CLEVELAND — The smell always gets you. It is usually champagne, and it is usually quite strong. In this case, it went beyond pungent.
Cinder block walls could not contain the smell of Mumm Napa Brut Reserve emanating from the locker room of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors. You could smell it outside the locker room 15 minutes after the trophy presentation had concluded, and a half-hour later you could smell it down the hallway outside the Cleveland Cavaliers’ locker room, where LeBron James was slumped shirtless at his locker, a towel draped over his head and his feet soaking in buckets of ice, mounds and mounds of uneaten sushi piled high nearly.
Eventually, the smell even made it through the Cavs’ own locker room door.
No one had an exact count as to how many bottles of Napa Brut were sprayed around the visiting locker room, but dozens of empty bottles littered the floor. The plastic sheeting protecting players’ individual lockers had broken free in several spots, and the mirror on a wall at the center of the room was covered in drippings from the revelry. You simply cannot imagine how strong the smell was.
Strength, of course, was the defining characteristic of the Warriors in this championship series. The strength to come back with three straight victories after falling behind 2-1; the strength to overcome the greatest player in the game; the strength to go deep into their reserves to get big contributions from the likes of Leandro Barbosa and Shaun Livingston and David Lee and even Festus Ezeli, whose 11 minutes were 11 more than former starter Andrew Bogut logged in the clincher.
And let’s not forget that the Warriors’ reserves were formerly populated by Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, whose play in this series on both ends of the court made the difference for a Golden State team that got sporadic bursts from Steph Curry and Draymond Green but received relatively little from Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes and were led by a wily veteran who spent the majority of his NBA career getting ripped in Philadelphia for never being quite as good, or quite as endearing, as Allen Iverson.
“Their plan was to take Steph away, take Klay away and force Draymond and Andre to beat them. And Andre did,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “You can make an argument that it could have gone to Steph, it could have gone to LeBron. But for us it’s really fitting that the award went to Andre, because he sacrificed his starting role from the first game of the season.
“An All-Star, an Olympian saying ‘OK, I’ll come off the bench,’ it set the tone for everything we were able to accomplish. So it feels full circle for me that Andre received the award. Couldn’t happen to a better person.”
Iguodala is one of the most well-spoken and thoughtful players in the entire league, a font of insight and talent that is hard to come across in too many places. You need talented players to win, and you need smart players, and when you can find a player who is a combination of the two, a player who can get the job done on both ends of the court, he can be invaluable.
Iggy finished with 25 points, five rebounds and five assists, making three 3-pointers (the same number as Curry) while serving as the primary defender on James, who had 32 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists yet was too deferential on the offensive end despite taking 33 shots. Yes, that seems harsh, but this was a night when the Cavs needed him to score 50.
They were getting nothing whatsoever from the perimeter until J.R. Smith cut an 11-point deficit to four in the final minute, and this loss will be remembered as much for who the Cavs were playing without (Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, Anderson Varejao) as who they were playing with (Matthew Dellavedova, James Jones, Iman Shumpert). They should be back in the Finals next year, and coming this close is sure to make them hungrier.
Still, the loss stung especially hard because this was a Cavs team that was running on fumes at the end. Coach David Blatt made all the wrong adjustments (none bigger than benching his second-best player, Timofey Mozgov, for all but 10 minutes of Game 5) and was outcoached by Kerr and his staff. If the Cavs make it back to the finals a year from now, don’t be surprised if Tyronn Lue has taken over the helm somewhere along the way.
Blatt could have made some sort of tactical adjustment when Game 6 was slipping away (intentionally fouling Iguodala was Unused Option No. 1), or some sort of personnel adjustment (Jones playing 27 minutes was his biggest), but he did neither. I expected better from him.
When it ended, the Warriors were rightfully ecstatic. A 40-year wait for Bay Area basketball fans had ended, while the Cleveland drought will be extended from 51 to 52 years.
Warriors assistant Alvin Gentry walked to the locker room with a friend on either arm. “Tonight, we drink,” he proclaimed.
Draymond Green came down the hallway yelling to no one in particular: “Game 7? What’s that?”
A Cavaliers employee told him, “You didn’t do nothing.”
“Didn’t do nothing? A triple-double is nothing?”
The employee did not respond. Green got the last word, and then he got inside that locker room and got drenched in Mumm Napa.
Curry followed moments later, holding the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Iguodala was right behind him, his MVP trophy clutched tightly in his left hand.
Next came assistant Luke Walton, who was warned, “Take your suit jacket off!”
The revelry went on for a while, the smell of the champagne lingering and spreading. The party later moved to Morton’s.
Great night to be a Warrior. Nasty night to be a Cav. And depending on your perspective, the odor in the air was one of two things: Sweetness, or a stench. But I’ve got to tell you, it was the most powerful and pungent smell I’ve ever experienced at an NBA Finals.
Being there to witness it, as always, certainly did not stink.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.