Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA title, beating highly favoured Golden State Warriors 4-3 in the finals. The achievement is remarkable in many counts...
“Discipline: Do what has to be done; when it has to be done; as well as it can be done; do it that way all the time”
This quote is inscribed on the walls of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School at Aakron, near Cleveland, where Lebron James once studied. The city of Cleveland was rather timid to embrace the saying on the wall in the field of sports. The city fields teams in most of the major sports: Cleveland Browns in the National Football League, Cleveland Indians in the Major League Baseball and Cleveland Cavaliers in the National Basketball League (NBA). Until this year, there had not been any titles for the city teams during the last 50 years or so. It all changed this year. Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA title, beating highly favoured Golden State Warriors 4-3 in the finals.
The achievement is remarkable in many counts. It was the first time a team winning after going down 3-1 in the finals. The team was not even among the hot favourites’ list prior to the season. Their opponents Golden State Warriors was in sensational form till the final three games of the season. Above all, the triumph of Cleveland is the victory of that important virtue: Discipline. This article is the story of that triumph.
THE BEGINNING
The story must begin in 2014, two years before the actual victory happened. Lebron James was with Miami Heat then. Heat had been in the finals for four straight years: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. They lost in 2011, but won in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, Miami Heat team lost the NBA title to San Antonio Spurs, a team they had beaten 4-3 in the previous finals thanks to some out-of-the-world heroics from James. This time James was unable to repeat the magic and Spurs comfortably won 4-1. All the media attention surrounding the San Antonio team’s triumph was evaporated when James made that all-important declaration: he was leaving Miami Heat and joining Cleveland Cavaliers.
This story is from the July 2016 edition of Sports Plus.
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This story is from the July 2016 edition of Sports Plus.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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