College basketball coaches can already be accused of staying
tethered to their cell phone more than most normal human beings, but the last
few weeks have been just a little bit different for Saint Mary's men's
basketball coach Randy Bennett.
Journalists from around the world have come to Bennett for
answers. They want him to explain how a 6-foot-4 guard from a foreign country
and a mid-major school could possibly be taking over the NBA Finals. How, they
ask, can an undrafted player in only his second year in the NBA be playing such
a huge role on the world's biggest stage? Bennett doesn't need time to think of
an answer, because it's always the same.
This is the Matthew Dellavedova that everyone at Saint
Mary's has seen before.
NBA fans got the truest sense of what Saint Mary's all-time
leading scorer is like on Tuesday night when the Cavaliers guard scored 20
points, played 38 minutes and spent the night doing perhaps the best job anyone
has all season in shadowing Warriors star and NBA Most Valuable Player Stephen
Curry. Dellavedova was everywhere, diving for loose balls, making floaters in
the lane and fighting through screens to make sure Curry had to work for
everything he got.
"He's had some games like this," Cavaliers coach
David Blatt said. "I don't know that it's even a matter of confidence with
Matt. I just think he plays as hard as he can every day. He plays right, he's
not afraid. He plays courageously. Everybody on this team has his back, so it's
not an issue of confidence. He's going to give you whatever he has and you
can't ask for any more than that."
And, after the game, the legend of Delly only grew larger
when the Cavaliers announced that he'd been taken via ambulance to the
Cleveland Clinic to treat severe cramping and dehydration. Dellavedova spent
some time in the hospital but returned to the team on Wednesday and is expected
to play in game 4, though Blatt told reporters he may do so with his minutes
limited to manage fatigue.
Put another way, Dellavedova left literally everything he
had on the Quicken Loans Arena court on Tuesday night.
"I was (at the hospital) for a little bit, mainly just
to rest up and recover," Dellavedova said when he met the media on
Wednesday. "We'll all take it pretty easy today just to get our treatment,
watch tape and things like that. I'll be ready to go tomorrow."
He's been called a "perfect fit for Cleveland"
with his blue-collar approach, but Bennett knows that little has changed since
his four-year run at Saint Mary's.
“When you have him on your team, you feel it,” Bennett told
the Canton Repository. “He’s special about that. He’s a special competitor.
He’s a great teammate ... I thought that would transfer to the next level. He
got an opportunity, got a role, he was smart enough to figure out his role and
he’s unselfish. All he cares about is if his team wins. That’s what makes him
special.”
