Only one player in Cavaliers history has worn No. 29, and his run in Cleveland was brief. Von Wafer wore it in just 37 games in 2006, but the number has still found a way to linger in Cavs lore for a lot longer than that.
A lot of the memorable 29s around Cleveland have been the painful kind. There was the 29-turnover game in 2019.
There was the night the Cavs gave up 29 threes to the Grizzlies. And there was the 29-point lead they blew to the Bulls last year.
Wafer’s NBA career stretched far beyond that short stay in Cleveland. He spent seven years in the league and wore No. 29 for eight of the nine teams he played for. The one exception came with the San Antonio Spurs, where he was part of the 2005 championship team and wore No. 11 instead.
For Wafer, the number meant something personal. He picked 29 to honor his hometown and the street he grew up on in Milwaukee, Wisconsin - the 29th Street Playground, where he learned the game.
He is now an assistant coach with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He joined the organization in 2012, moved up to assistant coach in 2019, and also served as interim head coach in 2021.
But if No. 29 is tied to one Cavaliers moment that still jumps out, it’s LeBron James’ takeover in Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals. Before his first Finals appearance, LeBron scored 29 of Cleveland’s final 30 points in a double-overtime win over the Detroit Pistons.
The game was tied 81-78 when the stretch began, and nobody besides LeBron scored after that. He poured in 29 points in the finish, capped by a tying three-pointer with 2.2 seconds left in the second overtime and then the game-winning layup that gave Cleveland a 3-2 series lead. The Cavaliers closed out the series in six games.
That night became one of the signature moments of LeBron’s early career. He was 22 years old, finished with 48 points, and those 29 points were more than all of Cleveland’s starters combined, since the starters together scored 29.
The number also shows up in another big Cavaliers season. Before finishing with the best record in the NBA, Cleveland matched the best 33-game start in league history by going 29-4. They joined the 1996 Bulls, the 2008 Celtics and the 2005 Suns on that list.
That season Kenny Atkinson won Coach of the Year after the team’s regular-season success, though the finish didn’t match the start.
Now, heading into this season, Cleveland is trying to get back to that kind of form, with a chance to have an even better offense than it did in that year.
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