Stan Van Gundy was irked. It was in the midst of a playoff game, the first one for the Detroit Pistons in seven years, and there was a microphone in his face for the standard in-game interview that has become a regular part of nationally televised games. The heavily favored Cavs were ahead by just two points after the first quarter.
“A couple calls have upset our guys,” Van Gundy complained to Lisa Salters of ESPN. “They’ve got to understand, LeBron’s LeBron. They’re not going to call offensive fouls on him. He gets to do whatever he wants. They’ve got to understand that.”
Over the years, a parade of underdogs had applied an array of tactics to deal with James in playoff series. They’d tried to beat him up, swarm him, leave him isolated, bait him into fights, and so on. Van Gundy revealed his strategy early: He was going to try to goad officials into calling fouls on James.
Van Gundy had beaten James as an underdog before, in the 2009 conference finals when he coached the Orlando Magic. James was brilliant in that series, averaging 38.5 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists before losing in six games. He had done it with a benign tumor that had developed in his jaw area, which was removed in an intricate four-hour surgery two days after the series ended. Van Gundy’s strategy of shutting down James’s teammates had worked in that series, and he was working on another move seven years later.
The league dinged Van Gundy with a $25,000 fine for the comment. But it was only the beginning of the Pistons trying to get under James’s skin. Despite being the No. 8 seed, Detroit felt the Cavs might be vulnerable. They’d had a worse record under Ty Lue (27–14) than the fired David Blatt (30–11) as their defense sagged after the change. Also, the Pistons believed the Cavs’ best players, James and Kyrie Irving, could be goaded into taking three-pointers, and that was exactly what the Pistons wanted. James shot 31 percent during the season on threes, his lowest percentage since his rookie season, as he’d fallen into a bad habit of losing balance on long shots. Irving, his legs not quite as strong as usual after he returned from knee surgery, had hit 32 percent on threes, the worst season of his career.
What the Pistons didn’t consider was Irving’s rigorous conditioning during the second half of the season had gotten him into the best shape of his career. Over the final five games of the regular season, his three-point shooting had jumped to 42 percent.
So Detroit backed off and dared the stars to shoot. With James, their defenders gave him space and waited back in position, hoping he’d either take a long shot or run over them for offensive fouls. The Cavs won Game 1, but by just five points. Irving took advantage of all the space the Pistons were giving him and drilled five three-pointers to finish with 31 points. Kevin Love made four three-pointers and had 28. James had 22 points and 11 rebounds.
But the Pistons were undeterred, especially rookie Stanley Johnson. He’d first played against James two summers before. While James was having meetings and considering his jump to Cleveland during his Nike camp in Las Vegas, he played in a pickup game with Johnson on the other side. About to start at the University of Arizona, Johnson was aggressive and rough with James and certainly unafraid, trash-talking the legend at his own camp.
Johnson played several minutes of effective defense on James in Game 1 and then made himself the center of attention afterward. “We think, we know, we can win the series,” he said. “Honestly, LeBron’s a physical guy. But if he wants to try and grab me and throw me to the floor, and you call a foul on me, I just don’t understand that. I’ve never had a person grab my jersey and try to throw me to the floor.”
Between Van Gundy and Johnson, the Pistons’ strategy was transparent. “I’m not having an individual matchup with Stan or an individual matchup with Stanley or any other Stan they can possess,” James said with a dismissive shrug. There had been a litany of antagonists in his playoff past, including DeShawn Stevenson of the Washington Wizards and Lance Stephenson of the Indiana Pacers, both journeyman guards who attempted unorthodox playoff tactics with James. Stephenson had famously tried blowing in James’s ear during playoff games.
A few minutes into Game 2, the Pistons were up nine and Johnson was part of the hot start. James then sent a message as the two passed on the floor, leaning into Johnson and purposely bumping him. A literal brushback.
“I’m definitely in his head, that’s for sure,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what you take from that. I don’t take anything from it but a cheap shot, a cheap-ass bump.”
Problem was, Johnson’s act didn’t work. James made seven of nine shots that night when Johnson was guarding him. He was even making three-pointers, shaking his head as the Pistons gave him space. He ended with 27 points. J. R. Smith made seven three-pointers, Irving added four more, and the Cavs ended up winning by 17.
The Pistons’ strategy wasn’t working, but Johnson doubled down. “He jabbers, he moves his mouth sometimes,” he said. “Their whole team does, kind of like their little cheerleaders on the bench. They’re always saying something like they’re actually in the game. They might as well just be in the stands, in my opinion.”
After the game, Van Gundy dismissed a coaching move by Lue that had proven quite effective. Lue jostled his lineup to make James essentially the point guard of the second unit, while making sure Love and Irving played together while James was resting. In the past, Lue and Blatt had always tried to keep James and Love together, with Irving being out there with the second unit. It was a small but impactful change that ended up being one of Lue’s finest strategy moves in the entire postseason. But like Johnson had run his mouth with James, Van Gundy mocked Lue.
“That’s really smart coaching. It is. That’s really smart coaching, to put LeBron on the floor,” Van Gundy said. “I give him a lot of credit for that adjustment, if that’s what you want to call it.”
Meanwhile, Van Gundy’s game plan of daring the Cavs to shoot threes was not working. They made 20 of them.
The Cavs ended up sweeping the series after taking Games 3 and 4 in Detroit. Love, James, and Irving all scored over 20 points in Game 3, in which the Pistons moved on to roughhousing James. During the second quarter, Pistons center Andre Drummond elbowed James in the neck. He was not disciplined by the league, part of a trend of the NBA allowing rough play as Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas avoided suspension after hitting Atlanta Hawks guard Dennis Schröder in the head in another series.
“Initially I was surprised,” said James, who believed for years that the NBA let opponents get away with hard fouls on him even as the opponents insisted it was he who got favorable whistles. “But then I thought who he did it to and I wasn’t surprised.”
Game 4 was decided by two points and the Pistons were furious over calls at the end. Irving had 31 points, finishing off a masterpiece of a series. He hit four three-pointers, shooting 47 percent for the four games. He led the Cavs in scoring at 27.5 points, just the second time in 34 career playoff series that James didn’t lead his team in scoring.
When it was over, Irving shouted “Bye-bye!” to courtside fans who’d been heckling him. James walked off the floor without shaking any Pistons players’ hands. Forgetting about their opponents, Cavs players began praising Lue for his game plans and in-game moves in the series, including a late out-of-bounds play in Game 3 that freed Irving for a clinching three-pointer with less than two seconds on the shot clock.
“We definitely recognize it and understand that it’s his first challenge, and he succeeded as well as any coach could,” James said. “He physically, mentally, and spiritually prepared us every single night.”
“For him, his first playoffs, he’s been great,” Tristan Thompson said. “We were like, ‘Man, you can just see it on the court.’ His poise. It’s his first time, and a lot of guys might be nervous or shaking or come to timeouts and not know what to say. But T-Lue, he was fearless.”
Thompson and James seemed genuine in their comments, but it also again felt like the statements were coded. Players often noticed Blatt’s discomfort in huddles and sometimes losing track of everything from who was in the game to the number of timeouts. As if the point hadn’t been hammered home enough, the Cavs players kept piling on with how much they liked playing for their new coach.
The drive to the airport and the loading of equipment in the cargo hold takes longer than the actual twenty-five-minute flight between Detroit and Cleveland. But in that span, something happened that would become a galvanizing moment. As he waited for the flight to leave, Richard Jefferson started flipping through a magazine that was in the seatback pocket. He came across an ad for a Tommy Bahama tropical shirt, and the model had a striking resemblance to Love, right down to the length of the beard.
Love had a mixed history when it came to bonding with teammates, even with his dry, likable sense of humor. He also had done some modeling for clothing lines, something teammates were quite aware of. Jefferson was the class clown and, united with Channing Frye, he was constantly on the lookout for ways to lighten the mood.
Jefferson roared with laughter at the ad and immediately tore it out and began passing it around the plane. With the euphoria of having just won a series, the team was in a good mood. Teammates took turns putting the photo in front of their faces and doing impressions of Love. They nicknamed the model “Lil’ Kev.”
Over the next several days, Jefferson started bringing the page to team functions. He arrived at Love’s house to pick him up for a team dinner several days later with Lil’ Kev in the front seat and Frye relegated to the back. It was a dose of camaraderie that was particularly useful in the playoffs, and it helped bring Love out of his shell, something team staffers marveled at as he truly embraced the ongoing prank.
The team had plenty of time for antics, as they had to wait eight days between playoff games. They got the Hawks in the second round in a rematch of the previous season’s conference finals. In that span something more interesting than Lil’ Kev happened. Warriors star Stephen Curry slipped in a pool of sweat in a playoff game in Houston, causing him to fall and sprain his knee, knocking him out for several weeks.
The Warriors won the series, but after what seemed like no adversity for two years, it was the first time they faced some uncertainty. The Cavs, who had faded into the background a little as the Warriors assembled a record 73-win season, took notice.
The Cavs didn’t seem to have much concern for the Hawks. They swept that series too, running their playoff win streak to eight. The hot three-point shooting from the Pistons series didn’t just carry over, it became a central part of the game plan as the usually stout Atlanta defense was unable to keep up with the Cavs’ perimeter players.
Lue once again made a strong coaching move, deploying lineups with Love and Frye playing together. Though that lineup was defensively suspect, the Hawks were unable to handle the array of long-range options.
The Cavs won Game 2 by 25 points and hit a playoff record 25 three-pointers, with the starting lineup combining for 18 of them. Smith made seven by himself. The box score looked like something from another league. The team made nine more three-point baskets than two-point baskets. It continued in Game 3 as they made 20 more threes, this time Frye hitting seven in one of the finest games of his career.
“We didn’t prepare for Love and Frye playing together,” Hawks center Al Horford said. “They took advantage.”
After seeing the Warriors dismantle the league with three-point shooting, the Cavs were now doing it better than their rivals. The addition of Frye made a difference, but Irving and James emerging from long slumps was just as important. As the bench celebrated each make, Lue stood stoically as his plans for an open, uptempo offense blossomed in front of him.
Game 4 was closer, the Cavs winning by a single point, with James making the game-winning basket and the game-winning defensive play in the final minute. It was Love’s turn that night: He nailed eight three-pointers with his teammates shouting about Lil’ Kev the whole way. By this point the tattered ad had been laminated for protection and was traveling with the team like a mascot.
The Hawks lamented a few calls, including a suspect goaltend on Paul Millsap, but after 16 more three-pointers it was clear the better team had moved on. The Cavs set a slate of new records for their shooting, the 77 three-pointers they hit in the four games being perhaps the most jaw-dropping.
After the game, there was a buffet set up outside the team locker room. Players heading to the bus stopped by the table to get a meal to take with them. As Love worked his way down the line, a call echoed down the concrete hall from a group of his teammates: “Don’t forget to make a plate for Lil’ Kev!”
“You can’t tell me that Lil’ Kev didn’t matter during the playoffs,” Jefferson said. “It’s so random. Think about something as random as Lil’ Kev. Thirty, forty years from now, someone will show a picture of that and there will be fans that will be like, ‘Oh, that’s Lil’ Kev.’ It was an excellent tool. It gave the fans something that they really enjoyed. I’ll stand by the fact that it put our team in a different light. It showed how much fun we were having. It showed that we had something unique. Something all our own.”
The team had to wait nine days for its next opponent, as it took the Toronto Raptors seven games to win their second-round series with the Miami Heat. In that time the Cavs practiced, but their passion was more on the growing Lil’ Kev phenomenon.
The Cavs marketing department had developed a slogan and a campaign for the playoffs weeks in advance: “All In.” This was a poker reference that owner Dan Gilbert, who also owned several casinos, including one in Cleveland, always liked. Shoving all the chips into the middle, as Gilbert did with his $160 million payroll, was a reasonable way to term it. It was on huge banners on the exterior of the arena, on signage around the interior, and printed on tens of thousands of T-shirts. But as far as the team was concerned, Lil’ Kev was the rallying cry for their postseason run.
In the days that passed, as the Cavs killed time, the meme grew. Players started wearing T-shirts with the face of the unsuspecting model from the Tommy Bahama ad. Masks were made. And players ordered up the gaudy shirt the ad was pitching and began wearing it.
There was something else, too, that the team was doing to build camaraderie, but it remained a secret. Late in the regular season, James Jones approached the Cavs owners with an idea for the playoffs. He wanted the team to have a symbol, a motivation, to use during the playoffs. After discussion, the idea was hatched for a puzzle of sixteen pieces, all in gold, one for each win that would be needed to gain the title. When fully assembled, the puzzle would form the Larry O’Brien Trophy. After each victory, a different Cavs player would set a golden piece in place, the trophy slowly being put together. Then it would be hidden away in a special case and would travel everywhere with the team during the postseason.
“We needed something to bring us together,” Jones said. “Every guy was a piece. We assembled this team. So we had to assemble the puzzle.”
The Raptors arrived in Cleveland fatigued and wounded. Their starting center, Jonas Valanciunas, was out with an injury and they only had one day to recover after eliminating the Heat. They had also been shaken by watching the film of the Cavs hitting all those three-pointers against Atlanta and entered with a quickly tossed-together game plan to try to slow them down.
It did work and it didn’t. The Cavs only made seven three-pointers in Game 1, but they made 28 baskets in the paint and crushed Toronto by 31 points. James and Irving combined to make 22 of 30 shots. Kyle Lowry, the Raptors’ stout point guard, a major concern for Cleveland, scored only eight points.
Game 2 was nearly as lopsided. The Cavs won by 19 points as James, Irving, and Love combined for 65 points. Smith, who arrived with a sports coat over his Lil’ Kev shirt, made three three-pointers. Lowry managed just 10 points and walked off the bench to the locker room before the end of the first half in frustration. It was a decision that got him roasted by the Toronto media, especially after he said he’d needed to leave the floor to “relax his mind.”
Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar attended the game and stopped by the Cavs locker room. He waited for James, and when the Cavs star arrived they embraced.
“How do you feel?” Abdul-Jabbar asked James after congratulating him on the win.
At that point the Cavs were 10–0 in the postseason, had won the first two games of the conference finals by a combined 50 points, and James had played just two games in the previous twelve days. He’d had a triple double that night in just 33 minutes. Meanwhile, Curry was just limping back from his knee injury as the Warriors had to fight their way through the second round and had fallen behind the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western finals.
“I feel great,” James said.
For the better part of two years, the Cavs had gotten used to a near-constant state of drama. Whether it was with each other, with their coach, or with injuries, there had rarely been any period of successful calm. Now, finally, there was. They were playing brilliantly, they were healthy, they were generally in a good place with their coach, and, thanks to Frye and Jefferson, they’d never been looser as a group.
They took the short flight to Toronto and posed for pictures together on the sunny tarmac as Canadian customs officials searched their baggage for contraband, a little home-country advantage as the visiting team got some extra scrutiny. At that point, even airport delays couldn’t spoil their mood.
They finally tasted a little adversity in Game 3 when the Raptors rallied back to win by 15 points. Irving and Love played miserably, combining to shoot 4-of-28. James was hit flush in the jaw by Thompson by accident. He assumed it was one of the Raptors who hit him, and when he tumbled to the court some thought he was exaggerating for effect.
“I’m not trying to sell a call. I got hit with an elbow,” James growled on the matter. “Sell a call for what? There was no call there to be sold. That’s it. I was going to say something else to you, but I’m going to leave it alone.”
Late in the game, Raptors backup center Bismack Biyombo leveled James with a flagrant foul, wrapping his arm around his neck on a drive and pulling him to the court. The crowd cheered Biyombo, who was making his presence felt as he played in place of Valanciunas, and James hopped up to confront him. In the final 15 seconds, end-of-bench Cavs player Dahntay Jones entered the game and hit Biyombo in the groin with a closed fist, dropping the Congolese big man to the ground.
Jones was suspended by the league for the next game. James, recognizing Jones had leveled the blow as a defense to him, offered to pay his fine. It was an interesting gesture that only added to the spice that was suddenly injected into the series. However, Jones’s salary for the entire year had been just $8,800 because he’d signed on the last day of the season. By the calculation used for suspension fines, he was only docked $80. James made $210,000 per game.
Raptors coach Dwane Casey, unsatisfied with the victory, attacked the referees because the Cavs had shot 27 more free throws over the first three games. “Bismack is getting fouled so much. He’s not getting the calls,” Casey said. “He’s getting hit. There’s one play where they almost have a brawl. He gets killed on that play… Some of those fouls are unbelievable.”
The league fined Casey $25,000. The Raptors then didn’t go to the foul line for the entire first half of Game 4. It didn’t hurt. Lowry finally arrived and scored 35 points as he repeatedly bested the Cavs’ perimeter defense. DeMar DeRozan, his backcourt mate, scored 32 and the Raptors won by six points. They’d evened the series at 2–2, and for the first time it looked like the Cavs had some weaknesses.
Love played poorly again, shooting 4-of-14. He was 5-of-23 in the two games in Toronto, and Lue benched him in the fourth quarter.
In the locker room, Love’s teammates noticed he was down. This, in reality, was where all the bonding would matter. For all the jokes and the T-shirts, that was where the relationships would truly be tested. Sure enough, the first two to be at his side were Frye and Jefferson. Lil’ Kev was not the topic.
“Channing basically told me no one’s immune to the NBA playoffs. These things happen. You have to keep fighting through it. In order for us to win, he said I need to be aggressive,” Love said. “I give him credit for staying on me and staying vocal.”
Jefferson kept the mood light. The Raptors’ playoff slogan was “We the North,” a communal reference to Toronto’s geographic location. As Jefferson left the building he made a proclamation: “We the South will be fine.”
Before Game 5, Lue also approached Love for a chat. Weeks earlier, when Lue held that emotional meeting in New York City, he’d appealed to Love’s ego in telling him he was a star and should start acting like it. This time he was more encouraging and he urged Love to stay involved and look to shoot his way out of the slump. The team had learned Love by then, and they knew he was prone to getting down on himself. They’d found a way to bring him out of his shell with the comedy of his alter ego.
It worked. Love exploded in the next game, making his first six shots. He scored 19 points in the first half and 25 for the game as the Cavs smashed Toronto by 38 points to take back the series lead. James, Irving, and Love together put up 71 points, one of the classic three-pronged attacks that the foundation of the team was built on.
“I’ve been a part of some really adverse situations, and I just didn’t believe that this was one of them,” James said. “From the very moment that we lost Game 4, I was just very calm about the whole situation.”
This was a kind way of saying that despite what had happened in Toronto, he wasn’t really worried about the Raptors. He proved to be correct when the Cavs ended the series two days later with a 26-point win back in Toronto. James was strong, scoring 33 points with 11 rebounds. Irving had 30 of his own and Love 20 as the Cavs’ might showed through.
It was the 25th consecutive series that James personally had been part of a road win, breaking an obscure and seemingly untouchable Michael Jordan record. He was off to the Finals for the sixth time in a row and the seventh time in his career. Yet he celebrated after the victory like few times he had in his career, embracing teammates and clutching them by the shoulders in gratification.
“I didn’t appreciate last year, myself personally, getting to the Finals,” James said. “Just so much was going on in my mind, knowing that Kevin was out for the rest of the season and knowing that Kyrie was dealing with injuries all the way from the first round. I just didn’t appreciate it. It’s definitely a different feeling. Having these guys right here at full strength, having our team at full strength and the way I feel personally, I appreciate this moment, to be able to be part of it and to be there once again.”
As he’d told Abdul-Jabbar the week before, he was feeling great. There was no champagne in the locker room; the team hadn’t wanted to go all out in the celebration. So the team showered each other with what they had: water. Lots and lots of water. As they bounced around, they picked up the buckets of ice supposed to be used to soak their knees and feet and instead started throwing them around the room. The visiting locker room at the Air Canada Centre has rubber floors—it’s primarily designed as a hockey dressing room—and the water turned the room into a slippery lake.
The Cavs were going back to the Finals, and if they could avoid any falls on the wet floor, they’d be going healthy this time.
Smith took possession of the trophy the team had won that night and he didn’t want to let it go. But he needed a shower, and so he kissed it and set it on top of his locker for safety.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, addressing the silver ball. “I’m going to get your golden sister next.”