CLEVELAND — LeBron James was given the woe-is-me card on a platter. All he had to do was sign it.
Down 3-0 to a team that is hurtling into history, that leveraged a wrinkle-in-time to add an emerging all-time great to a roster that was already in the conversation for best ever, all James had to do was agree that his own career was somehow star-crossed, a victim of timing, and people might have even bought it.
But still sore and tired and spent from having 46 near-perfect minutes go up in smoke, lit on fire by the second-coming of the Iceman, Kevin Durant, James shoved aside any shelter from the hurricane the hand-crafted Warriors will be raining down on the NBA for the foreseeable future.
James’ professional goal is to chase down Michael Jordan and be recognized as the greatest of all time. But even as Durant, Steph Curry and the Warriors have emerged as a potential roadblock to those ambitions, James isn’t going to cry about it.
He can’t really, given his own history.
Was it fair that the Warriors were able to sign Durant, adding him to a 73-win team, one that the Cavaliers were barely able to overcome in a historic Finals a year ago?
Hey man, welcome to sports, where they play for keeps.
"Is it fair? I don’t care," said James, barely 12 hours after his 39 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists earned were overcome by the Warriors superstar brigade, fronted by Durant, who signed with Golden State in the off-season, taking advantage of a momentary bump in cap space provided by a flood of new TV money into the NBA’s revenue-sharing system.
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In one swoop the Warriors appeared to have put together a team that will rule the league’s elite for the next three to five years. Barring something drastic, James’ championship window as he heads into his 15th season could very well be closed.
No sour grapes though. Not publicly.
"I think it’s great. It’s great for our league," said James, one of only three players since the 1960s era Celtics to make at least eight NBA Finals and one of four players to win at least three Finals MVPs. "Right now, look at our TV ratings, look at the money our league is pouring in. I mean, guys are loving the game, our fans love the game. I mean, who am I to say if it’s fair or not? No matter who I’m going against, if I’m going against four Hall of Famers, like I said before the series started with Draymond, Klay, Steph, and K.D., or if I’m going against two or whatever the case may be, I’m always excited to play the game. And I’m not one to judge and say if it’s fair or not if guys are adding players to their team.
"So that’s what you want to do. Is it fair that the New York Yankees in the ’90s were adding piece after piece after piece after piece? I mean, if you have the opportunity to do that — is it fair that the Cowboys added Deion Sanders?
"I mean, listen. It happens. It’s sports. You have an opportunity to sign one of the best players, and you can do it, go ahead and do it. Why not? If I become an owner, I’m going to try to sign everybody.”
And who is James to complain, really?
He arguably authored the super teams playbook when he left Cleveland for Miami after the 2010 season, not that circumstances were identical to Durant leaving OKC for Golden State. James (and Chris Bosh) joined incumbent Dwyane Wade with the Heat, but with their salaries accounting for the bulk of the cap space they had to finagle the rest of their roster for the first year at least.
James could take some heat for suggesting that Durant walked into a turn-key championship while James has had to undertake some heavy renovations, both in Miami and in two turns in Cleveland, but he’s not far wrong, if at all.
"I don’t think that our careers are the same as far as changing teams," said James. "Their team was already kind of put together, and you just implement a guy that’s ready to sacrifice, a great talent, a guy that’s willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win.
"But that team, they knew what they were about," James continued. "[Durant] just had to come in and just do what he had to do. And that’s what he’s been doing. For me, when I left here to go to Miami, we had to build something. We brought in eight or nine guys and we had to build something. And when I came back here, we built something again.
"But I can definitely appreciate the simple fact of him either reshaping his game or just sacrificing maybe some shots here, sacrificing having the ball in his hands all the time," said James. "But it works for their team. I mean, who wouldn’t want to sacrifice playing on a Golden State team or a San Antonio team or a Cleveland team when you know the ultimate result is you can actually compete for a championship?"
Officially James hasn’t conceded this championship to Durant and the Warriors, but he wasn’t wasting a ton of breath expounding on the possibilities of the Cavs becoming the first team in NBA history to comeback from being down 3-0. If he wasn’t resigned, he wasn’t making guarantees or plotting trips back to Oakland for Game 5 either.
James is averaging 32 points, 12.3 rebounds and 10.3 assists on 55.4 per cent shooting while connecting on 39 per cent of his threes and has nothing to show for it.
Who can blame him if he’s not entirely optimistic about sweeping the Warriors over the next four games?
"I feel like if we come in with the same energy, same effort, physicality, as we did in Game 3, we give ourselves a good chance to win [Game 4]," said James. "Now, does that result in a win? It’s to see. Because we played well in Game 3, and they were able to get that one as well… obviously we know it’s a big challenge, but we look forward to the matchup again."
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But given the near certainty of a Warriors championship, if not in four games, then in five or perhaps six, it’s hard not to look ahead and wonder what becomes of James with the Cavaliers and his own quest to add to his ring total and close the gap on Jordan.
While James looks as good as ever in his 14th season and Kyrie Irving is an able-if-flawed assistant, the Warriors have exposed a roster that went 12-1 against the Eastern Conference in the playoffs as not even close to being good enough to knock them off. Tristan Thompson is proving easily neutralized and J.R. Smith completely unreliable. Kyle Korver and Deron Williams have offered little-to-nothing and Kevin Love was a 1-of-9 no-show with the series in the balance in Game 3. There is no promising young talent waiting in the wings. The Cavs are built to win now, except they can’t win.
The off-season doesn’t hold much promise as the Cavs are capped out and James’ time is running short, though he’s under contract until 2018 in Cleveland.
He was asked Thursday how long he planned to stay around – it wasn’t clear if that meant in Cleveland or playing period. But at 32 James has a lot of basketball in him, but only so much runway when it comes to winning another title with the Cavs in what is clearly the Warriors’ era.
"I feel pretty good where my game is right now," said James. "But I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it, how long I want to stay around. I definitely want to compete. I want to compete for championships every year and so we’ll see what happens."
James knows what building a super team takes. His next renovation project could be his most interesting and challenging yet.
