Going up against Steph Curry and Klay Thompson in 2016, when both were arguably in their prime, carried another level of intimidation. But the Cleveland Cavaliers had to give it their best shot that year, after having lost to the Warriors in the Finals the year before.
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Back-to-back Finals losses would have hurt the morale of a team that was, by all means, championship caliber. Iman Shumpert, a member of that squad, recently spoke about his preparations leading up to that matchup.
Shumpert, who had joined the Cavs ahead of the 2015-16 season, turned to Tony Allen for advice on how to guard Klay and Steph. The Boston Celtics star asked Shumpert to use his body as much as his skill and basketball acumen.
Yes, Allen wanted the Cavs’ forward to be as physical as possible. And the way Shumpert spoke about it, he did make life very difficult for the Warriors duo in that Finals.
Allen recalled how he called Shumpert before the series began and asked him to ‘keep elbowing Klay’ throughout the game. With Curry, the game was a little bit more difficult and complex.
“You just gotta stay connected,” Allen said. “He [is] running all through the game. He [is] running everywhere.”
Shumpert added, “He said, it’s gonna feel like, sometimes you [are] leaving a layup open, you leave it… Whole game, I’m elbowing the rib dog, whole time, connected, hand on back.”
The frustration, evidently, piled up on Curry and Thompson. Shumpert recalled that Thompson, at times, would grab his face in desperation to get away from him because of how he stuck to him during the games.
“This is what I was telling people… We weren’t just punking people; it was a real strategy. You can find plays of Klay literally taking his hands and grabbing my face… Steph [would be like] ‘Stop playing with me, bruv, stop playing with me!’ He’d come up to me mad as hell, like sh**, he was frustrated,” said Shumpert.
This strategy worked. Yes, the Warriors had a 3-1 lead in the Finals, but Steph and Klay weren’t at their best. Curry averaged just 22 points in the series, and Thompson only 15. LeBron, fueled by his motivation to respond to Thompson’s trash-talking, inspired the Cavaliers’ comeback to win the series in seven games.
Despite the victory, Shumpert admitted he had never been more scared of a duo than Steph and Klay that year. “I blew my other assignments because I was like, I’m not letting you get a shot off, bro,” he said about the Warriors legends.
It remains the last championship the Cavs won. And Shumpert’s defense, inspired by Allen’s advice, played a huge role in that victory.
