LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers have never done things the easy way, and last season they lifted the NBA championship after overcoming a 3-1 deficit becoming the first team in NBA history to do so.
After falling down 3-1, countless things happened, some more significant than others. One of those significant things was the text message James sent to his teammates following the depressing loss to the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 inside Quicken Loans Arena that gave them the 3-1 advantage.
It was perhaps one of the most challenging moments of his career, but James stood up like no leader ever has and let his team know that the series was not over, and he’d get them home for a Game 6. It was acts like this that sparked the most incredible comeback in NBA history, but James wasn’t the only one that believed in the team and refused to accept that they were going down.
Cavaliers GM David Griffin was another figure of similar mindset, and according to an excerpt from a book, via Sports Illustrated, written by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin titled Return of the King: Lebron James, The Cleveland Cavaliers and The Greatest Comeback in NBA History by Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin, Griffin himself sent a letter to the entire Cavs organization.
The recipients weren’t just the players and the coaching staff, but the entire company including the sales department, marketing department, vice presidents, the secretaries, and security guards. Literally everyone involved with the Cavaliers received the emotional email by Griffin, who sent the single most important email of his career.
Read the letter in its entirety below.
Family-
If you are like me, and sadly for all of you, many of you are more like me than you’d care to admit, you felt a little like a bomb went off late into last night and maybe even this morning. Needless to say, we are all disappointed that we didn’t hold serve at home. However, I have a few thoughts to share with you that I think might make the wait for our Game 5 victory in Oakland and our ultimate triumph in an epic Game 7 a little more reality than dream.
Consider the two seasons we have spent together and think about all these things that make us HISTORICALLY SPECIAL.
We enter LAST SEASON the prohibitive Vegas favorite to win the NBA Title.
Our starting center tears his Achilles, 26 games into the season.
Our MVP focal point misses 2 weeks with a back injury.
We become the first team in NBA history to enter as NBA Title favorites to start a season with a losing record thru 39 games (actually went 19–20).
We trade one player for 3, get our MVP back and go an NBA best 32–7 over the next 39 games. During this stretch we ranked 1st in the NBA in winning percentage (.821), first in scoring differential (10.6) and first in three-pointers made per game (11.8).
We sweep our first round opponent and in Game 4, lose our starting power forward for the remainder of the playoffs and most of the next 6 months.
We win the next round against Chicago despite starting down 2–1 while our starting point guard is battling knee issues. He only plays 12 minutes in the Game 6 win.
We win one game because our assistant coaches save our head coach from calling a time out we didn’t actually have. That would have resulted in a technical foul and the ball to Chicago in a tie game. Never seen that before either.
We then sweep a 60-win team and the No. 1 seed in the East while Kyrie misses games 2–3 with the knee issue. WE MOVE ON TO THE NBA FINALS.
LeBron and James Jones appear in their 5th straight NBA Finals.
We drop G1 and lose Kyrie for the remainder of the playoffs. We are now down two All-Stars. So what do we do…
We win the next 2 games to take a 2–1 lead over this same Warriors team.
Our new starting point guard, Delly, has to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher after the G3 win because we can’t hydrate him fast enough to combat his muscles that are shutting down from exhaustion.
The Warriors discover their best line-up as a desperation move to save their finals, because we had beaten the piss out of them physically.
Wounded and battered, we eventually succumb but everyone is ready to run it back healthy.
OFFSEASON
Everyone returns, we keep the band intact, a group that went 34–3 in the last 37 games that LeBron, Kevin and Kyrie all play in.
Ownership spends the 2nd most money in NBA history to achieve this.
THIS SEASON
We start training camp without Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert. All of whom are rehabbing from surgery.
We lead the NBA’s Eastern Conference literally wire to wire.
We are the #1 seed in the EAST.
We sweep the first and second rounds of the NBA Playoffs.
We are the first team in EASTERN CONFERENCE HISTORY to start the Playoffs 10–0.
Coach Lue becomes the first Head Coach in NBA history to start his career 10–0 in the post season, passing Pat Riley who was 9–0.
We win our 17th straight Eastern Conference game in the Conference Finals, becoming the first team in CONFERENCE HISTORY to do that.
We finish off Toronto in 6 games, winning Game 5 by a FRANCHISE POST SEASON RECORD 38 points.
LeBron and James Jones make their 6th straight NBA Finals appearances. AN NBA RECORD for anyone not a Bill Russell Celtic.
Along the way, we set NBA PLAYOFF records for most consecutive games with 12 or more three-pointers (8). NBA RECORD 77 three-pointers in 4 game sweep of Atlanta. We are the FIRST TEAM IN NBA HISTORY to make 15 three-pointers in 4 straight games. AND, we set the ALL-TIME NBA RECORD for threes in a game with 25 in Game 2 vs. the Hawks.
We enter the NBA FINALS with the LARGEST SCORING DIFFERENTIAL in EASTERN CONFERENCE HISTORY (+177pts).
We win Game 3 by 30 points over a 73-win team. Becoming the first team in NBA FINALS HISTORY to win by 30 after losing by 30 the game prior.
So, what does all this mean? It means more than you have ever dared to imagine, but no more than we have always done. NO TEAM IN NBA HISTORY has ever come back from down 3–1 in the NBA Finals. Rather than asking you the cliché: “Why not us?” I would like to offer the following:
WE HAVE SEEN NBA HISTORY IN THE MAKING EVERYDAY HERE. It’s not “why not us?” It’s “What the [expletive] else would we do?” We love it harder. We love it RECORD-SETTING. You know in your hearts and in your minds we have been the NBA DRAMA KINGS since we came together. I bet you can, and I’d love for you to add to this HISTORICAL DATABASE. What else speaks to you about the RECORD-SETTING insanity that has been YOUR CLEVELAND CAVALIERS!
Let me be the first to tell you, NBA HISTORY HAS BEEN WAITING ON US. No one has done this, because WE have never been here before. We will become the first, because that is all we have ever known how to do.
NBA HISTORY HAS CHOSEN US. Don’t run, don’t be afraid. Don’t be discouraged. WE WILL SEIZE OUR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THAT HISTORY!
Griffin left it all out there, with his emotions overflowing, he sent a firework through the organization that kick started one of the greatest accomplishments in sports history. He went as far as to put it in every player’s locker, to ensure they received his moments of clarity before they went out for practice.
Cavs owner Dan Gilbert remembers the letter vividly, stating it was an instrumental part of their history-making turnaround.
“That was some letter,” owner Dan Gilbert said. “I was like ‘you believe we can win three in a row, two games at Golden State? They’ve lost like two home games in two years.’ He believed. That rallied us.”
