ESPN.Com: NBA Playoffs 2016 [Print Without Images]

ESPN.com: NBA Playoffs 2016 [Print without images] Tuesday, June 21, 2016 Won for The Land: How LeBron bore the weight of a city By Ramona Shelburne ESPN.com IT WAS LATE, but apparently not too late. The Cleveland Cavaliers had lost the first two games of the NBA Finals by a combined 48 points. The Golden State Warriors were dominating every phase of the game. And LeBron James was looking for something, for anything, he could say to his teammates to help them believe a comeback was possible. LeBron had spent the weekend watching old Muhammad Ali fights, in awe at the champ's perseverance. His longtime friend and adviser, Nike executive Lynn Merritt, had suggested he study the way Ali carried himself in those epic 12- and 15-round fights. The way Ali took punches, knowing his opponent would eventually tire. The way he taunted opponents, flaunting his superior skill and talents, knowing he would get into their heads. His teammates needed something else, though. Something they could connect to that would make them believe this series was not over. And so LeBron gathered everyone in the Cavaliers locker room before Game 3 and played a portion of Steve Jobs' commencement address to Stanford University in 2005. The Apple founder, who died in 2011, had told a story about dropping out of college and how taking a calligraphy class ended up helping him design the elegant fonts and interface of the first Apple computers. "Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later," Jobs said in his address. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." “ To be able to have a dream, to be able to have a vision, to make it come into fruition, it's a beautiful thing. ”- LeBron James, on delivering a championship to Cleveland As he listened to Jobs' speech, 15-year veteran Richard Jefferson was struck by the events that had transpired to place him in these NBA Finals. The only reason he was in this locker room was because DeAndre Jordan had changed his mind about signing with the Dallas Mavericks over the summer. Jefferson had committed to the Mavs, thinking he'd be teaming up with Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki, Chandler Parsons and Wesley Matthews. He was undergoing a physical in Dallas when he started getting wind that Jordan was having second thoughts. "When it went sour, I called my agent and was like, 'I can't go there,'" Jefferson said. "And he was like, 'Richard, now is not the time to tell them that you can't go there either.' So we let it wait a couple weeks. There was a conversation about maybe offering me some more money. I was like, 'Look, if Cleveland goes to the Finals and I stay in Dallas for a little more money, I'll kill myself.'" MORE TRUEHOOP PRESENTS Read more stories from TrueHoop's feature series. TrueHoop Presents: LeBron, Wade friendship divides NBA 40 hidden facts about Westbrook Dwight Howard Q&A: Superman returns? Durant & Westbrook: Keeping it together The untold story of Steven Adams The re-emergence of Kevin Durant How Nike lost Curry to Under Armour Is Steph's rise causing LeBron's fall? The extraordinary measures of Giannis Curry and the best worst ankles in sports The last true days of Kobe Bryant As it turned out, Jefferson wasn't just along for the ride in these Finals. He played a key role, as the Cavs adjusted to the Warriors' smaller lineups. Afterward, he said he planned to retire. No better way to end his career than on top. The guy Jefferson was taking minutes from, Kevin Love, had been ruled out for Game 3 with a concussion. Love had started reading about Jobs on his own a few weeks earlier. One phrase stuck with him: "Stay hungry, stay foolish." Love started writing it on his shoes as a way to remind himself to loosen up -- to not judge his performances on the statistics he was recording (which weren't even close to his career numbers), but rather by the effort and energy he gave for tasks like rebounding and defense. "I had just ordered a shirt from a company in Akron with that Jobs quote," Love said. "And then [LeBron] played that [speech] like two days later. I came up to him and was like, 'It's so crazy you played that with all the chaos that was going on with our team, being hungry, but being down in the series." LeBron had been tasked with delivering a championship to his hometown since he was a teenager. No matter how many titles he won elsewhere, even if he'd won "not five, not six, not seven" rings with the Miami Heat, LeBron's legacy would not be complete until he won a title for Cleveland. But to do so, he had to learn to lead and be led. To embrace the burden of trying to break Cleveland's 52-year championship drought, not be overwhelmed by it. "I knew what I was capable of," LeBron said. "I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone. And when I came back, I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get to a place we've never been. That's what it was all about." THE CAVALIERS HAVE gotten close to a title before. Every team in Cleveland has. Each has its own nightmare story of heartbreak and misery that has served to perpetuate the curse. Remember, LeBron is a native. He can run through these moments off the top of his head. But this wasn't just about exorcising a city's curse and adding another ring to his jewelry box. It was about changing his town's mentality. Turning pessimism into belief. Negativity into hope. LeBron is often quoted saying that the fans in Cleveland deserved this title, at long last, because they kept supporting their teams no matter what. That's usually as far as he goes. It's too emotional for him to say more, so he stops before he says too much -- about his childhood and the struggles of growing up in a single-parent household with little money or resources to make changes in his life. He can't feel the weight of all that if he is to play at the highest level. Once the game ended and the title was secure, he fell to his knees, lay his head on the court and let it wash over him. "To be able to have a dream," LeBron said in an interview with ESPN's Rachel Nichols after Game 7, "to be able to have a vision, to make it come into fruition, it's a beautiful thing." Before this championship run, the best moment in Cavs history was an improbable Game 7 conference semifinals win in 1976 over the Washington Bullets that's affectionately known as "The Miracle of Richfield." That would be the Richfield Coliseum, a 20,000-seat arena halfway between Cleveland and LeBron's hometown of Akron. Thirteen years later, the building would become the site of Michael Jordan's infamous shot over Craig Ehlo that broke the hearts of Cavs fans. When the Cavs moved back to downtown Cleveland in 1994, the Richfield Coliseum was largely abandoned. All its memories, the miracle shot the Cavs made to win the series against the Bullets in '76, the heartbreaking shot Jordan made in '89, faded into the collective consciousness. Over the years, nature has reclaimed the site. Today, there is only a meadow at the intersection of Interstates 77 and 271, where the Palace on the Prairie used to be. ASK CLEVELAND OWNER Dan Gilbert about the city and he's clear on this point: One thing that frustrated him when he bought the Cavs from Gordon Gund in 2005 was the general pessimism about the team and the city. "It was like they were always waiting for the other shoe to drop," Gilbert says. Gilbert invested heavily in the team and the city. He was bold in greenlighting trades his front office recommended. The Cavaliers were perpetually in win-now mode, as a team with LeBron on its roster should be. This season was no different. The Cavaliers spent approximately $160 million in salaries and luxury taxes. And when general manager David Griffin told Gilbert he thought the team needed a coaching change, despite then-coach David Blatt's 31-11 start, Gilbert didn't flinch. "It was a ballsy move in the middle of the season when we're 31-11," Gilbert said. "It's just, for this team, at that point, it was David Griffin who made the call, and we backed it. That's the thing, if you're going to believe in your general manager, you either believe in him, or you don't. If you believe in him, then you gotta back it, because if you don't, he'll start changing his behavior. He'll start acting differently." It was a difficult move for Gilbert to make. Gilbert, who is Jewish, had been a supporter of Blatt and had taken pride in bringing the Israeli coach to the NBA and giving him a chance to succeed.

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