Protocol was being seriously breached in the aftermath of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Game 7 victory over Golden State Sunday to end the 2016 Finals.
Traditionally, pretty much without fail, the opposing head coaches are among the first to emerge from the respective dressing rooms — one downcast, the other bubbly — to offer perspective and speak about the conclusion of a championship series with the authority their positions bring.
But Tyronn Lue, coach of the Cavaliers, was nowhere to be found as first Golden State’s Steve Kerr, then player after player from both sides came, answered and went.
Could have been that he was in a reception line somewhere, shaking JFK’s hand.
The “Forrest Gump” aspect of Lue’s wild five-month ride as the Cavs’ head coach was in full roar Sunday at Oracle Arena, a roar nearly as ferocious as that shown by Cleveland in clawing its way back in the series to win the championship. Lue was spotted a time or two under the stands, hugging family and friends, standing in for a quick hit with a local Cleveland TV crew.
In his dark championship t-shirt, “2016 NBA Champs” cap, team warm-up pants and black socks and shower sandals, Lue looked more like one of the fans who’d traveled west and infiltrated the Warriors’ building than he did the bench boss of a team that had just made Finals history.
No team ever had survived a 3-1 deficit to win the title — except Lue’s team. Nobody had ever so spoiled things for an opponent that had won 73 games in the regular season and 15 more in the playoffs — except Lue’s team. Only three Finals teams out of the 18 that tried ever had won Game 7 on the road, and none since 1978 — until Lue’s team did it with their 93-89 victory.
Of course, you could plug in “LeBron’s team” after each of those achievements too and not be wrong. That’s one of the reasons Lue’s role in all this — delivering the first Larry O’Brien Trophy to the Cavaliers franchise, ending Cleveland’s sports title drought after 52 soul-crushing years — seems to some to be random.
If LeBron James is the resident superstar, unofficial coach and presumed general manager for whatever team he happens to be playing — certainly both Cleveland 1.0 and 2.0 editions — there isn’t a lot of credit left over for the guy who’s parking space actually says “coach.”
“I don’t care,” Lue said when he finally reached the podium, nearly 90 minutes after Cavs chaos erupted on Golden State’s court. “I don’t care about credit. We won. Everyone deserves credit.”
That’s fine and, at a certain level, true. But it was Lue who got promoted out of nowhere, as far as casual NBA fans and the sports world overall were concerned, when Cavs GM David Griffin decided to fire David Blatt in January. All Blatt had done was get Cleveland to the 2015 Finals in his first NBA season and have them atop the Eastern Conference at 30-11 midway through his second.
The atmosphere within the team, the tension both overt and covert, was what drove Griffin to replace Blatt and promote Lue. He had seen the ease with which the Cavs players — sure, LeBron, but others as well — related to the former journeyman point guard and lead assistant. Griffin knew that Lue already was essentially the Cavs’ defensive coordinator. And when the GM had hired him to assist Blatt before James made his decision to return to Cleveland, he learned the high regard in which Lue was held by mentor Doc Rivers, Kerr and pretty much anyone he asked about the then 38-year-old .
The transition went smoothly enough — Lue wound up coaching the East All-Stars after logging just 11 games as an NBA head coach — but by the season’s end, the Cavs had gone 27-14 in his half of the schedule. They burst into the postseason with 10 consecutive victories, Lue topping Hall of Famer Pat Riley’s record of nine to start a coaching career, and were 12-2 by the time the Finals began so very long ago.
But staring into that 3-1 abyss, Lue again was in danger of falling short of Blatt’s mark (the Cavaliers lost to Golden State a year ago in six games, with a lesser, injured-wracked roster).
Maybe that’s why, when Lue was asked to describe his meteoric tenure and highly improbable sudden success, he chose a somewhat surprising word.
“Tough.”
“It’s been very tough,” Lue said. “The team was great. They supported me from day one, taking over a tough situation that wasn’t — you can’t see yourself taking over the situation that I took over in, and then also taking over when you’re coaching a LeBron James team, and I knew it was going to be tough.”
The Blatt firing still is a sore subject, one that most of the Cavaliers shy away from and one about which James is particularly sensitive, given the “coach killer” assumptions thrown his way.
But veteran backup Dahntay Jones said the “dynamic” of coaching James is simply different, not worse or demeaning or any other negative, from what many basketball fans are used to. And Kyrie Irving, the 24-year-old point guard who hit the championship-winning 3-pointer Sunday and has had four coaches in his five NBA seasons, concurred.
“When T. Lue was hired after David Blatt getting fired in the middle of the season and us dealing with that,” Irving said, “I voiced a lot of emotion that got back to not only our coaching staff but to our teammates, and we just grew from there.
“As a maturing young professional in this league, I just had to understand that things happen like that and now you just move forward, and how to figure it out is part of the journey. Now we can tell that story that the Cleveland Cavaliers switched coaches in the middle of the season and still won an NBA championship.”
Lue brought 11 seasons as an NBA backup to his job, along with time served with Rivers in Boston and Los Angeles. But he also learned on the fly, the privileges as well as the challenges of James, as far as ordering a team around such a rare and dominant player. He preached pace and defense, tried to shake loose Kevin Love whenever called for and for a spell anyway, unleashed a 3-point potential the Cavs might not even known had.
Along the way, Lue seemed to have little or no ego — a departure from Blatt’s occasional defensiveness over his impressive international coaching career — and a similar disinterest in the spotlight.
When it was over, he was glad that the spotlight was shining elsewhere, so he could simply sit on the bench and cry.
“I never cry. I’ve always been tough and never cried,” Lue said before getting into the “but” for his blubbering Sunday. “Just after the game — my brother is here, Greg, just said ‘I’ve never seen you cry before’ — a lot of emotions just built up. My grandfather couldn’t be here. He passed away, and all the haters and all the doubters. It just all built up at one time. Then finally hearing that last horn go off, it was just unbelievable. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right.
“My mom, she’s a minister, and God is good. I mean, I don’t know. What you want me to say?”
Lue laughed. Last.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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