When forward LeBron James returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers via free agency in the summer of 2014, the Cavaliers had a pair of young stars to complement him in guard Kyrie Irving and big man Tristan Thompson, but they didn’t exactly have reputations for being winning players prior to James’ arrival.
Irving and Thompson were both lottery picks by the Cavs in the 2011 NBA Draft, and they didn’t help them to more than minimal success in their first three seasons in the league. The Cavaliers failed to win more than 33 games in a single season with the young duo in the fold, and Irving and Thompson failed to make the playoffs during that stretch.
However, Cavaliers insider Jason Lloyd revealed that when James rejoined the Cavaliers, he told Irving and Thompson that they would win if they did everything he told them to do, and James turned out to be right.
“When James returned to the Cavs in 2014, one of the first things he did was pull aside young stars like Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson and essentially tell them, ‘Do everything I tell you to do and we’ll win,”‘ Lloyd wrote. “They did. And they did.”
Thompson and Irving didn’t have to wait long after James joined the Cavaliers to play high-stakes playoff games for the first time as pros, as the Cavaliers made the NBA Finals in James’ maiden season of his second stint in Cleveland.
It’s worth noting that Irving played in just one game of the 2015 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors due to injury. It’s possible Irving would have won his first title that season had he not been down for the count.
Irving and Thompson received valuable experience playing in important games in the 2015 NBA Playoffs. The following year, the duo (with the help of James, big man Kevin Love and others) got on top of the basketball world.
The Cavaliers won the 2016 title after they defeated the Warriors in a seven-game series for the ages, and Thompson and Irving both came up big for the Cavs in the championship series. Thompson was a force to be reckoned with on the offensive glass and created a whole lot of extra possessions for Cleveland, as he racked up a team-high 27 offensive rebounds in the series.
Irving, on the other hand, filled up the scoring column against guard Stephen Curry and company. He scored 27.1 points per game in the Finals matchup and made a clutch shot late in Game 7 to seal the win for the Cavs.