Former Cavaliers wing Iman Shumpert isn’t letting Kevin Durant off the hook for how the 2016 NBA landscape changed.
Appearing on Gil's Arena, Shumpert pointed directly at Durant’s decision to sign with the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2016 and blamed it for costing him more championship chances. “You the reason I missed out on two rings dog. It was your fault,” Shumpert said.
The timing of Durant’s move still sits at the center of the story. Cleveland had just beaten the 73-9 Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals, becoming the first team in league history to erase a 3-1 deficit in the Finals. Then Golden State added Durant to a core already built around Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala, turning the roster into a powerhouse.
That version of the Warriors ended up knocking off the Cavaliers in both the 2017 and 2018 NBA Finals, with Durant earning Finals MVP honors each time. Durant had already been on the other side of another painful collapse too: his Oklahoma City Thunder held a 3-1 lead over the Warriors in the 2016 Western Conference Finals before losing the series in seven games, after which Durant headed to Golden State. The move has long been viewed as the weakest in NBA history.
Shumpert was in the middle of all of it. He played in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 NBA Finals with Cleveland, and the Cavaliers went 1-2 against the Warriors in those series. Cleveland later traded him to the Sacramento Kings at the 2018 NBA trade deadline.
The article also notes how much the Cavaliers’ path changed after those Finals runs. Kyrie Irving asked out in the summer of 2017 and was traded to the Boston Celtics, while LeBron James left Cleveland for the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 2018.
LeBron’s name came up again because many expected him to return to Cleveland this summer after leaving the Lakers. Instead, he signed a two-year deal with the Philadelphia 76ers.
That move closed the door on another possible Cavaliers reunion, and LeBron made it clear he sees Philadelphia as the end of the road. “This is my last decision,” LeBron wrote on social media.
“I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family.
What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice.
I still want to work. I still want to grind.
I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship.”
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The caveat is where the picture gets murkier. ESPN pointed to weaker marks in draft assets, money and market categories, the kind of areas that can quietly shape a contenders next move, especially with a core built around James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Peyton Watson, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. The talent is there, but the concern hanging over Cleveland is how much flexibility it will have to keep building around it. [Read more 🡒]