The Blueprint

An unputdownable, must-have sports book for every LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers, and NBA fan. June 19, 2016: the greatest moment in Cleveland sports history, when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Finals and broke the Cleveland Curse. It was the triumph fans had been waiting fifty-two years for, and it wasn’t easy to get there--but thanks to LeBron James, an audacious plan to build a winning team, a couple of maverick GMs, and an incredible community of fans, it happened; and 2016 saw the birth of a new Cavaliers dynasty. But how did they get there? It was a roller-coaster ride from tragedy to triumph, one that Jason Lloyd, a longtime Northeast Ohio resident turned reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal , got to see firsthand. He was witness to the Blueprint, as he calls it, which the Cavs put together to win their star player back from Miami and build a team that could win the ultimate championship. It incorporated several losing seasons, some high-risk draft picks, and an entirely new understanding of how to build a championship team. The best part of the plan is that it worked, culminating in the most exciting Finals series in NBA history. And, most important, the end of the Cleveland Curse. Jason Lloyd, a true insider, tells the story of how the NBA really works, and how everyone--from the front office to the stars on the court to the new generation of coaches--worked together to create an unforgettable winning team.

Praise for The Blueprint

“[An] energetic, detailed slice of basketball history... Lloyd’s intoxicatingly thorough reporting allows readers to grasp the difficulty in assembling a team—even one featuring a legend.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] brilliant book, one that takes the reader back through the many momentous moments over the past several seasons in Cavaliers history...Lloyd masterfully tells a truly compelling story of the fall, and subsequent rise, of the Cavaliers.”—Tim Bontemps, The Washington Post

“In the tradition of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (2003), journalist Lloyd traces how the Cleveland Cavaliers, after re-signing LeBron James, captured the NBA championship in 2015–16.”—Booklist

“I couldn’t put down The Blueprint...this book will interest anyone whose team has had a long championship drought.”—Library Journal

“A very personal account of the return of LeBron James to Cleveland in 2014 and of the Cavaliers' NBA championship in 2016... [Lloyd] tells several interlocking stories: James' decision to leave the team, the four intervening years when the Cavs' front office began plotting to get him back, the arrival of key players (especially Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, and J.R. Smith)... and, of course, that championship that erased decades of frustration for Cleveland sports fans.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is a book about basketball, but also about hope and loss and redemption and what happens when the impossible somehow becomes real. Page after page, Lloyd expertly pulls back the curtain on all the private moments that coalesced to give Cleveland something more than a miracle: its first major championship in more than half a century.”—Rachel Nichols, ESPN
 
“In 2011, Jason Lloyd told me LeBron was coming back to Cleveland. 2011! That's how deeply ingrained he is with this franchise, this athlete and this story, a modern epic he was hard-wired to tell.”—Lee Jenkins, Sports Illustrated

Auteur
Jason Lloyd is a lifelong resident of Northeast Ohio. He has covered the World Series, the NCAA Tournament, the BCS National Championship Game, and the NBA Finals; and he has won several state and national awards for his work covering the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Cleveland Cavaliers. He has also worked for ESPN.com, Lindy’s Sports, Cleveland Magazine, and CBSSports.com. He and his wife, Alessia, live in Avon Lake, Ohio, with their three children.

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Chapter 1

In the Beginning, King James Version

Cleveland sports is littered with tales of sadness, devastation, and heartbreak. But it wasn't always that way. Cleveland teams had a proud tradition of success in the early nineteenth century up through the NFL's Cleveland Browns championship in 1964. The following fifty years, however, contained so many magnificent disasters that they were given their own legendary names, such as "the Shot," "the Drive," and "the Fumble."

LeBron James was supposed to change all of that. The phenom who grew up just down the road from Cleveland in Akron was regarded as basketball's best prospect by his junior year of high school. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated for the first time as a junior at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary and was declared "the Chosen One" and the next great NBA superstar. James was ready to soar. And the Cleveland Cavaliers wanted to go with him.

During the 1998-99 basketball season, just as LeBron was getting media attention, the Cavs began losing more games than they were winning. They were sliding into NBA mediocrity, not good enough to compete for championships and not bad enough to draft elite talent. The teams with the worst records have the best chance at high draft picks, so in the NBA landscape, the absolute worst place to be is stuck in the middle. By the time James was entering his senior year of high school, it was clear he was the top talent available in an elite 2003 draft class that had scouts, coaches, and general managers swooning.

"Heading into that lottery and that draft, there was a lot of preparation that took place internally regarding the outcome of the lottery," Cavs senior vice president of communications Tad Carper said. "That draft was one of the strongest ever. History has proven that to be the case. We knew that going in. This was a loaded, powerful draft and we knew it was going to be a game-changing situation for us."

Carmelo Anthony was a freshman who guided Syracuse to a national championship. Chris Bosh was the ACC Rookie of the Year, leading Georgia Tech in scoring, rebounding, blocks, and field-goal percentage. Dwyane Wade was an explosive combo guard out of Marquette who kept rising on draft boards throughout the predraft process. Darko Milii was a tantalizing European who dazzled during workouts. In all, the 2003 draft produced nine All-Stars and two NBA Finals MVPs. The jewel of the draft, however, was James. And the Cavs were determined to do everything possible to get him.

The Cavs had swung and missed badly at acquiring a superstar when they traded for Shawn Kemp in 1997 and signed him to the seven-year, $107 million deal his former team, the Seattle SuperSonics, refused to give him. As Kemp's weight ballooned north of three hundred pounds and his play deteriorated, the Cavs regretted giving him the deal almost immediately and spent at least two years trying to get out from under it. They finally did in 2000, dumping the last four years and $71 million on the Portland Trail Blazers. Removing the bloated Kemp erased the only star off the roster, and fan interest was waning. The Cavs faced the same problem the NBA in general battled at the time: a lack of star power.

Ratings had steadily declined following Michael Jordan's retirement in 1998. More than twenty-nine million people had tuned in that year to watch Jordan topple the Utah Jazz and win his sixth NBA championship. Ratings plummeted after that, and by the time James was a senior in high school in 2003, less than ten million watched the San Antonio Spurs beat the New Jersey Nets for the franchise's second championship. In Cleveland, attendance was down, and so were the gate receipts. The Cavs were losing more than $1 million a month. Cleveland, and the rest of the league, desperately hoped the …