The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Ethan Strauss on How LeBron BROKE Steph Curry & the 73-Win Warriors in 2016 | 06.25

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by Ethan Strauss to look back at the 2016 NBA Finals and how LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and the Cleveland Cavaliers came back to beat Steph Curry and the 73-win Golden State Warriors. On this episode of The Right Time, Bomani and Ethan break down what made LeBron’s performance so overwhelming, why Game 7 still feels like one of the biggest legacy games in NBA history, and how the 2016 Finals changed the way people looked at Steph Curry, the Warriors dynasty and the Cavs’ championship in Cleveland. They discuss LeBron vs. Steph, Kyrie’s role in the comeback, Draymond Green, the Warriors’ collapse, Game 7’s defining plays, and why the 2016 NBA Finals still stands as one of the most important series of the modern era. Topics include: LeBron James’ control of the 2016 NBA Finals Steph Curry’s legacy after the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead Kyrie Irving’s impact on the Cavs’ championship run The pressure on the 73-win Warriors The biggest moments from Cavs vs. Warriors Game 7 Why Cleveland’s title hit different Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wave. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a Wave Original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.

It is Time Machine Tuesday. We are looking back at the 2016 NBA Finals, the Cavs and the Warriors, joining us. Check him out at House of, Strauss, I think we in a certain way kind of exist as the friend that each of our friends have a lot of questions about either Strauss. How are things? I don't know if that's true of you, Beaumont.

That might be true of me. I don't get asked about you. People do not complain about you to me. So you know. Not complaining. They ask. Ah. Well, you know what.

I'm not the first person to tell you this. I look. I'm shot. I hope I can hold it together. I hope I can hold it together the rest of this podcast and focus on the Warriors and Caps. But I'll make it through. I'll muddle.

Hey, man. So Even has got his own thing going on sub sec. It's really interesting. I think you honestly should check it out. He's one of the few people who I subscribe to your newsletter and actually read it as soon as it comes through. Right? Some people I'm doing favors, right?

I mean, I check this out and periodically nag you with how much I think you're wrong but not because I don't think that you gave us some consideration, which has got a, you know, compliment. How praise? I appreciate that. I would say that there are those who write a lot, but I think that's maybe the, what is it, market inefficiency, it's something where I just try to get something out every weekday in the morning, about a thousand words.

And just by doing that, that seems to be differentiating, Beaumani. There's just not as much writing versus back in 2016 a short time ago where there are articles everywhere. Yes, and Ethan was writing them for ESPN about the Warriors. And as I recall, you started covering them like right when it got cracking, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I got very lucky. I said that getting hired, it almost felt like when you're hungry and you open up the pantry and you just want something and there's some stale almonds and you shrug. That's what I thought I was for ESPN because I was just Johnny on the spot. I just had to be. I just had to be a lot. I just have to be a lot. I just happened to be showing up, happened to be covering this team when they were absolutely terrible

when Epe Udo was the lottery pick of focus. I'm not trying to insult him. I thought he was a great defensive player before he got injured and a good guy. And my God, it just all of a sudden became this huge event. And Steph Curry took off as a superstar. I really think his moment was that Madison Square Garden game and that February, where it just went up a whole other level. And they needed somebody.

And I got hired as a full-time staff writer. I'd been doing more for ESPN before it. But I got hired as a full-time staff writer the exact day that Mark Jackson got fired. So that was my experience. Yeah. And we talked a bit with Logan Murdoch about kind of the building of the team

and going through that actual season where they went 73 and 9 and it was just kind of comedy. But the postseason, I think for the Warriors, turned out to be interesting. And a part that Warriors fans will always remember and that LeBron fans don't necessarily like to talk about, which is this thing got rolling, but Steph gets hurt early in the playoffs.

And the Warriors were still really, really good without him. Like certainly not a complete team, probably not one that wins a championship. But they were rolling so tough that it wasn't against Portland, they basically just walked through without him. Yeah, and Draymond was amazing. I think I've become almost a defensive. defender of Dremont's legacy in a weird way, not because I think that he's so wonderful or I owe him

any sort of favor. I'm sure he would say some critical things about me and my coverage if we were looking back at it. But I was there. And when you were there and you were around the team, you have a different context sometimes than what the conversation becomes. So when I see people saying, oh, if he was in a different situation, he wouldn't have been good. And he's so lucky that he just found the perfect situation. I look at, I look at Draymond. I say he helped create the situation. There wasn't really a situation before he arrived. Nothing was promised to him. And if you look at some of his games in that Blazers series, he was incredible and he was offensively dynamic as well. And people will push back at it. But I think that that era of warriors, pre Kevin Durant, he was the

second best player on the team. And that is not a controversial opinion if you were around that situation. I mean, any of those, and I guess it's a little bit different now that more teams play this style of basketball, but any team that played something that you could call small ball, and I've always contended that the Warriors were actually not small. They played a brand of basketball that involved a level of shooting that you would associate with the team being small, but at every position, even Steph is not small for his position. Clay Thompson was not small. The closest thing you had to it was Draymond, but the way that, it has to work for a team like that is you've got to have a guy that can be really flexible

in terms of who it is that he can guard because when the minutes really matter, you're not putting Bogot or Fester Zizeli on the floor necessarily. You needed to be in a position where if you put one of those guys down, that Draymond, if somebody decided to go big on you, Draymond can be the guy to guard them. Sean Marion was that guy for the seven seconds or less spurs, for example. Dennis Rodman, when playing with the second three Pete Bulls, when they're take, you know, Luke Longley and Beef and Bill Whittington, how much you want them on the floor? Rodman is the guy that can slide up and down. So, like, there's a perfect situation part of it, but also,

ain't that many people that could have done what Draymond did in what we call it a perfect situation. No, and I think because it's a funny thing where people get drafted, what their reputation is, and I talk about draftism, that's huge in our discourse. You would think that if you exceeded people's expectations, they would like you better. but sometimes what happens in sports is that it makes them almost resentful of you or suspicious of you. And they think that you must have had good fortune because they're anchored to the idea of what you were previously. So after Draman becomes this thing, I remember everybody's trying to find the next version of him as though it's just so easy.

You can just find that type. And Denzel Valentine, that's this guy who fits this mold. No, he was just an original. He's great at basketball. And it's not just guarding one through five, which at the time it happened was revolutionary in the way that he did it, somebody who could switch on to Chris Paul and also guard the biggest centers in the league. He's also grabbing that rebound and pushing the fast break as well.

So there just weren't many, if any, guys who did that. And a lot of the nerdy plus minus statistics, which are obviously helped by the other talent the Warriors have, but especially Drayman was absolutely dominant. And maybe it's a bittersweet memory for him or for fans of the team. In a way, this playoff run is his absolute peak, even if it didn't result in a Warriors championship and even if he infamously is associated with why they lost. Yeah, one of my favorite sporting phenomena is, wow, here's the thing we've never seen before. Now we're going to get another one.

What? That's like, yeah, you know what? Who's the next Patrick Mahomes? hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, we're only having this conversation because they ain't going to be another one. Like, that's not, that's not really how it works. But that, I think the warriors trucked through those first two rounds, again, even in the points without Steph, that when the Oklahoma City series comes up, like I think playing of the conference finals against Oklahoma City, which had, I think it's easy for us to lose sight of, they never made it back to the NBA finals after 2012. They also were really snake-bitten in some ways. He had the one postseason where in 2013 where Patrick Beverly goes into Russell Westbrook's knee.

And that happens. You have 2015. Kevin Durant winds up with the broken foot. 2016, and we don't really, we don't fully know this at the time, but it is in the air all year long that Kevin Durant is probably going to wind up signing with the Warriors. That's on the front end. But this is the last chance for this collection of guys who finally everybody's healthy enough, right? they hadn't gone through a postseason where for them it felt like they had all their guys.

Everybody was healthy enough in this series and they, but they're playing against a team that won 73 games. They just also happened to have Kevin Durant and a willingness to play two big guys at the same time and try to, a lot of teams tried to go small and do what the Warriors did. That didn't work. They tried to go the other way. We're going to put big guys out here and it worked for four games. I mean, there was a physical president. to it. What was cool back then versus what it's like for a lot of media members now, I got to sit court side at those Oklahoma City games and it almost seemed unimaginable at a point that the Warriors could turn that series around. They were just getting physically swallowed up

by the thunder. And it felt as though it was just completely over. And when it ultimately, it did go seven games and the last game was kind of close, but it ultimately really culminated in that game six. That game six is one of the most memorable games of my life. And I don't just remember the stuff that happened in it, but also what it felt like afterwards, where even if you would have interviewed everybody in that arena and said, hey, is Kevin Durant coming back?

They would have said yes. At the same time, everybody acted like something had died. and the emotions were just out of control in that arena after the Warriors came back late and won that game. I remember Sam Amick now at the athletic was sitting next to me and he got into some screaming match with some angry thunder fans who were just unruly and out of control. I looked and I saw the thunder dancers.

They were all weeping in the aftermath of the game. And there was just a real sense that something had ended, even if there was no official, word and even if everybody wasn't committed to the idea that this was the last chance for that Thunder team. I feel like one of the interesting things about the Thunder is, and maybe it's because they had their seasons affected by injury in the way that they did, but they never felt battle tested, even though they'd been to every round that there had been in the postseason, that the core of their team had been together for eight years, right? Was West Brasbrook had to

Durant had been together for eight years while they were playing. They had this raucous arena that feels like a college field house, or at least that's the way that it seems on television. Like it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of frills. Like, watch it on television. Like it looks like it's hot in there, right? It's just everybody standing up. Everybody's screaming.

All of this is going on. And they get up 3-1. Also, let us not forget with Billy Donovan, who they just plucked from Florida, right? We don't have any idea. This is not a league that has a great track record of coach. is coming up from college and being able to figure out how to make it work. Right. All of all of this has gone on. And like you said, they looked dominant in those games.

Game five, as I recall, Golden State kind of put the screws to them at Oracle. But that was kind of what you would expect. Like that wasn't unreasonable. Like the defending champions are not going to get sent out of here at home under those circumstances, no chance. And then they had that Oklahoma City that is, they had that lead late. It's not as though, like, they just run out their loss. They had that lead late and they gave it away in part because Russell Westbrook, one of my favorite players of all time, and you just have to live with the bad that comes if you're going to have Russell Westbrook on the team.

And the bill came due at the absolute wrong time. Because they were up with like two minutes left in that game, right? They were. They were up seven. I can't remember what exact juncture, but they were up seven. And a lot of it was the defense. It's easy to remember Clay Thompson going absolutely crazy in that game. But the defense was huge at the end.

And Durant looked gassed. You had Andre Godala doing those strips he does. He's got such a savvy and awareness of what's going to get called and when it's going to get called and when you can be aggressive and he goes for it. And they just were not functional towards the very end of that game. And what a just mesmerizing scene. I remember Steph when he hit the dagger held up the seven in that building. Just truly one of the great series I've covered and one of the most memorable. And then it just set the stage for the finals, which was at least equal in measure.

Though I don't know. Maybe it's through Warriors colored glasses that the Western Conference Finals is more epic in my mind. Because most people would say it's that NBA Finals. It's what followed. That's the truly memorable one with all the stakes. but we'll get into it. We'll get into it. That one had a lot of bad games, I would say,

or a lot of lopsided games. Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that because there's a phenomenon that we just had it, I think, with Oklahoma City and San Antonio, where the series is better than the sum of the games, like as a narrative arc that happens. But I want to get to, you just brought up Clay Thompson, and that, like, Game 6 Clay, right?

That's a thing. I, as much as we say that Draymond is the guy that wound up in the perfect situation, I think there's just a strong argument that Clay Thompson's a guy that wound up in as perfect, if not more of a perfect situation. But the thing I always have to say about him that's important because, you know, I'm not a Scotty Pippin guy. There are two guys in his world. People think Scottie Pippin's overrated, people who think Scottie Pippin's underrated.

But the thing about Scottie Pippen that he doesn't have is a Game Six Clay type of situation. Like there have been times where the Warriors needed Clay Thompson to be a lot of. a guy to score 40 points and he was capable of locking in and focusing and being the guy that could get you 40 points, even as a guy that could not really do much to generate his own offense. Like for whatever reason, I don't think of him the way I think about Reggie Miller, who I did think about as a guy who created his own offense through the screens and running around. I didn't feel that same way about Clay. And I could be wrong that a lot of this is predicated by the fact that somehow you're not even the best shooter on this team, which made it a whole lot

better for you to be maybe one of the five best shooters we've ever seen. Well, Clay had some great branding with the whole Splash Brothers thing that he got to. There's an aspect of coattails. Chris Milledon never got whatever would attach him slogan-wise to Janus and to Kumpo. Great point. So that was nice, but Clay also had this element where sometimes he could just touch the face of God.

You could channel something beyond. And I'll just say it. Durant came to resent the way that Clay was covered when Katie was on the Warriors because it's true. He wasn't wrong about his gripe that in the media and among fans, if Clay plays poorly, yeah, we're not going to talk about it.

If he goes 4.15, I don't know what did Steph do, but if Clay plays great, oh, then we're talking about it. But some of that is because when he played great, it was just far more memorable. When he's scoring 37 points in a quarter, for instance, he could tap into that.

And I don't know what that is. I don't know if that's just, luck or what. But Clay, for a guy who didn't necessarily hunt his own offense or act as a 1A offensive option, had a capacity to reach higher heights than a lot of guys who did have those shots and did have those opportunities. And I still don't know why, but he had it. You know, Clay did figure out the amazing power if not saying that much. Like if you're going to be a number two type of dude, he ingratiated himself by seeming, I think just to be truly sincere and being a different kind of guy.

Yeah. I just, you know. I remember in the series earlier. Yeah, I can't remember which Memphis series actually that this was. It might have been the 2015 Memphis series, but I remember as I shoot around and he was walking up the arena steps and out of the building, which was strange because the players go to the bus, which is at the event level and the loading dock.

So I'm just watching Clay just walk up the arena steps all the way up to the mid point of it. And Luke Walton said, man, every step of the way. And he said this because Clay would always get the same breakfast whenever he was there. Every step of the way that guy is only thinking one thing. Omlet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet. Because that that's what his focus was. He didn't, there was a little bit of Manny Ramirez to Clay where he wasn't thinking a whole, lot about a whole lot else. And that served him well with what he was doing. You know,

you mentioned Luke Walton also brings up the interesting thing about that team. Obviously, was that Kerr did not coach for the first half of the year. And Kerr also, we can't forget in this, this is a second year head coach. Like, Steve Kerr is a much better head coach now than he was then. Like, he had figured out something that was paradigm shifting. But game to game in the postseason, there were always, there were still questions to be had. And of course, they had the thing where Draymond Green had run of the place and then Kurt came back and he no longer had run of this. I am not a robot.

Oh my God. I didn't just say that. He said a whole lot else in that infamous. That was back in Oklahoma City too. That was the regular season game. Some say the greatest regular season game ever. That was the on a personal note when things fractured between myself and went Draymond Green

when I had to talk about whatever happened with him and Steve Kerr. There was a whole lot going on there. and I really do miss, I miss what Steve was, and I know he probably would agree, I miss what he was before the botched spinal cord surgery, which released a horrible sentence. Oh,

well, it's also people don't even understand, people don't even understand what the problem was with it, because they think it's his back. I would hear that all the time. People would say, oh,

is Steve dealing with his back all right? That wasn't the issue. The issue is that the cerebral spinal fluid leaked out of there, and he just had, constant headaches and was in perpetual pain for months and months and months. And I don't know what the update is. I'd assume the body eventually heals itself, but he went from a very young Pete Carroll type

of guy. And he did a podcast of Pete and he modeled a lot of what he did from watching Seahawks training camp, just high energy, just completely engaged to the maximum to somebody who was just racked with pain and trying to coach the. most famous team in the world through the fog of that. It was tragic. And I think it's great that eventually things got steady for him, but they were trying to manage all that back then. They had this crazy wind streak with Luke Walton at the helm. To what you said, Luke Walton's approach was let Draymond be Draymond and Draymond discovered. You know, I kind of like, kind of like being Draymond.

I kind of like this. You had this component that I think was just really hard to manage of a guy who never envisioned this level of stardom for himself was just trying to make the league as a second round draft pick and all of a sudden, without any sort of restrictions from the head coach, he's now an all-star. I think he might have been seventh and MVP voting that season and he's seeing a whole new possibilities for himself. And then Steve comes back and says,

don't shoot that shot. And that was explosive at that particular time. Yeah, like, I finally get to do this. And by the way, I've been doing it. Like these shots are falling. Apparently you were the problem. That was the sense. Right.

I don't know. You see like you go away. I turn it into this. Yeah. Which I mean, he said something to that effect recently in a podcast that people were killing him, but you could see it from his perspective.

And I thought he was a little more nuanced than what he was saying about it than what gets aggregated. But you could understand why he felt the way he felt that he was being. thwarted by the coach who wasn't necessarily as invested or as energized as he had been previously. And you could see some rumblings of that in the 2015 championship rate. Because Draymond was, he was on the podium and he did that thing that sometimes happens at a wedding

where somebody gets a little too drunk and a little too honest. And they're trying to do the thing of razzing somebody when they're up on stage, but it's not really connecting like ha ha funny. And they got to kind of pull him off stage. And he was talking about how much he hates Steve and how much Steve hates him. And it was a little uncomfortable. So you could already see,

you could already see where this was headed just a long time out, despite all the success that they were due to have. You know, the Warriors, most uncomfortable championship speeches by dynasty that there's ever been. It's topped by Joe Laker. shout out to that team that got all these guys on these great.

Yeah. Cheap-ass contracts. He didn't say cheap-ass, but that's what everybody heard. Oh, yes, yes. Bob, Bob Myers getting a lot of credit up there, but the specificity of the credit that Joe Lacob gave him quite amusing. Yes. But we got all of this.

They wound up winning that games. Those people were crying at Oklahoma City because they were right after game six. it was over, Warriors, beat them in game seven. And now we get to the NBA finals, another face off with LeBron James. The biggest stage in world soccer is here and every goal changes everything. And now, Fanduil is giving you a reason

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dot org slash chat, Connecticut. Visit MD gambling help.org, Maryland. Visit gambling helpline MA.m.org. Call 800-327-50-50, Massachusetts. Call 1-877-8-8-Hope-N-Y. Text, Hope N. New York. Call 1877-770-8867, Louisiana. All right, we are back with Ethan Strauss. Check out House of Strauss. The NBA finals in 2016, I think because the Warriors were so good, none of us had really properly considered how good the Cavs might be. Like I know Brian Wenthorst said many times that the 2016 Cavs, they might have been the second best team of all time.

Like if the Warriors had won that, that the 2016 Cavs themselves might have been the second best team. I don't recall myself going into that thinking that the Cavs had that much of a chance to win it. But as we saw by the end of it, it was worth noting. The Warriors did have one shortcoming, which was another guy that you could trust to go get a bucket. That was the one thing that they did not have where the calves had two of those. And they were both like top of their powers at that point.

Yeah. And I don't think Clay, who is effective against certain players defensively, had as much for Kyrie Irving. I just don't think that there was something about Kyrie, his unique. genius. It's just whatever made Clay good at what he did, I think it was strength and also size. It wasn't necessarily right for Kyrie. But to what Windhor said, and I love Brian, and I'm not even saying that he's wrong. I haven't really considered the suggestion, though I do, I would say that I would think that I would disagree is what I would say. I don't think anybody

was feeling that way after game two of this series. After game two is this series, when the Warriors were up, 2-0, they had just won 110 to 77. 77. I don't know anybody. And I was certainly among the voices you just thought this was done. This was over. And this was just an utter mismatch when it came to the talent. So I don't know if I properly, I didn't properly respect those calves.

I didn't. I just seen so much from the Warriors. I think we were still in an era where we assume. that the regular season was a proxy for who you were as a playoff team. And so I can't remember how many games the Cavs won that season. Let me see. 57. That's respectable.

That's respectable. And man, I forgot they had the coaching change midseason. They did. So that's respectable. But the Warriors had 73 games. And this sounds stupid. But there is this reflex to go, 73 wins, 57 wins, up to O. What are we doing here?

But obviously with LeBron, by that point, there's an element of him, pacing himself and understanding how long a series is. And the Warriors also had this tendency that Zach Lowe identified back then. They would just give you a game sometimes. They just wouldn't bring the full energy on occasion. They wouldn't lose a close one. They would, as they did in the following game, lose 120 to 90 after being fully in control of that series.

So, yeah, I don't think that I gave the Cavs enough respect. I can't speak for the Warriors as to whether they didn't, give the calves enough respect. But these memories of that series, I think, a lot of it for me is clouded by the awareness of how messed up Steph's knee actually was, watching them work on that knee and feeling like it was difficult to really communicate that

because at that point, Bumani, so many people resented the cocky warriors and Dremont specifically, especially after he kicked Stephen Adams in the nuts in that Western Conference Finals, they did not want to give any sort of excuse to that team at all when they faltered and looked vulnerable against those cats. Well, one thing I want to say about the regular season part is they won 73 games. Like, seven, I mean, yeah, we're going to think you're better than everybody when you win 73 games.

And you just came back from a serious test. Now, one can make the argument that the fact that the Thunder pushed you to seven could be an indicator that, hey, maybe you guys aren't as good as it seems, regardless of what the reasons were, but they won 73 games. But you touched on something that I think has always been the case with these warriors. And to me,

is much different than any champion that we've ever seen like this, which is a tendency to have lapses of attention to detail. Sometimes in small, like small in terms of time, sometimes in big stretches, but they would have this crazy ability

to be down like 15, at the half and then come back and they're up 15 at the end of the quarter. Like they could decide to, it's not just that they could lock in, is that once they locked in, they could erase whatever mistake it was very, very quickly. And then it all goes and turns over. But you're right. They could just give away a game, 30 point loss in game three, and then come back and win by 11 in game four.

Yeah, the story of that playoffs, for their perspective, was a team that had this extra gear, slowly losing the capacity to tap into it. And yet retaining the habits and memory of we have that gear. But Steph gets hurt. They had injuries in that series. Bogot got hurt. I got hurt.

You know, it was interesting. I want to skip ahead completely and maybe this is wrong. But the way you're bringing up makes me want to bring it up. I think a lot of what happened when we get to talk about the suspension of Draymond. It was almost like if you would run a marathon, and right when you're about to cross the finish line, they go, hey, there's actually another mile.

There's actually another mile here. Could you run that other mile? I mean, not everybody has it in them to, I should say not everybody has it in them, but I would say recently Agassi, he was talking about, he was talking about sinner and how he hit the wall at the French Open. And Agassi was explaining, look, he's got to do something because I had a body clock that was around four hours.

And maybe it was hot conditions. It goes down to 345. Maybe it's cool conditions. It goes up to 415. But that's the body clock. The Warriors in this series had a body clock of five games. That's what they had left. They had five games.

And the thing that pushed them into having to play more games, I think that was just beyond, they had budgeted, given what they had. And that's a lot of the story. That doesn't include the great things the Cavs did, but the story of the warrior's failure was that story. Yeah, and I would point out, because Draymond got game four, who do he kick in a nuts in game for?

LeBron. It was LeBron. That's right. It was LeBron he kicked in a nuts in game four. They got their asses kicked in game five. Like, I don't know if they were simply a Draymond away. They lost that game by 15 points. like the idea that

Draybond getting suspended cost them the finals. You're right. It certainly made it a bit more difficult. Like maybe it didn't add another mile, but it definitely made that last mile a bit more uphill than they had planned on it being. Like the idea that the Cavs could win that, I don't think was that shocking.

Because I feel like by now, LeBron is, LeBron has shaken off all the 2011 and we see him as a dude that can bring it. And we give him all the credit in the world for them winning two games the year before, just by going up to one. Like, he's a guy that you could expect to rise up in a moment. And God damn, the last three games in that series, LeBron just decided,

I'm going to another life. How about you? Like, this is where I'm going. And that gets it to game six. They got them back at home. And that's, to me, Steph getting ejected in game six, even though the game was already over. But the fact that he had that reaction over that call at the end,

which was hilarious because he threw it. his mouthpiece. We had never really seen him be that bad before. Like there was a, there was an element of your little brother is getting mad here and everybody thinks is cute and adorable. But in a way, Ed looked to me like, oh, we've got a crack here. Because they're still coming back to have game seven at home. But right there was like, there's a feeling like, oh, wait a minute, they've wobbled. And Ayesha had some infamous tweet about the rest. That's right. That's right. She said the rest for fixing the gate. Yeah, I remember that. And my main memory of that game wasn't so much the

refs. It was just LeBron controlling it at the end and people have their arguments about how clutch he is, how not clutch he is. There are ways to be clutch that aren't shooting. And we can forget about that sometimes. And he was just controlling those guys like pieces on a chessboard, moving Tristan Thompson to do lobs at the right moments and really just had the defense figured out in that game. But yeah, there was a crack. Let me stop you right there. Because I wanted to touch on this before I forget. And this is from watching it up close. What was the, like to watch the mastery of a 2016 LeBron James run an offense,

like, what was that like from your chair? It was trying to, I'm trying to recall it, because it is the most vivid aspect of that game to me, is that you would, he had that slow manipulation of the defense that when he's on, it's like there's just nothing that can be done about it in the way that another player can be crowded in the way that Jalen Brunson, you can get the ball out of his hands.

Steph's way of dealing with it was just to work off the ball. But it was that tick-tac-toe, if you do this, I do that basketball genius. And in person, I'm sure it comes across when you're watching on TV as well, but I had that baseline view that just gives you a better sense of that lateral perspective. and it really felt to me

like he was mentally puppeteering the other calves. And I mentioned Tristan Thompson because that's the sort of player that you would do that with. I'm looking at the box score. And Tristan was six of six. I'd have to go back and, you know, check out what went into that.

That shot chart looked like six green O's on top of each other, I bet. I would bet as well. I'd have to go back and see it and see why Tristan has a 96. 6.6% true shooting. I'd assume that some free throws, some free throws might have rimmed out right there,

or at least one of them. But that's what it felt like. It just felt like control, is what I would say. Other players, they just do great things. They do brilliant things. LeBron was in charge of the team in a way that's different from the Warriors and Steph is amazing and arguably the best offensive player of all time, but it almost comes sporadically or not in a way that's planned or he's off the ball

and it's more of a team effort and he infuses it into the team. LeBron, it's I'm the puppet master. These are the puppets. You go here, this happens. I go here, that happens. And that was the overwhelming sense I had from watching it in person. Yeah. And as you said, I hated to cut you off before that.

But yeah, the Warriors, the Warriors crack and now take this to Game 7 at home, which is, at least for my money, one of the great basketball games of all time. Like this is where we start talking about the series was better than the sum of the games. Basically, it was six blowouts, and then the 15th round was a classic. Yeah.

Well, I thought the two, which game, the two games in Cleveland leading up to it, I thought were both great games, even if they didn't end close. I thought the one, the Warriors won, before Dremont kicked LeBron and the nuts, was a great game. I thought that the one, the Cavs won Game 6 was a great game.

And in some ways, this is a strange meta commentary and the whole thing, I became disgusted when I watched the game on TV years later because I felt like ESPN, ABC, had not done a good job conveying the gravitas, that I was there for that. I remember before that game 6, they play that in the air of the night, Phil Collins saw before Cavs games. And I was watching the concession years, belt out the lyrics at four. volume and I'm just getting goosebumps and you feel the energy. This is big. And then you watch what ABC

did with it. And to be clear, I think they're doing a really good job with this 2026 finals, but there was a cheapness to the production is what I will say about it. I think they try to incorporate the roots into it in a way that didn't really work. Anyway, I'm getting distracted. Yes, game seven. Game seven, that was the epic one. It was a game as great as it was ugly and boy, the tension in that building in old Oracle, oh, you could just feel it, B'amani. The stakes are so high at this point, right? Because I contend that those warriors ultimately ruined the regular season because the 73 wins doesn't mean you're a champion. Then what does any of this stuff matter, right? There's LeBron trying to win the championship in Cleveland.

There's also the guy we haven't talked about that much in this, which is Kyrie Irving. Yeah. who's, I mean, he's been through some things while he's been on that team. Like he's only been there five years, but God, they were awful for the first stretch of this. He thinks it's going to be his team. Then they bring in LeBron, but you are still the guy that gets to take all the shots. And man, they needed him in that game as much as they ever needed a guy to be there. And it's a slug fest, man.

And then also, Steph Curry, play it on a bad leg. Nobody wants to hear it. He doesn't want to be the one to have anything to say about it. But they're on the verge of what is one of the all-time collapses. in the history of the NBA. And I think a lot of that energy, that negative energy towards Steph has almost been forgotten about because he validated himself in 2022 against the Celtics. And now people top 10, everything, there was a lot of resentment of the rise of Steph and

skepticism of the rise of Steph and feeling that this was a restoration of order if LeBroad beat him and an exposing of fraudulence to put it on top of that. He was getting crushed on all kinds of levels. For his shoes, for instance, became a huge talking point in that series, Bumani. And it became the death of the Under Armour Steph Curry brand. You could just mark it down at that exact point. It was just all falling down. If you were in that building when you were a Steph Curry fan, you could feel like a lot

was on the line for him. And as he was struggling, it had that poignant, that poem, Casey at the bat, that feeling the mighty Casey has struck out. You could feel it in the building and it was heavy. Well, it also reminds me that game six to me was the first moment that LeBron really betrayed the fact that it was personal for him, right? Like he had a moment with a stare down to Steph and Steph looked at him and laughed because Steph has this Drake-like quality and I don't mean this in a bad way because

normally I would if I was making a comparison to Drake. But in the sense that when Meek Mill and Drake were in that battle, Meek couldn't do all that tough guy shit with Drake because like, ooh, you're tougher than Drake. Okay. You're really impressing us. Like that doesn't work. Staring down Steph Curry, nobody's impressed by that, right?

Like nobody's going there. But there was a moment where you saw LeBron was he realized that the little homie is not the little homie anymore, right? like this is a rival now and whatever buddy buddyness that may have been and how cool he thought it was and oh wait when he was doing that shit at Davidson man didn't none of that matter and that became the next level and for the first time we were raising the question as to whether or not somebody was better at basketball than LeBron James and of all people it was that guy well and it was bigger than that because this wasn't just oh a Tim Duncan type person where you're saying oh he brings more

to the table. For argument's sake, he brings more to the table than you do. So maybe you're one or he's one A or maybe he's surpassed you, but he's not really a force in the culture. Steph mania, it was like Beatles mania. It was crazy that season. You'd go early to the games on the road. There are thousands of people just watching this guy warm up.

Under Armour was selling shoes, which they haven't been able to do since, I don't think. I it was just completely so much bigger than this guy might be better at basketball. It's also the country, they like him better than you. They're kids like him better than you. He's more a face of the league than you are. And I mean, he could have said whatever when asked about it, about not resenting it, but players resent that sort of thing. They're at the top, if they're in the top tier, generally speaking.

The irony is that I don't know if Steph enjoyed all aspects of being number one. And that's a funny subplot to this whole thing. I think for LeBron, it was very important to be the face of the league. And hell, he might have just gotten used to it. It might have been anchoring at a certain point because it was just known. But Steph, it was never supposed to go that way. He was never supposed to become as famous as he became. And even if he was competitive and wanted to win as much as humanly possible and enjoyed winning,

it was uncomfortable for him in those years. Just people following his family and his car. People jump, I was at training camps, people jumped out of the bushes to get autographs. He wasn't dealing with it well, and that might help explain a little bit of what happened afterwards, why he was open to Kevin Durant coming to the Warriors and sharing some of the spotlight. I feel like game seven for me has three plays that I will always remember.

Two of them are obvious. One of them is, let me sure, one, two, four actually, my fault. One of them, and I can't even remember. I just want to, does Festus Azele make your list? Which list? Oh, like, what would be black festus? That's not what I call it. Oh, but I'm wondering if he.

He is in your top four plays because he's in my top. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, he was not in my four. My bad, I thought I was like, Festus, what are we saying about him? I forgot about him. So, and I chronologically, I don't have these, but I'll give you the four. One is Steph kind of, shit, it might be five.

Steph getting clamped up by Kevin Love, right? There's that. Where I talk about the warriors having lapses of attention. Steph throwing the ball away with that crazy behind the back pass. Yeah. obviously Kyrie hunting Steph repeatedly and then getting switched on to him to make that bucket. Yeah. The one that forever, the block, right?

LeBron hawking Andre Iguodala down and pinning his shot. And the fifth for me, in Chapel Hill, they talk about in the 98 Carolina Duke game at the Dean Dome, the tip dunk that wasn't, which is this unreal tip dunk that Vince Carter missed. But if he had Maine would have been the greatest dunk of all time. after this game is wrapped up LeBron went to put an exclamation point on that where I swear I have never seen anybody in a game let alone at the end of the fourth quarter

higher above the rim than he was. Draymond filed him. He missed it. I will never understand how he did not break his arm bracing in his fall. But that is the what I will always remember whether he made it or not is I can't believe how high up he got. Like that was him saying this shit is over.

I just did the impossible. But it was that, late in that game just had a run of moments. Yeah, I mean, that one, all of those, very memorable. I added the Azeeli one because I think from the Warriors perspective, that's when things got a little bit unraveled. When Azeali was in there, he wasn't exactly healthy. A lot of Warriors fans were tearing their hair out about it.

And LeBron craftily baited him into one of those pump fake fall on the guy fouls. And that was a turning point where it looked at that point in the game, like the Warriors might open up a lead and start gaining their own momentum. But LeBron was just too crafty, too wise for that sort of, for somebody who was so inexperienced and rusty. But yeah, those moments, those moments were huge. I'm trying to think if there are any others that particularly come to mind. I think the Steph Kevin Love moment was something that he learned from.

And you saw evidence of that in the, the 2022 finals because Love played him for the three-point shot. He was selling out completely for that. And there might have been an element where Steph wasn't totally right, but he also wasn't taking what was given. And there was a play, 2022 finals, the game in Boston that the Warriors had to have, game four towards the end, where, man, what was the name of that big, that athletic big the Celtics had at that time?

22, Joe Robert Williams. Yeah, yeah, Robert Williams, yeah. Where Robert Williams was switched on to Steph, and they were doing the dancing on the exterior out there. And it was very similar to the Kevin Love play. But this time, Steph just took what was given, and he just went in the paint and did a floater. I think that's probably one of the regrets that he lived with following that finals,

was in that situation, not just taking what was. there and trying to go hero ball because that contributed to what lost it. Let me tell you this about the Warriors, which you can't forget. They really had only one guy play a really good game in Game 7. And that was Draymond Green, who put up 32 on 15 shots. Ooh, another memory, he had another one towards the end that rattled in and out, another one of those threes. Like, what would have brought it to 41 might have settled the finals for them as well?

Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy. I think it was the second 37 point game in that playoff run, which to the modern Draymond Green Watcher would be quite astounding as a staff. But that was a different guy back that, Beaumonti. And I'll tell you what I'll also remember about that forever. You wound up writing a story, and I think it's okay to say this in public, as it's been so long.

But basically your editor was like, need everything you got on Drayvon. Oh, my God, yeah. Oh, okay. And he wrote the Draybond story and it had a quote in it. And I'll have to do the full quote and I will and my mama's listening. But understand that I'm not the one who said it, but this was the quote. And the quote from an unnamed source that, I mean, I think I know who said it was very simple. Yeah, everything they say about Dreban, they had their chance and they all play like pussies.

Yeah, I felt bad. I tried to get that quote pulled and they didn't pull it. There's a tough dynamic when you're writing a rough draft and you're doing it for a bigger institution, not to make excuses for myself. But you go, yeah, that was a little too hard. Maybe we can pull back on that. And they go, never, no chance. I never would have given you that back.

There's no circumstance under which I would have given you that one back. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, my God. That, that I had to do a lot of damage control after that one. That was that quote made a lot of trouble for me interpersonally. See, I don't understand why it made trouble for you. you ain't the one that said it. Ah, yeah, but I don't know.

It was just, for whatever reason, certain things are a little more provocative than other things. And I will say this, there was something very strange from the coaching staff in the aftermath of that game. Coaches are so weird.

All coaches, in my experience of the NBA, at some level, they love their team and at some level they hate their team. I'll give an example that I think he's, with giving i think i wrote it but when the warriors won the western conference finals in 2015 i was talking to steve cur afterwards and he was he was by the media catering not the media catering but the team catering uh chepotely or whatever you know just trying to eat is they're hungry after this stuff and he's all excited he's saying western conference finals is a big deal he's all

happy and then he just flashes into anger and he goes you have step and clay could just stop doing and he's just pantomimes, like dribbling all crazy, this shit. Like that's, they feel this way about it where they're so frustrated that these guys aren't doing the things that they want them to do. And there was a sense from the coaching staff back then that the warriors were being a little bit icarus. And there were, and I don't completely know what those things were or what the frustrations were.

But there was a sense after what happened, the coaches were sad about it. But there was also a sense of, you see? And that's what coach. coaches feel they want to win so badly. But there's also a sense after they lose of almost a sick validation of, I told you, I told you not to do that. I told you not to do the thing that you did. And you did it and you see what happened. And I didn't just get that sense from one coach. I got that sense from the coaches after that one. And I still don't exactly know what the fixation was, but that was something in the aftermath.

And on the LeBron side, he gave Cleveland the proverbial $4 million ring. Oh, yeah. As close to all is forgiven could ever be possible. He won them that championship. That was the only reason to go back was to come as close to making that one thing right as he possibly could. And he did it.

Oh, yeah. And it's the best argument he has in this goat debate where I think you and I are on the Jordan side of that particular debate, but it's the best piece he has. It's the best chip that he has. The best argument is that winning a championship for Cleveland, Ohio, just counts an order of magnitude more than another championship. It feels different.

Yeah, that's a bigger, that's a bigger get. That even if the Chicago Bulls were a Wobie Gone franchise before Mike showed up, there's something about winning in Cleveland that feels impossible. in the American sports culture. And that's fair. That's a fair perspective. Yeah. Like, I remember the look on his face about that one.

Like, I was there for the second, when he won the second championship in Miami. Like, I was there. The emotion that he had about winning this one in Cleveland was a completely different animal. Like, I felt like the Miami stuff was just as much about getting him off his back as much as anything else. This one was bigger than him.

Like, I don't think for him or for most people that the Miami championships were bigger than him, even though it's a franchise, it was their third ever, all that stuff. That one in Cleveland was so much bigger than him, right? Like, it felt, I don't think any championship has ever felt more like someone did it

in service of others in the way that that one kind of felt. Yeah, I would agree. And it had these other aspects that we were talking about too, where it has the more, let's say, endearing aspect of it being for Ohio and the people out there. But there is this other aspect of the corporate side where Lynn Merritt, big time Nike executive is there

and they're getting that Nike shirt on LeBron immediately. And there is a sense of we killed Under Armour. We killed Steph. We did it. We did it. We, you know, the invading force, we've repelled them. And the other memory I have of the whole thing, there's something so weird about when you win on somebody else's court.

It's the thing that's most similar to old, like, Mongol invasion and the debauchery and the decadence. They go to the nightclub afterwards. They pursue the hottest women in the city. And I just remember, and it happened both ways because the Warriors won it in Cleveland before. And Steph said something about the locker room still smelling like champagne or something like that. And that got Cleveland fans been out of shape. That got the bad of shape in this kind of primal, visceral way. And then I saw that when the calves won it and LeBron celebrating.

And I just remember their sneakers making this sound, this sticky sound on the floor as they're tracking champagne all over the Oracle court. And yeah, it's this when you win it, when you win it on somebody else's court, there's this almost glorious humiliation on behalf of the victor. and that's a bit of a digression, but now I'm just free associating these memories as we're going back a decade. Dude, you do a whole trophy presentation in front of, like, it's actually a wonder those things don't go worse,

that people don't just stick around to boo and throw things. I've been at a few of those. My dad bought, now it's a topic, the price of tickets at Madison Square Garden, my dad bought some scalp tickets because we were visiting family in 1999, and I was there at Game 5 when Sprie miss the shot. And man, the ill feeling, the New York as somebody from San Diego,

not really being acquainted with that kind of brusqueness in that kind of moment, with something to behold for a young man, I would say. Hey, man. Ethan Strauss, check out his newsletter, House of Strauss, Google it up. I pay money for it. It wouldn't be the worst idea if you did, too. My brother, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me, Bumani. Yes, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this a few times a week during the summer.

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