Iguodala turns demotion into Finals MVP trophy
Shaun Livingston sauntered through the Champagnesoaked visitors’ locker room at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland shouting the same greeting to any Warriors teammate, coach or staffer who crossed his path: “How does that feel, champ?”
Then, Livingston ran into Andre Iguodala and realized that the phrase wouldn’t suffice. They simply embraced in silence. There was plenty of credit to be lobbed around after the Warriors won the franchise’s first title in 40 years on June 16, 2015. But the LivingstonIguodala celebration sequence following the 10597 Game 6 victory over the Cavaliers might have best put a bow on the remarkable season — which ranks No. 2 among The Chronicle’s top sports moments of the decade.
Owner Joe Lacob had hired Jerry West and Bob Myers to construct the team. Head coach Steve Kerr had brought a championship pedigree to oversee a roster of rising stars.
Stephen Curry had become a generational talent. Klay Thompson had jetted into stardom. Draymond Green had changed the narrative of his career from secondround pick to AllStar.
Amid it all, there was Iguodala — an Olympic gold medalist and possible future Hall of Famer, who quietly accepted a background role to meld a team that ended up disrupting the NBA for five seasons and might have changed the game forever.
“Andre sees through all of the bulls—, but when he agreed to come off the bench, it made everything possible,” Kerr said after a practice this month. “He would probably say that he could have predicted the ending, but no one could have written that script.”
Like any good plot, there were plenty of twists and turns. Iguodala didn’t start a game during the regular season, but ended up earning the NBA Finals MVP.
Kerr said he needed four or five meetings with Iguodala to convince him that it was best to come off the bench. Kerr explained that Harrison Barnes would be lifted by starting alongside Curry, Thompson, Green and Andrew Bogut.
The coach also shared his experiences of playing with Manu Ginobili, who was one of San Antonio’s best players but thrived during a career spent mainly running the second unit for championship squads. Plus, coming off the bench could lengthen Iguodala’s career by lessening the pounding on his knee tendinitis.
Once he got past the stigma of what he deemed being either “a starter or a scrub,” it became evident that Iguodala was going to become much more than a sixth man.
He molded a ragtag group of reserves into a unit that embodied the team’s motto: “Strength in Numbers.” He also stayed on the floor at times with Curry, Thompson, Barnes and Green during halfending bursts that crushed opponents’ hopes and led to a 67win regular season and the top playoff seed.
The lineup of Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Barnes and Green shocked opponents by switching defensive assignments on every pickandroll and storming out in transition for highlightreel dunks and 3point shooting flurries.
They didn’t have a player taller than 6foot8 on the floor, but the similarsized and ultraskilled players ran opponents out of arenas.
The Warriors simply called the halfclosing unit their small lineup, but Vincent Goodwill, then of the Detroit News, coined the phrase “Death Lineup.” It became synonymous with the new style of play — an onslaught of high screens, split cuts, movement, rhythm and, most of all, joy — and has been mimicked to a lesser avail by nearly every team in the league since then.
“It is flattering to see opponents trying to match the pace we play with,” Kerr said. “It’s changed the game.”
In his first year with the Warriors, Kerr used the small lineup for only 104 minutes during the regular season. Still, the group outscored opponents by 47 points per 100 possessions, and that domination sowed a seed that would be reaped when it was needed most.
Trailing 21 and on the road in the bestofseven NBA Finals, the Warriors were searching for answers. Nick U’Ren, then a special assistant to Kerr, was poring over video of how San Antonio upset LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the 2014 championship.
The answer was right there. Gregg Popovich spun the series by inserting 68 Boris Diaw at center and playing small ball. Green was an even better and more versatile defender than Diaw, so the strategy might just work against James now that he was back in Cleveland.
When the Warriors fell behind 21 in the Finals after a 9691 Game 3 loss — in which they trailed by 20 at one point — U’Ren went over the idea with assistant coaches Luke Walton and Chris DeMarco at Michael Symon’s famed Lola Bistro on Fourth Street in the shadow of the Cleveland arena.
Walton called Kerr to suggest sitting Bogut, a 7footer, and putting Iguodala in the starting lineup. The head coach agreed, saying later that he would have taken the blame if it didn’t work and praised U’Ren publicly only because the adjustment was such a success.
It was an eventual success, but only after a rocky start. Cleveland jumped to a 70 lead in Game 4, but Kerr saw that the lineup was creating the space that the Warriors’ shooters needed and allowing them to accelerate the tempo of a series that the Cavaliers had purposely ground to a slog.
He stuck with the unit, and the Warriors tied the series with a 10382 Game 4 victory. They won the next two, as well, as Cleveland frantically tried to counter the adjustment before the Warriors claimed the championship and created indelible memories.
“I’ve never been happier for one person in a team game than Andre in that year,” Kerr said. “His personal sacrifice made everyone buy in.”
There’s a huge photo of Iguodala and Curry ecstatically kissing either side of the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy that still hangs in the team’s old downtown Oakland practice facility.
Maybe one day they’ll add a shot of Iguodala clinging to his Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award as he hugged Livingston in knowing silence.
“I’ve happier never for been one person in a team game than Andre in that year. His personal sacrifice made everyone buy in.”
Steve Kerr, Warriors head coach