CLEVELAND – When the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors reconvene for Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday night, watch Richard Jefferson during the first timeout.
That, as much as anywhere else, is where you’ll see what it takes for a 35-year-old who’s in his 15th season to make this kind of impact on this kind of stage.
“Last night (in the Cavs’ 120-90 win in Game 3), when my body was sore, and I had nothing left, and during timeouts I’m just sitting on the bench because I need to just save every bit of energy I have,” Jefferson, who had nine points and eight rebounds in 33 minutes while starting for the absent Kevin Love, told USA TODAY Sports. “During timeouts, you can’t be standing up. The minute and a half that they give us, you try to sit there the whole time, because you’re playing to exhaustion, you’re playing until there’s absolutely nothing left. Those little bitty moments – sitting for a minute vs. standing for a minute – those things add up over the course of the game.”
Regardless of what Cavs coach Tyronn Lue does with this Love quandary – either keeping Jefferson in the lineup, as is expected, or putting Love back into his old role once he clears the concussion tests that kept him out of Game 3 – Jefferson’s impact on this Cavs’ recovery is undebatable. Raise your hand if you saw this one coming (this hand, for the record, remains down).
Even before Love suffered the Game 2 concussion that forced him out of Game 3, Jefferson was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak loss. Jefferson’s aggression on both ends continued in Game 3, when he set the tone during that early run that ignited the Cavs’ home crowd – a rebound, a drawn foul on Draymond Green, and a three-pointer for the 9-0 lead that prompted a Warriors timeout and led to Jefferson shouting “Let’s (expletive) go!” over and over again.
There is an irony to this, too, as Jefferson was with the Warriors for parts of two seasons before his departure helped put them on this championship path. In the summer of 2013, he was the salary cap casualty they needed in order to sign small forward Andre Iguodala.
He had mentored the likes of Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, and Ian Clark while clicking with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. And now, after that trade to Utah was followed by a season in Dallas and this Cleveland connection, he’s the wise old man whose combination of competitive fire and do-everything play has them right back in this series.
“He has kind of brought them a spark when it wasn’t quite there,” Iguodala said so perfectly.
The most impressive part, the thing that needs to be discussed even beyond Love’s uncertain part in the Cavs’ basketball theatre, is that Jefferson is making this look easy when it is anything but. The man has logged 1,204 games (regular season and in 10 playoff appearances) 36,079 minutes, and he’s the first to admit that the tread on those wheels is getting pretty thin.
But this is a special opportunity, a chance to win the championship that has always evaded him. This is as close as he has come since those first two seasons, when his New Jersey Nets reached the Finals in back-to-back years and fell to the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs. Yet now, as he makes this shift from a role player who averaged 17.9 minutes during the regular season to a glue guy who has averaged 29.5 minutes in the past two games, the challenge is very different. And, to be frank, more tiring.
“You’ve got to work twice as hard now to slow the (physical) decline,” Jefferson continued. “When you’re 25, you’re trying to get gains. When you’re 23, you’re trying to get gains. Once you get to this point in time, you have to work twice as hard just to slow the decline, because if you don’t work that hard, then the decline comes a lot faster.
“If I’m not taking care of my body, if I’m not in shape year round. If I get off this season, and then I gain 15 pounds, and then all of a sudden I’m trying to lose that weight and now I’m having to work so hard and my body is banged up and my knees are sore because I’m carrying that extra weight. You really have to work year round just to slow the decline, probably after 30 or 31. Luckily, where I’m fortunate, is that medicine, staffs, massage therapists, there’s so much more that you have access to from when I first came in this league, it’s a whole ‘nother world.”
There’s no complaining, as Jefferson is ecstatic to be in this position. He’s just begging his body to keep pace while this late chapter of his NBA journey is over.
“It’s easy to do it for 10, 12 minutes,” Jefferson said. “People are like, ‘Hey, you look great.’ Well yeah, but that 10-12 minute stretch? I used to be able to do it for 30 minutes, for 40 minutes. So now when they ask me like, ‘Hey Richard, we need you to do that now for 30 minutes.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I’m going to do the best I can,’ because it’s just really, really difficult, and it’s tough.
“There is a satisfaction to it, but there’s also a satisfaction if it can be completed. I think that completion is what I’m really looking for. And if it’s not completed (with a championship), it hurts even more, because you’re so close to your ultimate goal.”
As if the pain of playing isn’t enough.
Follow Sam Amick on Twitter @Sam_Amick
