Going up against Steph Curry and Klay Thompson in 2016, while both were arguably at their prime, would be a level of intimidation that very few of today’s NBA stars would get. But the Cleveland Cavaliers that year had to give it their best shot. They had lost to the Warriors in the Finals the year before, and back-to-back losses would have hurt team morale, possibly beyond repair. Iman Shumpert, a member of that squad, recently spoke about his preparations leading up to that matchup.
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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. In a nutshell, Allen wanted him to be as physical as possible, and the now-35-year-old’s revelation hints that life was very difficult for the Warriors duo in that Finals.
On the All In podcast, 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 running all through the game. He running everywhere.”
Shumpert added, “He said, it’s gonna feel like, sometimes you 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, as Shumpert further revealed. He even admitted 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.”
This strategy admittedly worked. Yes, the Warriors had a 3-1 lead early 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.
Regardless, 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,” Shumpert said about the Warriors legends.
To date, it remains the last championship the Cavs won. Shumpert’s defense, combined with Allen’s advice, played a huge role in that victory.
