When people are asked to name the important Cleveland Cavaliers players from the 2016 championship team, who do they usually say?
LeBron James and Kyrie Irving are usually the first two players who come to mind and sometimes Kevin Love gets mentioned in that discussion. That said, there are two players who don’t seem to nearly get the recognition that they deserve for their roles in the 3-1 comeback against the Golden State Warriors.
We’ll give those two their due for the Cavs then here.
The first one is Tristan Thompson. He didn’t really have any major scoring games in the series, albeit he did average 10.3 points and 10.1 rebounds in the series; regardless, his impact was continually felt.
First of all, he did quality work off-ball even when needed through switches on to Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry to deter passes to them while communicating it out, and Thompson did do decently in switchouts on-ball even on to Curry. Of course, Kevin Love had his legendary switchout stop on Curry, too.
Looking back at Thompson, he didn’t have any games where he scored a LeBron-level of points, but that’s not what the Cavaliers asked him to do in the series, or throughout his career with Cleveland. Nonetheless, in Game 6 of the series, the one where Curry fouled out and got ejected, Thompson had a double-double in the first half!
What this shows is that you don’t have to a LeBron-like performance to have a major impact on the series. Granted, Thompson did get credit for his 2016 Finals efforts, and generally for his efforts for the Cavs, but it’s not nearly enough for that title it seems.
And perhaps in the future, Tristan’s number 13 jersey will be hanging in the rafters at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse; at the moment, he’s currently on the Boston Celtics, for what it’s worth.
You never know, though, it could happen once he retires by the Cleveland Cavaliers. By all accounts, he deserves it.
And the second player that deserves their share of recognition for their work done in the 2016 NBA Finals W over Golden State is Richard Jefferson.
He wasn’t even going to play with the Cavaliers originally, as he was actually supposed to play for the Dallas Mavericks. However, when LeBron came back to Cleveland, and after a deal fell through with DeAndre Jordan, the Mavs allowed Jefferson to get out of his re-signing deal, so he could sign with the Cavs.
During the 2016 Finals against Golden State, Love never really had that breakout game that perhaps people were expecting from him. He didn’t even play in Game 3 of the series because of a concussion that he suffered in a 110-77 blowout loss at Oracle Arena in Game 2.
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This meant that Jefferson would start in his place. Love was back and able to play in Game 4 of the series, but Jefferson still started and Love came off the bench.
Similar to Tristan, RJ, who 5.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per outing in the series, never had a big scoring game that fans will remember from the series.
But, as explained with Thompson, if you can contribute in other ways then you don’t have to score a tremendous amount of points. Jefferson’s veteran presence alone seemed to bring a calming force to the team even in the two blowouts in Games 1 and 2 of the series.
Jefferson make the right plays at the right time whether that was making a pass to set up a teammate for a mid-range jump shot or perhaps it was making a shot of his own. He made some plays down the stretch in games as well, and defensively, did a quality job on the wing, and had 1.3 steals per outing.
Now, did he make the game-winning shot in Game 7? No, that was Kyrie Irving, whose shot was otherworldly and arguably the best one in NBA Finals history, at least it was according to our own Dan Gilinsky. But again, Jefferson helped in other ways.
Both Tristan Thompson and Richard Jefferson were integral pieces of the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers’ comeback from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the greatest regular-season team in NBA history, in the Golden State Warriors.
If either of them weren’t on the team, the Cavaliers don’t win the title.