Memories of a Title
Reflections from Cleveland's 2016 Championship Run
by Joe Gabriele (@CavsJoeG)
6/21/21 | Cavs.com
Since we’re in the midst of both baseball and basketball season, this analogy hopefully still works.
Whenever I think back on the Cavaliers’ glorious 2016 Championship run – celebrating its fifth anniversary this week – I always think about the line that Burt Lancaster delivers as Moonlight Graham in the movie Field of Dreams.
Now a septuagenarian, Moonlight Graham reflects on his first (and, as it turns out, only) at-bat as a pro baseball player nearly a lifetime later. He says: “We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there'll be other days.’ I didn't realize that that was the only day.”
That quote – one of, like, 12 in the movie that inexplicably choke me up – doesn’t mean I think the Wine & Gold can’t get back to the Finals one day and win it. We should expect that they will – and they should expect it, too. Every team should. It’s why we’re all here.
But thinking back on that NBA Championship season in Cleveland five years ago – and even watching the current Playoff field, recently whittled down to its final four – the one thing that strikes me most about that year was exactly how many things had to go right to win the title.
You can rumble through the regular season like a juggernaut – drop a game here and there, battle through some injuries. But in the postseason, everything’s magnified. Every injury. Every possession. All of your regular season infallibilities now seem as delicate as a Fabergé egg.
J.R. Smith revived his career in Cleveland, and helped repay the Wine & Gold with an NBA title.
Joe G Photo
A lot of teams are finding that out right now. Another inch-and-a-half and it’s the Nets, and not the Bucks, in the Eastern Conference Finals. Both Conference’s top seeds, this year’s MVP, and the league’s reigning Champs are all watching at home with the rest of us.
In the 2015 Finals – with Kyrie Irving joining Kevin Love on the shelf with a season-ending injury after Game 1 – LeBron and the Cavs took Golden State to six games with Iman Shumpert and Delly as their next-best players. (As thrilling as winning the Championship was the following season, my personal favorite Finals moment came in Game 2 – when Cleveland prevailed in overtime and Numeral 23 spiked the ball with a rage every Clevelander could understand. It wasn’t celebratory. It was defiant.)
There’s no need to recap the major events that led to the 2016 Championship. Most of the attention, rightfully, centers around what’s become the ‘holy trinity’ of the title – “The Block,” “The Shot,” and “The Stop.” There’s no fancy rings without them. But it took a lot of little things to even reach that point.
And some big things, too. Including trading Anderson Varejao for Channing Frye – both of whom eventually became universally loved by Cavaliers fans.
But the smaller moves paid off, too.
Dahntay Jones seemed like a somewhat inconsequential signing late in that regular season, but his minutes just before half in Game 6 were invaluable. Mo Williams gave the Cavs good minutes in that same game. Richard Jefferson stepping in for a concussed Kevin Love in Games 3 and 4 were huge.
Shump’s four-point play in Game 7 – after Cleveland started the game 0-of-8 from deep – and, of course, JR Smith’s eight points to start the second half all set the stage for the superstars’ final flurry.
Game 7 was also the Cavaliers 103rd game of that season after finishing the regular season at 57-25, one game better than the Toronto Raptors for the East’s top seed. The Warriors famously went 73-9 that year, fueling the theory that were mentally and physically gassed after running out to a 3-1 series lead.
The relentless Cavaliers also dented the Dubs’ characteristic cool. Steph Curry melted down in Game 6, getting tossed after chucking his mouthpiece into the crowd. Klay Thompson “poked the Bear” at a presser in Oakland after Draymond Green literally poked him in Game 4 – drawing a one-game suspension for Game 5.
Whichever of the final four teams eventually wins the 2021 NBA title, they’ll be running on fumes – not just the players, but everyone in the organization – when they eventually do so.
For all those involved, it’ll also be the sweetest moment of their professional lives.
I’ll never forget celebrating the title in the spacious Oracle Arena locker room. Plastic covered the floor, and we were literally sloshing in champagne, like it’d been raining bubbly for 52 years. The best part was being able to share the moment with my best buds in the organization – play-by-play man, John Michael, Spanish play-by-play man, Rafa Hernandez-Brito and high-ranking legal muckety-muck, Jason Hillman.
But I also cherish the nervous moments leading up to that night. Calling my dad that morning to tell him we’re bringing home a title for Father’s Day. Telling my mother that, just once, I was going to break her rule – (to pray for a sports outcome) – and then went to St. Patrick’s Church to do so. It was their monthly Tagalog mass, which I took as some sort of sign although I’m sure it wasn’t.
Later that night, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA Championship and later, later that night we flew to Las Vegas to celebrate. And you know what they say about what happens there.
After the Cavs won the Whole Enchilada, the Indians proceeded to go on a 14-game win streak and eventually face the Chicago Cubs in the World Series, falling after a freak rainstorm in Game 7 in Cleveland. The next fall, the Browns proceeded to go 0-16.
The Wine & Gold reached the Finals in the following two seasons, but came up empty to the Warriors – who’d added Kevin Durant – in both 2017 and 2018.
So what’s the point of all this?
The point is to appreciate all of it. Not just the winning, but the way up.
During those Finals runs, the Cavaliers almost single-handedly led to the demolition of the Hawks as they were then-constructed – which led to the young Hawks as they’re currently constructed, on the way up, back in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Wine & Gold – with their promising young core – hope to be there, in the thick of things next year. It won’t be easy, but that’s what’ll make it fun.
The 2016 Championship team showed the way and made history. It’s a long road to the top, the little things are big and there’s lumps to be taken along the way. But it’s all worth it when you get there. And there’s champagne!
The key is to recognize those significant moments along the way – just like Moonlight Graham said.