James: Cavs can take nothing for granted

By JOE VARDON

The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND

LeBron James wants the same thing from his Cavaliers teammates and the fans.

To assume nothing.

The All-Star break arrived with virtual agreement from NBA onlookers on two key points regarding the Cavs: they’re probably going to the Finals and they’re probably going to lose to the Warriors.

Cleveland has always been the favorite to repeat as East champions, and entered the break with a three-game lead over Toronto at 38-14.

Players are supposedly in a happier place because David Blatt is gone, the team has a chance to improve itself via trade before Thursday’s deadline, and Kyrie Irving seems to be rounding into form after a slow start coming back from knee surgery.

Of course, the Warriors could wind up as the best regular-season team in NBA history. They’re 48-4, a game ahead of the Chicago Bulls’ 72-win pace in 1996. Golden State took both games from the Cavs this season, including a 34-point drubbing at The Q last month.

James insists that his teammates (and would like it if fans and media did the same) ignore the eye test, worry only about the present and use history as a reminder that nothing — neither a berth in the Finals nor a loss to the Warriors when they get there — is guaranteed.

“What I do is, when I come into the practice facility every day, there’s sports anything on, I turn it off, because I don’t need that venom in my guys’ minds, or whatever’s being talked about, if it’s good or bad,” James said. “We need to have our blinders on from everything to the outside. There’s so much talk for us about what we should be, we should do this, we shouldn’t do that.

“The only thing that matters is what we come together and talk about, and how we prepare every single night, and that our coaching staff put us in position to win.”

Again, history is on James’ side.

In the Cavs’ run to the Finals last season, they trailed the Bulls two games to one in an Eastern Conference semifinal. Chicago was hosting Game 4, and jumped out to an 11-point lead with 42.9 seconds left in the third quarter.

The Cavs were already missing Kevin Love for the rest of the playoffs. The Bulls were 12 minutes and nearly 43 seconds from going up 3-1 in the series, pushing James’ team to the brink of elimination.

Of course, the Bulls blew the lead, the refs missed Blatt’s attempt to call a timeout when he didn’t have one, and James buried a shot at the buzzer that tied the series at two.

The Cavs didn’t lose again until the Finals, but they were closer than perhaps people remember to losing in the second round. What people do recall is Cleveland running our of bodies and gas against the Warriors, falling 4-2 without Love or Irving because of season-ending surgeries.

But Game 1 of the Finals was tied at 98 with 30 seconds left. James missed a stepback jumper with 3.8 seconds left that could’ve won the game in regulation. Iman Shumpert missed his last-ditch effort at a putback. If either of those shots go in, Irving doesn’t break his kneecap in overtime of Game 1. The Cavs won games 2 and 3 without Irving, and of course there’s no guarantee they would’ve won those games had Game 1 gone differently.

But, one could argue the Cavs were a missed jumper from being up 3-0 against the Warriors, virtually guaranteeing a Finals victory.

The brink of defeat, the edge of glory. Neither the Cavs nor you have any real way of knowing where they will stand come June.

“I shouldn’t have to remind (teammates) that we was down 2-1 to Chicago, that we was up 2-1 in the Finals,” James said. “We coulda easily lost to Chicago or we coulda won in the Finals, so we’ve been on both sides.”