball out of bounds when he crashed into the first row of seats, where pro golfer Jason Day, a Cavs fan who had won the PGA Championship a few months earlier, was sitting with his wife, Ellie, as a guest of the team. He had just done a promotion hitting foam balls into the crowd.
James always took great care to avoid running into spectators and often took the worst of it. The season before, he had hurt his knee jumping over the first row in Miami trying to avoid fans. But this time he couldn’t and he wiped several people out, including Ellie Day, who banged her head against a barrier. Paramedics were called and Ellie was taken off in a stretcher with a neck brace after being strapped to a backboard. She turned out to be okay after a night in the hospital, and James was relieved.
Three days later, Irving was cleared to play. He missed the first 24 games of the season—and the last five games of the Finals—recovering from the broken kneecap. He returned slowly, playing 24 minutes in a blowout victory over Philadelphia. He looked okay, scoring 12 points.
But he wasn’t 100 percent. The next game he showed rust, going just 1-of-6 against the Knicks. He was already a little frustrated, and he took the rare step of coming back out to the floor to practice after the game as workers were cleaning the arena, another example of him mimicking Kobe Bryant. But the Cavs won again and were riding a six-game win streak as they prepared to leave for the West Coast.
On Christmas Eve, the team boarded their plane for a long flight to California. It was the marquee Christmas matchup on the schedule, a rematch with the Warriors, who were sitting at sparkling 26–1 waiting for the Cavs, who were 19–7. For the first time since Christmas Eve the year before, the day when they learned that Anderson Varejão had torn his Achilles’, the team was fully healthy. Just in time for a huge game.
With health and the win streak, there was finally a feeling of stability within the team. Now that they were settled and whole, they believed everything would calm down. After everything they’d been through, they should’ve known better.