Written by Rodger Sherman at SB Nation.com
LeBron James needed to make the impossible happen to win the NBA Finals.
He needed to beat the Golden State Warriors, the team that broke Michael Jordan’s supposedly unbreakable regular season wins record. They the best shooting team in a sport that depends a lot on shooting, and they’re elite defensively too. They beat teams without Stephen Curry and they trounced teams with him. Even when Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder backed them into a 3-1 hole, the Dubs found a bunch of silver bullets and perfectly launched them from about 27 feet into the hoop. They seemed unkillable, and LeBron had to kill them.
LeBron needed to beat them with a team that, quite frankly, was outmatched. The Warriors’ strength was their depth, from the unanimous MVP Steph Curry to his Splash Brother Klay Thompson to pivotal role players like Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa. Not to take away from Kyrie Irving, who is an undeniably great scorer and showed it in the latter half of this series, but the Cleveland Cavaliers’ strength was … LeBron.
LeBron needed to win three straight games in the NBA Finals after falling into a 3-1 deficit. Nobody had ever done this before.
LeBron needed to beat the Warriors in three straight games. They didn’t lose two games in a row all regular season.
LeBron needed to beat Golden State twice in Oracle Arena. They went 39-2 there in the regular season and lost just once to date in the playoffs.
LeBron needed to win a Game 7 of the NBA Finals on the road. The last time a team did this, it was the Washington Bullets on the road against the Seattle SuperSonics. There is not an NBA team with either of those names now.
LeBron needed to win an NBA Finals as a player on a sports team from Cleveland. CLEVELAND, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY. CLEVELAND. We had over 50 years of evidence that this city was a sports sinkhole. The cosmic force field surrounding Northeast Ohio made sports hopes disappear like planes in the Bermuda Triangle. LeBron was born near this place, he learned how cursed it was and was smart enough to leave. And then, like an idiot in a horror movie who runs back into the haunted house and bravely gets murdered, HE RETURNED. He chose to go back to this place where winning was impossible, and he won.
James found himself at the foot of this mountain of impossibilities. The various narratives about James’ career imply that this is when he would’ve quit. He’s been called not clutch, with his critics seizing on moments when he missed shots or passed in critical moments. He’s been called a frontrunner who leaves when things get bad. He’s been called a baby, including by players on the Warriors in the middle of this series.
But instead of running, he climbed that mountain.
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