In Leading Cavs to NBA Finals, LeBron Shows Why He Is Game's Top Handyman

CLEVELAND — The essay was 951 words long, and it veered wildly from sentimentality to pragmatism to outright romanticism. The byline belonged to LeBron James, and he made two points very clear:

He was coming home with a mission to bring a championship to Northeast Ohio.

He did not expect immediate results.

"I'm not promising a championship," James wrote in Sports Illustrated last July. "I know how hard that is to deliver. We're not ready right now. No way."

It was a thoughtful, measured address from a fully matured superstar who had experienced enough to know the difference between aspirations and practicality. The Cleveland Cavaliers would be too young, too new to each other, to expect much in Year 1. A new team needs time to grow, to develop trust and good habits. James had learned these lessons many times over in his 11 NBA seasons.

It was a reasoned, sensible outlook. It was the right approach, the wise approach.

Somehow, in all of that reasonable rhetoric, LeBron James underestimated the most important factor in play: LeBron James.

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That was never more evident than Tuesday night, when the wine-and-gold streamers burst from the rafters after the Cavs' 118-88 Game 4 win over the Atlanta Hawks. James had led another city in another raucous celebration, as if the party merely migrates with him from one year to the next.

The Cavaliers are heading back to the NBA Finals—their second, James' sixth—after completing a sweep of the Hawks and a commanding 12-2 run through the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Cleveland has a chance to end its burdensome, half-century championship drought.

There are many ways to frame this moment, and it's not unreasonable to cite the decrepit state of the Eastern Conference as a factor. But more significant is what the Cavaliers, and James, just achieved.

This team won 33 games last season without James, missing the playoffs for the fourth straight year. The Cavs hired a coach with no NBA experience, made a blockbuster trade for Kevin Love, jettisoned three high draft picks, acquired two castoffs from New York, another from Denver and spent half the season just trying to figure out who they were.

On Jan. 13, the Cavs were 19-20.

On May 26, the Cavs clinched the Eastern Conference championship.

In January, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert were underachieving malcontents playing for a miserable Knicks team. Timofey Mozgov was toiling in relative anonymity for a dispirited Nuggets team. Matthew Dellavedova was a fringe NBA player, doing fringe things. Mike Miller, Shawn Marion and James Jones were in semi-retirement, hanging on just to see where James might take them.

Before James returned, Kyrie Irving was an overhyped, self-entitled scoring star who couldn't lead the Cavaliers anywhere.

Today, they are all heading to the finals.

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"That's what he does, though," Miller said of James, his teammate in Miami for three seasons. "It's the LeBron James factor. He demands people do things the right way. It's not an accident he's been to five straight finals."

James' five-year finals streak is the longest in nearly 50 years—since Bill Russell and his Celtics teammates piled up appearances from the 1950s to the 1960s.

He is the first star in the modern era to lead three distinct teams to the finals, starting with his first Cleveland team in 2007, then the Miami Heat (2011-14) and now a completely overhauled Cavaliers squad.

"It's special," James said late Tuesday, sitting at the podium with Smith to his right and Tristan Thompson to his left. "Just because I think it's today, it's tonight and to know how far we've come as a group, to know how unexperienced we are as a unit playing together, I think that's special in its own right."

In Cleveland, the press-conference dais is elevated, almost comically high, providing the self-styled King a virtual throne from which to issue his postgame proclamations. In his first Cleveland tour, a younger, brasher James often spoke with an arrogance to match the setting.

This was a different James who took the stage Tuesday, issuing heartfelt sentiment instead of proclamations, every sentence layered with humility and appreciation. He spoke in low, almost somber tones and did not even crack a smile until seven-and-a-half minutes into the press conference.

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At one point, James and Smith shared a private joke and doubled over in laughter. But James was otherwise all business as he pondered what had been accomplished, and the challenge that still lies ahead.

"I'm a guy who believes in unfinished business," James said, alluding to his polarizing exit in 2010, and to Cleveland's long wait for a championship. "And I understood what these people were going through, the people here not only in Cleveland, but in Northeast Ohio and all over the world, who love and bleed wine and gold."

Damon Jones, a teammate on James' first finals team in 2007, now the Cavs' roving instructor, watched the press conference from the side, underlining the passage of time.

In the locker room, James' teammates—many of whom have never won anything—took turns holding and ogling the Eastern Conference championship trophy. Marion handed someone his phone to get his picture taken with the silver globe.

"We want the gold one," chirped Marion, who is making his second trip to the finals and plans to retire after that.

"I'm happy to be a part of this," Marion said. "It's not every day you get an opportunity to win a championship. Everybody has dreams and aspirations to do that, but some of these dreams and aspirations that a lot of these teams have are not real. Ours is real."

Across the room, James emerged with a towel around his waist, hugging well-wishers, smiling and declaring, "This is, like, pre-prom. We're going to prom on June 4!"

Every trip to the finals is an achievement in its own right. This one stands out.

In the last six weeks, James has made Smith respectable, Shumpert fluid and Dellavedova functional. He's turned Mozgov—a spare part in the 2011 Carmelo Anthony trade—into a local folk hero. He's turned Thompson into a star.

This is what sets James apart, not just among his generation, but among the all-time greats. He takes the discards, the rejects and the misfits and molds them into title contenders.

"He leads to such an amazing degree," general manager David Griffin told Bleacher Report. "He makes everyone believe in what he believes in—which is, 'We can, and we will.' He engenders the kind of confidence in guys that they play their best basketball when they play with him."

The Cavs lost Love to a torn-up shoulder in the first round. James made his absence irrelevant.

Irving injured his right foot, then his left knee, lost his mojo for days at a time and missed two games of the conference finals. James filled the gap, becoming the first player ever to average at least 30 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists in a playoff series.

Yet it's still hard to gauge the strength of these Cavaliers, given their road to the finals. They opened with a sweep of a Boston Celtics team that should have been in the lottery. They rumbled to a six-game victory over a disjointed Chicago Bulls club that was wracked with internal politics. Then they swept an injury-riddled Hawks team that had been underwhelming for two months.

The Cavaliers' greatest challenge lies ahead.

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The Golden State Warriors, their likely finals foe, won 67 games this season while boasting the league's No. 1 defense and No. 2 offense. The Warriors' offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) was 109.7—3.5 points better than the Hawks, 5.0 better than the Bulls and 8.0 better than the Celtics. Their defensive rating, 98.2, was 2.5 points better than the Hawks, 3.3 better than the Bulls and nearly 4.0 points better than the Celtics.

The Cavaliers haven't seen anything like the Warriors in this run. Then again, it's fair to say the Warriors haven't seen anything like LeBron Raymone James.

"I will guarantee that we will play our asses off," James said before stepping down from the podium. "At the end of the day, that's all I can ask for, that's all we can give. But we will be in the finals. I can guarantee that."

Howard Beck covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @HowardBeck.