Warriors win NBA title through sacrifice, continuity
CLEVELAND – When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made that fitting announcement, telling the basketball world that the Golden State Warriors' Andre Iguodala was the Finals MVP late Tuesday night at Quicken Loans Arena, the reactions of a few key characters nearby said everything about this team and its selfless season.
Stephen Curry, the Warriors' resident golden boy and 2014-15 regular season MVP, pumped his right fist to the sky as if the award was his to have. Not far away, Iguodala's parents who brought him up in Springfield, Ill. – stepfather Leonard Shanklin and mother Linda Shanklin – hugged each other tight and cried the proudest tears they'd ever known.
This story has been told countless times, the tale of the Warriors' many sacrifices that came to define their championship season. But this was a fitting ending if ever there was one, the poised and professional 31-year-old who had been benched to start the season turning the tide of a series that nearly got away from them. It all changed when first-year coach Steve Kerr put Iguodala back in the lineup for Game 4, the small-ball move that was so big in the end. And little did anyone know that Iguodala had been waiting decades for this kind of chance.
LeBron James and Iguodala were born 11 months and some 500 miles apart, the greatest player of his generation being born in Akron, Ohio and one of the game's most underrated talents growing up in Springfield, Ill. They crossed paths early and often, playing in AAU tournaments and – as is so often the case in today's NBA – becoming friendly throughout the years. So when it came time for Iguodala to try to slow the man whose peak just keeps getting higher, there was no one better equipped for the call.
"Of course you can't stop LeBron," said his stepfather, who came into his life when Iguodala was eight years old and who was there for him at every turn. "We all know that. But what they fail to understand is LeBron came in the league one year before Andre, and Andre is from Illinois, LeBron is from Ohio. They moved around on that AAU circuit. They went to the Olympics together (in 2012), so he knows LeBron, he knows his tendencies."
The evidence of Iguodala's impact was there for all to see. He slowed the Cavs' mack truck just enough to avoid the unlikely upset, with James' incredible production sullied only by the 39.8% shooting percentage that Iguodala had everything to do with. He was the extra offensive threat they needed, too, especially with All-Star Klay Thompson struggling to score during the series. In all, he averaged 16.3 points (52.1% shooting overall, 40% from three-point range), 5.8 rebounds and four assists per game.
But he couldn't have reached this point if he hadn't prioritized the team over himself at the start of the season, when it was quite clear that he didn't like Kerr's move but he decided to accept it. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd chosen winning over individual glory.
"He made some sacrifices (when he signed with the Warriors two summers ago), turned down bigger offers, made a sacrifice coming in knowing that he could compete for a championship," his agent, Rob Pelinka said. "And then when Steve approached him about coming off the bench for the greater good of the team, I saw 'Dre do a lot of soul searching. He's an incredibly confident and incredibly patient guy, and he knew that if he gave it a try things would come back around, and they did in the biggest way."
Leonard Shanklin added: "When I talked to him, I told him I didn't like it. He really didn't comment on it. He wanted a championship, and whatever that sacrifice was, he was willing to do it. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, 'OK.'"
That was the remarkable part of how they got to this point, this title that ended a 40-year drought for the once-futile Warriors franchise. There were danger zones at every turn, moves that were made that could have backfired if the culture didn't hold up. But of all the moves that were made – from the Iguodala-as-super-sub decision to Draymond Green starting over David Lee and all the rest – none threatened to change it all more than the Kevin Love trade that nearly happened last summer.
As non-trades go, they don't get much bigger than this. The then-Minnesota Timberwolves star was the shiny object that they surely had to think about, even if it meant they'd lose Thompson in the deal, but two guiding principles kept keeping them from giving that thumbs up: the desire to be elite defensively, something that Thompson would surely help with and Love would not; and the power of progressive growth that they didn't want to get in the way of.
Even they admit that a title didn't seem to be in the cards back then, but they knew this group was something special.
"What we decided as an organization was to bet on continuity, to bet on giving the roster a chance," Warriors general manager Bob Myers told USA TODAY Sports. "We'd taken the Clippers to seven games (in the first round) the previous year, without a center – we didn't have (Andrew) Bogut or (Festus) Ezeli. We had not given this current roster, with the addition of (Shaun) Livingston and (Leandro) Barbosa, a real chance to show us what they can do.
"But so many forces are pushing you to be impatient, and it's sometimes hard to pause and say, 'You know what? Let's let this play itself out. Let's give this team a chance.' We had just hired Steve, so let's give Steve a chance (with that roster). That was the mindset behind the decision."
Make no mistake, Kerr deserves a world of credit for what they did. His boldness is what took this team to the next level, and his willingness to create an inclusive environment bred the kind of creativity that played a pivotal part until the end – never moreso than the Game 4 lineup change that he publicly credited to his 28-year-old special assistant, Nick U'Ren.
But Kerr knows more than anyone that they all played a part here, that this doesn't happen without the collaborative element that made it all work. He learned that much right at the start, in a meeting with owner Joe Lacob, Myers and others inside the team's practice facility in which he painted a picture of how he would use his new team.
Draymond Green, the 25-year-old second-rounder who Kerr would later call the "heart and soul" of the Warriors, wasn't pegged for that starting power forward role when it all began. As Myers remembers it, he had Green down for an average of approximately 12 minutes per game.
"Not enough (minutes)," Myers said with a laugh. "But I think the thing to take away from that was that you don't appreciate Draymond until you're with him every day. We just said (to Kerr), 'Let's just leave his (minutes) number blank for now. Don't pigeon hole him, and just see what happens.'
"I think even (former Warriors coach) Mark Jackson would tell you that (Green) is a guy who a coach can't find ways to take out of the game. He's a hard guy to take out of the game. And until you're with him every day, and seeing him practice and see him on the floor, it's hard to appreciate that until you see it."
He would see it eventually, and they would all grow together en route to a title that no one saw coming. Iguodala was the one holding the individual trophy at the end, and there was a certain irony in that. The Most Valuable Player award's namesake, the great Bill Russell, was wired that way too. As even he would certainly agree, it's the Larry O'Brien version that they all shared that mattered most.
"If you do your job the right way, the product will be there in the end," said Christina Gutierrez, Iguodala's girlfriend and mother of their eight-year-old son, Andre II. "He was confident in all of their abilities as a team. So his thing was, 'Continue to stay focused. Do what we've done. Don't get ahead of yourself, because that's when you get knocked down.'"
Instead, it's Cloud Nine and beyond for the Warriors.
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