LeBron communicating during NBA playoff game....

LeBron communicating with his team during NBA playoff game...

1min 30sec

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ppMC0aRFWiM&feature=youtu.be

Cavaliers stay on point with driven Delly

It was perhaps the most significant moment of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ playoff run thus far.

The second half of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was about to get underway in Chicago. Kyrie Irving, literally carried to the locker room in the second quarter after aggravating tendinitis in his left knee, was out on the court but still wearing his warm-up shirt, too banged up to join the rest of the Cavs’ starters to begin the third quarter.

Matthew Dellavedova, Cleveland’s much-maligned backup point guard whom Cavs general manager David Griffin openly spoke about hoping to find a replacement for in January, was about to take the floor in Irving’s place.

Sure, the Cavs held a 14-point lead, but they were playing on the road, there was still 24 minutes of game time remaining and Dellavedova would be matched up with former league MVP Derrick Rose, who had been playing his best ball in years in the series up to that point.

Win the game and Cleveland is in the Eastern Conference finals. Lose it and the Cavs host a winner-take-all Game 7 just two days later with Irving’s health as a major question mark.

Right before Dellavedova trotted out towards the center circle, Irving grabbed his understudy and pulled him in to give a hug and impart a message.

“I just said, ‘Do what you do,’” Irving said, recalling the moment. What Dellavedova went on to do was score 11 of his team-high 19 points in the fourth quarter -- finishing 7-for-11 from the field and outshining Rose’s 14 points on 7-for-16 shooting -- and help propel the Cavs to a runaway victory.

As surprising a performance it was out of Dellavedova -- he had more games in the regular season when he scored zero points (11) than he did double digits (nine) -- the embrace with Irving that preceded it might have been even more unlikely when you consider how the pair’s relationship started off.

***

“Yeah, they used to f--- each other up,” said Tristan Thompson, recalling the times he’d have to play peacemaker in Cavs training camp in the fall of 2013 when Irving, the franchise player and former No. 1 pick, was matched up with Dellavedova, the undrafted rookie free agent just trying to make the team. “They used to go after it every day. There would be times when they’d be ready to fight each other.”

The distaste between them started a few months before that, in the summer, when Irving sized up Dellavedova for the first time during a pick-up game.

“I played him in the summer time and he was going into summer league, I was going into my third year and I was like, ‘Who the hell is this kid?’ I was like, I’ve never heard of him,” Irving said. “I had heard of him, because of St. Mary’s, but I had never played against him. So, I’m coming in and he just basically, every fast break, he was just fouling the s--- out of me. I was like, ‘OK, well, maybe I’ll see him in training camp.’ So, we went through training camp, every single day we went against each other and damn near almost fought every single day.”

Mike Brown, known for his lengthy practices, was coaching the Cavs at the time. More practice time meant more 1-on-1 battles between the point guards.

“Early in the season when you scrimmage more at practice, it definitely almost came to that -- having to be separated,” said Dellavedova. “But it was never [personal]. We were both just playing hard and wanting to win in practice. It’s been great for my development, having to try to guard Kyrie every day in practice.”

It wasn’t always great for Irving, at least he didn’t think so initially.

“Probably the first three months of the season he was irritated by Delly,” Thompson said, “but he realized Delly is not going to stop and it was going to make him a better player.”

Slowly, the rancor turned to respect.

“It was just the pride that he had and the pride that I had,” Irving said. “You know, I love a guy when he challenges me and I’m not going to back down and he’s not going to back down from me -- which I didn’t expect. So, that’s what really drew us a lot closer.”

***

Now, there are a lot of players in the Cavs’ locker room who express how close they feel to the team’s second-year guard from Australia.

“I’ve been telling people, Delly is the man,” said Iman Shumpert. “He’s one of those guys who comes to the gym early and leaves the gym late.”

Oftentimes when Dellavedova does lag after practice, he’ll be at a hoop with James Jones working on speeding up the release on his catch-and-shoot jumper with Jones closing out with his 6-foot-8 frame to contest the shots put up Dellavedova, generously listed at 6-foot-4. What led to Jones, born in 1980, finding a connection with Dellavedova, born in 1990?

“Listen, man, he’s a tireless worker,” said Jones. “He’s focused on this craft. Every day he comes in the gym to get better and he won’t leave until he feels like he had a day where he got better. And I’m drawn to him because he’s a young guy who has come up the hard way in this league but he’s proven to everyone that he’s a very good NBA player.”

And then Jones offered up the label that does the most to explain Dellavedova’s success story.

“Heart, man,” Jones said. “On this team, Delly embodies all heart, all hustle and all the work.”

***

Dellavedova doesn’t know what all the fuss is about when it comes to his Game 6 clincher against Chicago.

When he was asked during the postgame press conference he if ever envisioned being selected by the Cavs’ public relations staff to get the star treatment at the podium for the televised event, Dellavedova shrugged it off: “This is all the extra fluff stuff. What matters is what happens in the game.”

Similarly, he was uninterested in the fashion show aspect to it. His black jeans and dark green jacket were fine by him. He wants to run an offense not walk the runway.

“Somebody sent me a text message about that, but I mean, to be honest, that’s like an American thing,” Dellavedova said. “I couldn’t care less about my outfit -- which was, actually, it’s a nice jacket. It wasn’t just a hoodie. But I really couldn’t care less about all that other stuff. All I care about is just trying to help the team win basketball games.”

That’s what he’s done this postseason. It wasn’t just Game 6, either. In Game 2 against the Bulls he set a Cavs franchise playoff record for assists by a bench player with nine. He added nine points. Cleveland came away with the victory.

***

It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that Dellavedova has not only endeared himself to his fellow role players, but to the Cavs’ principle decision-makers in David Blatt and LeBron James as well.

Blatt said Dellavedova made an impression on him the first time they met in Las Vegas prior to summer league.

“Some guys are easy reads,” Blatt said. “He’s an easy read. I’ve coached enough guys to know.”

What stood out?

“Purposeful, attentive, motivated and very, very focused.”

Dellavedova might not have earned James’ trust quite as quickly, but it’s definitely there now.

“You don't mind a guy the way he plays, his attention to detail,” James said. “If he happens to make a mistake, you're able just to say, 'OK, he made a mistake because he's playing hard.' You can't fault that; you can't fault what he brings to the table. It's been key to our team.

“I know Kyrie is extremely happy to have a backup like that. For us as a team, we're happy to have him.”

Irving and Dellavedova were once at each others’ throats, now they have each others’ backs as they prepare to face Atlanta’s point guard tandem of Jeff Teague and Dennis Schroder in the conference finals.

“Even though [he is only in his second year], he’s older than me and he has a mature sense about him that allows him to play with a team like this,” Irving said. “It’s just, he’s going to go out and play hard, it doesn’t matter who he is playing against. He’s going to go out and give 110 percent and that’s what you want.

“I wouldn’t want a different teammate.”

The Evolution of King James

LeBron explains how he transformed himself into a ruthlessly efficient scoring machine

By Kirk Goldsberry on March 29, 2013

Just a few months after his 28th birthday, LeBron James is on the brink of his fourth NBA MVP award, joining an elite club of four-time winners restricted to Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell. But since winning his first MVP in 2008-09, LeBron's game has evolved drastically. He's a vastly different player now than the one he was in 2011. In fact, each year he's won the MVP, he's done so in a distinctive way. LeBron is a basketball scientist and his game is his laboratory; his ongoing research is returning brilliant results in awestruck gymnasiums from Boston to Los Angeles to London.

But James is not only the NBA's most valuable player, he is also the league's most versatile player. We can clearly see that LeBron is great at basketball, but we're less astute when it comes to identifying the radical shifts in his game over time. I spoke to James in Miami after the Heat beat the Detroit Pistons, their 25th consecutive win. When I asked him what he thought the biggest change in his game has been since his rookie season, he immediately honed in on his scoring. His first word says it all.

"Efficiency. I'm just a more efficient player. I take no shots for granted. When you're a young player, you cast up low-percentage shots, and you're not really involved with the numbers as much as far as field goal percentage and things of that nature. As I've grown, I've made more of a conscious effort to become a more efficient player and I think it's helped my team's success over the years."

In James's rookie year he shot 42 percent from the field and 29 percent from beyond the arc. This year those numbers are 56 percent and 39 percent, respectively. There are two reasons for that substantial improvement in his field goal percentage: (1) He's a much better shooter now, and (2) also a larger share of his shots are close to the basket now.

James won the NBA MVP in each of his last two seasons in Cleveland.

In James's last season in Cleveland his shot chart resembles that of a point guard.  James was very active in front of the basket and along both wings, where his game featured a lot of off-the-dribble 3s and long 2s. Although he shot 50 percent from the field, there was virtually no post game, and aside from a cluster at the rim, there wasn't much activity close to the basket. He was perimeter-oriented.

In his first year in a Heat uniform, James took fewer 3s and was much more active in the paint, but he was still spending a lot of time away from the basket. His early Miami patterns were similar to his Cleveland patterns: no hint of a post game; too many long 2s; his game was still too perimeter-oriented. And after losing the 2011 NBA Finals, James and coach Erik Spoelstra were more determined than ever to tweak their offensive approach.

In the last game of the 2011 Finals, James was almost listlessly loitering beyond the arc, hesitating, shying away, and failing to take advantage of his freakish stature. His last shot of those Finals was symbolic: an ill-fated 25-foot jump shot from the outskirts of the right wing — his favorite 3-point shot location that season. The next morning, newspapers and blogs didn't forget to remind us that James wasn't a clutch player. Although few would admit to it now, countless media personalities took the opportunity to opine that LeBron James simply didn't have "what it takes" to win championships in this league.

But something was about to change.

That loss, and maybe some of those demeaning characterizations, fueled one of the greatest and most important transformations in recent sports history. James was distraught, but somehow channeled that into ferocious dedication to his craft. Spoelstra was perplexed and desperate to correct course; he told me, "Shortly after our loss to Dallas in the Finals, LeBron and I met. He mentioned that he was going to work on his game relentlessly during the offseason, and specifically on his post-up game. This absolutely made sense for us. We had to improve offensively, and one of the best ways would be to be able to play inside-out with a post-up attack."

It's no secret where and when James first worked on his low-post game. Fueled by that loss to the Mavs, he went to Houston in the summer of 2011 to learn from a master: Hakeem Olajuwon.

"I wanted to get better," James said of his decision to work with Olajuwon. "I wanted to improve and I sought out someone who I thought was one of the greatest low-post players to ever play this game. I was grateful and happy that he welcomed me with open arms; I was able to go down to Houston for four and a half days; I worked out twice a day; he taught me a lot about the low post and being able to gain an advantage on your opponent. I used that the rest of the offseason, when I went back to my hometown. Every day in the gym I worked on one thing or I worked on two things and tried to improve each and every day."

Translating new moves developed in offseason workouts into actual in-game NBA improvements is deceptively difficult. James knew that working on practice moves in the gym was only half the battle.

"The biggest thing isn't how much you work on things, it's 'Can you work on something, then implement it into a game situation?'" James says. "Can you bring what you've worked on so much and put it out on the floor with the finished product? I was happy that I was able to do that and make that transformation."

After his summer workouts, James checked in with Spoelstra to let him know about his summer project. "Spo and I had a conversation. I told him how hard I worked on my low-post game. I knew we needed low-post scoring; we were more of a perimeter-oriented team my first year here, the year we lost the Finals, and I knew I had to get better, and in order for us to get better we had to be more efficient in the low post, so I took that approach."

It worked. James emerged from that summer transformed. "When he returned after the lockout, he was a totally different player," Spoelstra says. "It was as if he downloaded a program with all of Olajuwon's and Ewing's post-up moves. I don't know if I've seen a player improve that much in a specific area in one offseason. His improvement in that area alone transformed our offense to a championship level in 2012."

James's shot selection in the 2011-12 campaign was completely different, and completely dominant. For the first time in his career, his game was heavily asymmetric. James spent a lot more time on the left side of the court than the right, especially down on the left block, a spot that he now refers to as his "sweet spot." He took fewer 3s and spent most of his time closer to the basket. Good things happen for Miami when James is in the post and near the basket. Not only is he his team's leading scorer, he's its best passer and its best rebounder. LeBron's migration to the left block not only helped his scoring efficiency, it opened up space elsewhere for spot-up shooters like Shane Battier. When you study his most common shot locations before and after the Hakeem trip, it's almost like you're looking at two different players.

It's not hard to find people around the Heat who will tell you that the summer following that Finals loss to Dallas is what transformed James from a runner-up into a champion. Up through those 2011 Finals, James had yet to fully take advantage of his size and the inherent matchup nightmares he brings to every game. Battier says James is far better at exploiting that fact now.

"He understands that he's got a physical mismatch pretty much every night, and the best place to take advantage of that is on the block," he says. "He's worked at that. Scoring on the block is not a right in this league, you have to have a game down there, and he's worked on that. Now he's got a few moves that are really tough to stop down there."

The 2011 trip to Houston, and subsequent adjustments, obviously worked. The Heat beat the Thunder in the Finals, and LeBron was named the MVP of both the regular season and the Finals. But James wasn't satisfied. He recommitted himself to improving even more in the summer of 2012. This season, LeBron still loves the left block, but he's also introduced a few more tricks.

This season he's back to shooting 3s and fewer midrange shots.

"You know, I changed. I didn't shoot many 3s last year, I kind of played more in the post, and more in the midrange, but I felt like I worked on 3s enough this past offseason that I could make another change — and the least efficient shot in our game is the midrange shot — so I thought maybe I could move it out, improve my 3-point shooting, continue to work on my low-post scoring, and then leave the midrange to be my next journey."

James told me that when he was working on his 3s, he'd punish himself until he met a lofty set of self-enforced shooting milestones.

"It's work," James says. "It's a lot of work. It's being in workouts, and not accomplishing your goal, and paying for it. So, if I get to a spot in a workout and want to make eight out of 10, if I don't make eight of 10, then I run. I push myself to the point of exhaustion until I make that goal. So you build up that mentality that you got to make that shot and then use that in a game situation — it's the ultimate feeling, when you're able to work on something and implement it."

Last year James achieved that ultimate feeling by developing and implementing that left-block game. This season he's doing it with his much-improved long-range shot and his continued dominance attacking the basket and finding open shooters. "Our team is built around perimeter attacking, getting to the rim, and when guys clog up the paint, we're able to kick it out for 3s."

James is also a very good passer.  LeBron's dominance near the basket forces defenses to collapse in upon him, which opens up shots along the perimeter. The Heat decorate the perimeter with some of the league's most elite spot-up shooters, including Ray Allen and Battier. James is highly aware of the whereabouts of these teammates, and he's always cognizant of who might be open where and when. As a result, he commonly fires long passes to spot-up shooters in the corners as soon as he notices a collapsing defender.

The reintegration of his own 3-point shot is justified in part by James's newfound comfort. He's shooting 39 percent from 3-point range this season, far and away the highest such mark in his career. In Cleveland, James was frequently forced to create his own shot and rarely had good catch-and-shoot chances. That's different now.

Simply put, LeBron James remains both the NBA's most valuable and its most versatile player. He is acutely aware of his own game and his team's strategy. He continues to find new ways to integrate his own evolving talents with those of his teammates, and he makes everyone better in the process. While it's simple to label James a physical freak with outrageous basketball talents, that sells his progress, work ethic, and intelligence short. LeBron James is a basketball nerd who just happens to possess once-in-a-generation talent.

LEBRON TRAINING WITH HAKEEM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yF0vQGFpHrs