LeBron James not worried about pressure, legacy as Cavs pursue title
OAKLAND – From the outside, the pressure of being the homegrown superstar returning home to bring a championship to a franchise, city and region seems immense.
Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James has found a way to minimize that pressure.
“I don’t really get involved in the whole pressure thing,” James said Wednesday. “I think I’ve exceeded expectations in my life as a professional. I’m a statistic that was supposed to go the other way, growing up in the inner city, having a single-parent household. It was just me and my mother. So everything I’ve done has been a success.
“So as far as the game of basketball, I just go out and play it and have fun and love it and be true to the game and to my teammates and live with the results. So it doesn’t really get to me too much.”
James isn’t oblivious either.
“I know our city deserves it. Our fans deserve it. But that gives us no sense of entitlement,” he said. “We’ve still got to go out and do it. We’ve still got to go out and prove ourselves and be as great as we can be every single night we hit the floor. We look forward to the challenge.”
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James is back in the Finals for the sixth consecutive time, an accomplishment reached by only a handful of players, mostly those on the great Celtics teams of the 1960s, including Bill Russell.
“People look at my situation and take it for granted seeing I’ve been here six straight times. They think it’s easy, when it’s not,” he said.
James and the Cavaliers play the Golden State Warriors in a rematch of last season’s Finals won by the Warriors.
But this is a much different Cavs teams, starting with a healthy Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. Love was out with an injured shoulder and Irving sustained a season-ending injury in Game 1 against the Warriors.
Cleveland has played its best basketball of the season in the playoffs, and James, Irving and Love have played their best basketball together since they joined up before the 2014-15 season.
The Cavs move the ball on offense, shoot the three-pointer with a high rate of success, get to the rim and are a high-scoring team.
While the Warriors are favored – and James has been blunt about that topic (“underdog, overdog, whatever the case may be. It’s stupidity,” he said) – this is James’ best chance to win a championship since the 2013 Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs. That required heroics in Game 6 to force a Game 7.
“Every team that I’ve been on has given everything they had just to get to that point,” he said. “So I’m fortunate to be here again.”
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James is 2-4 in the Finals, and as difficult as it is to lose, he understands it comes with the territory. Few players know better than James how difficult it is to win once they get there.
Perhaps one of those players is Hall of Famer Jerry West. During this season’s playoffs, James revived his personal book club. Against the Pistons, James re-read Jerry West’s biography West by West: My Charmed and Tormented Life.
West, who was 1-8 in the Finals, wrote, “Those losses scarred me, scars that remain embedded in my psyche. … After the sixth and final defeat (to the Celtics) in 1969, I wanted to quit basketball in the worst way. … Probably the main reason I wanted to walk away from basketball was that I honestly didn’t think I could endure any more pain.”
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Contrast that with what James said after losing to the Warriors in last season’s Finals.
“I always look at it would I rather not make the playoffs or lose in The Finals? I don’t know. I don’t know,” James said a year ago. “I’ve missed the playoffs twice. I lost in The Finals four times. I’m almost starting to be like ‘I’d rather not even make the playoffs than to lose in The Finals.’ It would hurt a lot easier if I just didn’t make the playoffs, and I didn’t have a shot at it.”
He always reconsiders.
“But then I lock back in and I start thinking about how fun it is to compete during the playoffs and the first round, the second round, and Eastern Conference Finals,” James said. “If I’m lucky enough to get here again, it will be fun to do it.”
If you listen to James often enough, you start to pick up similar themes. He never takes the opportunity to play basketball for granted. He is willing to live with the results as long as the effort is there. He is a student of the game.
James is happy to be back in the Finals. He will be even happier with four more victories.