Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
LeBron can define legacy on his terms
Game 7 win would be ultimate feat for ‘The Chosen One’
OAKLAND, Calif. — Ever since LeBron James first appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 17-yearold junior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in his home town of Akron, Ohio, he has been burdened by impossible expectations.
Few people are capable of coming anywhere close to living up to the title “The Chosen One,” the phrase that graced that magazine cover over a picture of James. Having that kind of pressure placed on a teenager is almost guaranteed to end in a failure to live up to it.
James, though, has done so in every way imaginable. With plenty of time left in his career, he is easily among the 10 greatest players of all time. He has won two championships and made it to seven NBA Finals — including the past six in a row, something no one had done since the legendary Boston Celtics teams of Red Auerbach and Bill Russell in the 1960s.
But for all of his accomplishments, all of the remarkable things he has done, Sunday’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals between his Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors presents James with the rarest of opportunities: the chance to define his legacy on his own terms.
“I came back (to the Cavaliers) for a reason,” James said Saturday, “and that is to bring a championship to the city of Cleveland, to Northeast Ohio and all of Ohio and all Cavaliers fans in the world. That’s been one of my goals.
“But I don’t add too much pressure to it. I go out and trust what I’ve been able to do, the work I’ve put into it, my teammates have put into it, and you go out there and see what happens.”
With one more win, James has the chance to take control of the rest of his career. The thing he has seemed destined to do ever since he was drafted by the Cavaliers 13 years ago — delivering the title Cleveland has waited more than 50 years to receive — would be complete. His legacy would be ironclad, his place in the sport’s history inarguable.
A victory would elevate James to another level in the sport’s history, moving him ever higher up the list of all-time greats, and it would give him the freedom to do what he’d like over the remainder of his career.
He could even choose to leave Cleveland again — like he did when he made his decision to join the Miami Heat as a free agent in 2010 — if he wanted to. Nothing more could be asked of him. The Prodigal Son would have returned and delivered in the ultimate way.
James is no longer a precocious teenager, but a 31-year-old who has been through hell and back between then and now. He has seen just about everything possible in his career, from Cleveland to Miami and back again — the failures to break through in his first stint with the Cavaliers and the fallout from leaving, to finally winning two championships with the Heat and returning again. All of those trials and tribulations have prepared James for this moment, for this series, in which, as he has so many times in his career, made his presence felt with devastating force.
Few players could put up the kind of back-to-back performances James delivered in Games 5 and 6 of this series to carry the Cavaliers to the brink of the championship that has forever eluded the franchise. Scoring 41 points in both games, throwing a seemingly endless series of brilliant passes while committing a combined three turnovers, preening over the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player, Stephen Curry, after blocking his shot into the seventh row — James has done it all.
And, because of his brilliance, James and the Cavaliers have a chance to rewrite history. A win means the city of Cleveland finally gets the championship it has waited a half-century to receive. It would mark the first time any team has recovered from a 3-1 deficit to win the NBA Finals. It would prevent the 73win Warriors from being considered the greatest team in NBA history.
But for James, it would mean something even more special, even more lasting: authoring the defining moment in what is already a legendary career.
“If we win and take care of business,” James said, “that’s something our city hasn’t had in a very long time.”
No one understands what a win Sunday would mean more than James does. Although he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees as a child, James knows all about the history of failure for Cleveland’s sports teams since the Browns won the city’s last championship in 1964.
The Fumble. The Drive. The Shot. For the people of Cleveland and the surrounding environs — including James’ beloved Akron — losing in the most excruciating of ways is expected.
But since James was drafted by the Cavaliers with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, it has always been expected he would finally be the one to change that. nals collapse.
“You just don’t see kind of that rhythm and that flow and just the energy that we play with the offensive end,” Curry said Saturday. “Obviously, we lost Game 5 and 6, not so much because we missed open shots, but also because of our defensive breakdowns. So it’s kind of you can look at and nitpick both sides. But at the end of the day, I don’t know why we haven’t been ourselves. … The only thing that matters is we have one game left to figure it out.”
The Warriors couldn’t do it in Game 5 at home last Monday when do-everything forward Draymond Green was sidelined by a suspension. A second chance in Cleveland on Thursday night also ended up in a loss with rim-protecting center Andrew Bogut out after suffering a season-ending knee injury the previous game and defensive stopper Andre Iguodala dealing with a balky back that limited his effectiveness. Iguodala is planning to play Game 7.
The frustration boiled over with Curry’s ejection for throwing his mouthpiece at a fan after fouling out and coach Steve Kerr’s $25,000 fine for criticizing officials. Even Curry’s wife, Ayesha, got into it with a Tweet accusing the NBA of rigging the Finals, prompting Curry to quip, “I might have to cut the WiFi off at my house.”
But it will be no joking matter if the Warriors become the first team to lose the NBA Finals after taking a 3-1 series lead, which is one historical mark the Warriors are looking to avoid in a season full of records led by the 73 wins.
“When you go from up 3-1 to 3-3, it’s disappointing,” Kerr said. “But you get a couple of days, you kind of take stock. You think about where we are. We like our positioning. We like our chances. And we’re at home with a chance to win the championship. You can’t ask for much more than that.”
But the Cavaliers come into the game with James. The player known as King James since he was a high-school megastar in Akron, Ohio, has almost single-handedly moved the Cavaliers to the brink of winning the first championship in success-starved Cleveland since the Browns won the NFL title in 1964.
James has almost single-handedly brought the Cavaliers to the verge of a title, using back-to-back 41-point games to stave off elimination and force this decisive final game. He has 24 rebounds, 18 assists, seven 3-pointers, six blocks and just three turnovers in the past two games and leads the series in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals.
“I start to learn from my mistakes and break into the film and seeing the ways that they’re defending me, the ways they’re defending our team, ways I can be a little more efficient,” James said. “I’ve gotten better as the series has gone on.”
After shooting 42 percent the first two games, James has shot 55 percent the past four as he has exploited the Warriors in transition and made the mid-range jumpers Golden State has ceded him.
“He’ll continue to be aggressive,” Warriors forward Harrison Barnes said. “He’s a great player, so he’s going to score. We need to take away the easy ones, a lot of them in transition, easy dunks, defensive breakdowns, not let him just get to the rim easy.”
Some of those easy shots have come because of the way the Warriors have shot from long range. After setting a record with 1,077 3-pointers in the regular season, Golden State has shot just 36 percent from long range in the two potential clinchers.
Barnes has missed 10 of 11 3-pointers those games a part of a 2-of-22 shooting performance, while and Curry and fellow Splash Brother Klay Thompson have been hot and cold from distance.
Curry knows that must change Sunday if the Warriors are going to repeat as champions.
“I need to play my best game of the year if not my career because of what the stakes are,” Curry said. “So that doesn’t mean scoring 50 points, though. That means controlling the tempo of the game. When I need to be aggressive, well, I need to be aggressive. But when I need to push the envelope, do it, but do it under control.”