A World Where the Cavaliers Beat the Spurs in the 2007 NBA Finals
Rewriting history, expunging certain griefs, and redeeming an entire city for one of the worst NBA Finals
Chapter 1: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE 2007 NBA FINALS
Eric Snow. Larry Hughes. LeBron James. Drew Gooden. Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Five total All-Star Game appearances; one All-NBA First Team selection; two All-NBA Second Team selections; one Rookie of the Year award; three All-Rookie First Team honors; and two All-Defensive Team members, combined between five Cavaliers.
Tony Parker. Manu Ginóbili. Bruce Bowen. Robert Horry. Tim Duncan. 12 total All-Star Game appearances; eight All-NBA First Team selections; one All-NBA Second Team selection; one Rookie of the Year award; 15 championship rings; three NBA Finals MVP trophies; two NBA MVP awards; three All-Rookie team honors; and nine All-Defensive Team members, combined between five Spurs.
These were the two starting lineups in the 2007 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers. I guess the disadvantage wasn’t as obvious, at first. On paper, the Spurs had been one of the greatest NBA dynasties ever. The Cavaliers had LeBron James. In my nine-year-old mind, it seemed crazy to think that the Cavs weren’t going to win the title in 2007. The best basketball player in the world was on our team. In my universe, one I have carved from grief, the Cavaliers won the 2007 NBA Finals.
I look at a team photo of the 2006–07 Cleveland Cavaliers. All of their young faces (except one, the face of a 37-year-old bench-warming David Wesley). Many of those players would be in a different city within three years. Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Charlotte. Some would become role players on bad teams — like, all-time bad teams (sorry, Philly). Some would go on to win championships with other, much better teams. And some would retire, never experiencing the taste of lips pressed-up against a Larry O’Brien Trophy.
The 2006–07 season was the first season my father took me to a Cavaliers game. We played the Bulls, which meant we beat the Bulls — because they didn’t have Derrick Rose yet. My father and I ate team-colored nachos — though, I was initially repulsed by them, not fully understanding the concept of food coloring — while witnessing role players like Sasha Pavlović and Donyell Marshall (names that now show up on “name the most random NBA player you can think of” Twitter threads) put up solid 15-point clips off the bench, not caring about LeBron only putting up 19. I suppose that’s the beautiful thing about loving a team so much; I was part of the only group of humans in the world who ever gave a shit about Anderson Varejão’s +/- numbers.
“Do you think we’ll win it all this year?” I remember my father asking me on our long walk back to his car, which he parked a half a mile away from Quicken Loans Arena to save a few bucks.
In a lot of ways, the Cavaliers had already won the 2007 NBA Finals before they even got there. In Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Detroit Pistons, LeBron scored 29 of the Cavaliers’ final 30 points, which also included him scoring 25 straight, in a double-overtime, series-sealing victory. No one has ever had a run of 16 minutes like that. The game was in Detroit, so I watched at home, but I remember every moment of that night. If you witnessed Jesus Christ walking on water, you’d remember what you had for breakfast that day, too. I had a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a plate of toast.
Yet, the mediocrity of the 2007 Cavaliers team almost ruined basketball. An “aging” Spurs squad wrecked a raw LeBron James to win their last championship of the decade. I suppose we all should have seen it coming. Our second-best player was Zydrunas Ilgauskas, his feet held together by pins and prayers, and our second-best scorer was Larry Hughes, who still has, in my sincerest opinion, one of the prettiest jumpshots in NBA history.
Despite LeBron’s excellent Eastern Conference Finals performance, I am still reminded incessantly about how the Pistons team we beat had long plummeted from the height of their 2004 powers. The 2007 Cavaliers squad was compared to the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers, the 2002 New Jersey Nets, and the 2009 Orlando Magic — earning a reputation as one of the worst modern NBA Finals teams. And things were only getting worse.
When those Texan marauders draped in black and silver bounced my Cavaliers back to Lake Erie, our point guard of the future was nicknamed “Boobie,” the Cleveland Indians were upset in the ALCS (unrelated, but I’m still mad about it), and LeBron began plotting his exit from the team.
Chapter 2: A SUPER SHORT STORY ABOUT 2007
Before LeBron James decided to leave for Miami; before the Cavs finessed the Los Angeles Clippers into giving up a first-round pick for Mo Williams and Jamario Moon — a pick that would later become Kyrie Irving; before LeBron came back and took us to four straight NBA Finals; before he ended Cleveland’s notorious championship curse. Before all of that, I had lived for so long inside of the 2007 NBA Playoffs — holding on to the memory of strolling Downtown Cleveland’s summer streets with my parents, passing by what felt like an entire city while walking down East 9th, getting lost in an Ohio sea of navy, wine, and gold number 23 jerseys.
I have lived over half of my life since the 2007 NBA Finals, when the Cleveland Cavaliers went against the San Antonio Spurs. It was the first championship series in any sport I’d ever witnessed, because I was born the spring after Cleveland’s last appearance in a World Series. Being in Cleveland after the Cavaliers advanced to the Finals was what it felt like to be in the movie theater the night Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith premiered. A feeling only just recently replicated — when Tyler, the Creator won the Best Rap Album Grammy for IGOR, and my bro and I went to our favorite taco shop a few towns over to celebrate. Each bite proclaimed the long-awaited taste of some long-held hope finally real.
Now, ask me if I remember the last time a whole city celebrated even after a loss, and I’ll point you to 2007 — I’ll open my arms and show you all the remembrance of hope I can carry.
Don’t get me wrong, the 2016 NBA Finals victory over the Golden State Warriors will live forever. The 3–1 jokes will never truly be tarnished, even though the Cleveland Indians blew their own 3–1 lead in the World Series just a few months later. But I do not live inside of that Finals victory, because it was during a time when all of my loved ones were dying. My father’s mother was unconscious on a ventilator the night Cleveland won Game 7 and would pass away two weeks later. My mother’s mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, had almost burned her house down after leaving the oven on all day, and would die a few months later. My father’s father was just two months away from being diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. How can you celebrate the greatest accomplishment of the living when none of the people you love are there to celebrate it with you?
“Do you think we’ll win it all this year?” is the question I found myself asking my father as we sat next to each other in a darkened ICU room, nine years later, as my grandmother was dying on a ventilator during the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals. In a moment where I wanted the promise of Cleveland winning a championship for the first time since 1964 to mean something, it meant absolutely nothing. My father said nothing.
What I would give to rewind back to when my father bought a SAN ANTONIO SUCKS t-shirt for me from a street vendor outside Jacob’s Field the eve before the Finals — despite my grandmother’s dismay for such a vulgar piece of clothing. For a day, which now feels almost completely erased from my memory, there was a parade of magic in Cleveland. I had a home inside a moment that meant everything, and everything I ever loved was still a living, breathing god.
Chapter 3: AN EVEN SHORTER STORY OF HOW THE ACTUAL 2007 NBA FINALS PLAYED OUT
Maybe in your world the Spurs did sweep the Cavaliers in four games to win the Finals. In your world, my father still went to bed in the third quarter of Game Four because he knew it was over. But I spent my entire adolescence trying to replicate Larry Hughes’ jumper in my grandmother’s driveway. She asked me who I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her I wanted to be a reliable post presence like Drew Gooden.
No one talks about how the Cavaliers swept the Spurs to win the 2007 title. It was a world where the SAN ANTONIO SUCKS fabric rang true. Don’t start calling me a liar. The Cavaliers won. They did! If you’re a San Antonio fan reading this, chill out. You still have four other championships.
An aging Spurs squad was no match for LeBron James, who was just beginning to reign in his powers. My father and I watched all of Game Four, not getting up once, not even during the commercial breaks. As the final buzzer ticked away, we hugged and called my grandmother and cried on the phone while Larry Hughes held up the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Trophy. A trophy he was given because he dunked over Tim Duncan and made two game-winners. True story.
And because Cleveland won the 2007 title, LeBron never left for Miami. There were no rumors of him buying a home in South Beach. The League never experienced any post-90s “Superteams” and KD’s Warriors reverse back into the womb of our unknowing.
Because this is a completely true recounting of how the 2007 Finals actually played out, and because LeBron never left, my grandmother was never diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They’re not linked, but they are. Every kid in Northeast Ohio, from Ashtabula to Warren to Akron, became a part of LeBron. Every jumpshot on every jagged blacktop swished in. The whole world ran through Cleveland, Ohio. Throngs of tourists came to our state to see the thin downtown streets that the 2006–07 team walked on. An army of feet wearing Zoom Soldier IIIs could stutter-step through the rain and not catch a drop of wet.
But I’m back in reality now. And I want to meet all of the folks on earth who still dream about how good the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers were. Or the 2009 Orlando Magic. Or the 2002 New Jersey Nets. I want to meet every single one of them and hear their stories. I want to relish in our happiness for loving the worst NBA Finals teams to ever exist. I want to welcome them into my constellation of winning. I will ask them all if they think their beloved squads are going to win it all again next year, even though I know we will all have the same response: Yes.
I don’t need Michael Jordan winning six NBA Finals MVPs. I don’t. Give me Larry Hughes’ gorgeous jumpshot over Manu Ginóbli in a Game 2 blowout loss. I don’t care if it went in. I just want to remember what it felt like praying to god it would.
