The Cleveland Cavaliers find themselves dead smack in the middle of history. Not by what they were able to carry out by winning their first ever NBA title, but LeBron James has them onboard for a ride.
Last season James made it to his sixth straight NBA Finals, two with the Cavaliers and the first four with the Miami Heat. Does he have enough in the tank to make it to seven? On paper they are locks. The Eastern Conference has improved but who has the firepower to take down a team that features, James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving in a seven-game series?
The Golden State Warriors couldn’t do it after being up 3-1, so why should the 2016-17 season be any different? Right now, James and the Cavs are on a different playing field than the rest of the NBA and this is coming from a non-James supporter. I have often labeled him a choker and a coward for running from the big play when it was needed, but what he has shown me the last two seasons has been nothing short of remarkable.
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I am still not a fan of his and never will be but I am not blind to the determination. James wanted badly to get that first ring and he did with a supergroup in Miami but his heart was still stuck in Cleveland. He had to come back, there was a promise he made a while ago to his hometown team that he wanted to keep. During his first season back he almost kept it, single-handily but the Warriors were too much for him to take on alone as Love and Irving were out for the Finals. But he tried and in the process won some respect from me and many others.
As he and the Cavs enter the new season how does he wrap his mind around the possibility that he has a chance to become one of the only players to ever reach the NBA Finals seven straight times? Not Kobe Bryant seven but LeBron seven. All in a row, right after one anther and with two different teams. You can say what you want to about the “Decision” and what it did to his legacy but look how he has repaired his legacy.
One year at a time, for six straight years.