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December 23, 2015With a name like that, looking like that, from a college like that, it would have been no surprise if Matthew Dellavedova never became a real NBA player. He might have had a couple big moments like Boobie Gibson or hung around the league like Alonzo Gee, but becoming a known commodity was a long shot, never mind playing — starting! — in the NBA Finals. The undrafted St. Mary’s Gael was a better bet to wind up on Inside the NBA‘s “Who He Play For,” the occasional segment that quizzes Charles Barkley on the whereabouts of the league’s most well-traveled journeymen.
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Dellavedova’s rookie year foretold no great career. He played 72 games for an aimless 32-win Cavs team that, in retrospect, made absolutely no sense — No. 1 pick Anthony Bennett! Free agent signee Andrew Bynum! Jarrett Jack! Luol Deng! Henry Sims! Carrick Felix! Delly tried real hard, and that was enough for him to get the seventh-most minutes on the team. Still, he wasn’t all that good: 4.7 points and 2.6 assists per game, 41 percent shooting, 37 percent on threes. Even the most ardent supporter couldn’t look at those numbers and say yeah, I think this guy could be a meaningful player on a Finals team.
But then a few funny things happened to the kid erroneously referred to by many as “Delladova.” He stopped being teammates with Bynum and Jack and started being teammates with LeBron and Kevin. David Blatt took over for Mike Brown and took a shine to young Delly. After missing a month due to a sprained MCL, Delly played heavy minutes upon his return. As the Cavs sputtered, the All-Stars struggled to get along, and David Blatt only occasionally seemed to know what he was doing, Delly was on the court steady plugging away. He played over 20 minutes a game and, even though he shot an impressively bad 31 percent inside the three-point line, started filling a role on a newly starry squad.
This is all prelude, of course. The 2015 NBA Playoffs doubled as the Delly Coronation Ball. He didn’t play much in the series sweep of Boston — never more than 15 minutes in a game — but Kevin Love’s injury meant the rotation had to be shaken up. The Cavs by and large played smaller, which meant more time for the (now bearded) 6-4 Australian. He played a whopping 36 minutes in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semis against the Bulls, notching a respectable nine points and nine assists. He scored 10 points in 16 minutes in Game 3, which ended with a Derrick Rose buzzer beater that had the Cavs on the ropes. He didn’t do much in Games 4 or 5 — aside from get in a skirmish that resulted in Taj Gibson’s ejection — which only served to set the stage for what came next.
Game 6. Chicago. The United Center. It was win or go home — stay home, rather — for the Bulls, long among the league’s toughest teams. No way they would let the Cavs push them around in a do-or-die situation, especially not on on their own floor. That was the narrative, anyway. The Cavs won by 21, led — led! — by Delly. Here’s part of what I wrote after that game:
In Game 6 of a tightly contested playoff series featuring LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Derrick Rose, and Jimmy Butler, Matthew Dellavedova had the defining performance. The St. Mary’s grad scored 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting, including three three-pointers and 11 fourth-quarter points. He registered a plus-minus of plus-21, third-highest on the team behind Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith. He played 34 minutes, many of them necessitated by Kyrie Irving’s re-injury,1 and he played legitimately well. His shot-making in the fourth quarter put the Bulls away, and I have to think that Chicago was particularly deflated by the fact that it was a scrappy reserve putting the nail in their coffin.
Dispatching the Bulls meant a meeting with the Hawks, which came and went with relatively little incident. Kyrie sat out Games 2 and 3, which resulted in a heavy workload for Dellavedova. He was far from great — he shot 9-of-28 in those two games — but the Cavs won anyway. He kept on defending, kept on spreading the floor, kept on catching and shooting, and the Cavs were on their way to the grandest stage in basketball, the NBA Finals.
Forget about how the series ended, because for the purposes of this conversation, it doesn’t matter. The Cavs took two games off the best team in the league, and Delly’s play was instrumental — instrumental! — in their doing so.
In Game 2, he harassed Stephen Curry into a 5-of-23 shooting night, his worst of the entire season. Curry had six turnovers and five assists. Was it all Delly’s doing? Surely not. Curry missed some shots that he would normally make, and the Cavs help defense had plenty to do with it. But you can’t look at the tape and say that it was all just dumb luck. Delly was out there, man. Steph got his looks, but he had to work for every single one of them. From the moment the ball was inbounded until the Cavs secured the rebound, Delly went chest to chest with the MVP.
As for his next trick, how about scoring 20 points? There have been 198 players in the history of the NBA who have scored 20-plus in a Finals game. Matthew Dellavedova is one of them. Can you even begin to understand that? He has scored 20 points in an NBA Finals game as many times as David Robinson, Hall of Famer. Delly did at home in a game that put the Cavs ahead in the series, 2-1. If ever I were granted the powers of a deity, I might have ended the whole world right there. It doesn’t get any better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf2V0E8S-hw
It was just insane. The Cavs lost, and Delly’s 20 could end up going down as one of the great aberrations in NBA history. But man — the crowd was chanting DEL-LY, DEL-LY, and rightfully so. My perception of the entire thing was and is colored by my completely cornball love of underdogs who fight their asses off, but so what? We don’t watch sports because we want to see something we’ve seen a hundred times before. We watch them for the underdogs. We watch them because we want to believe in the impossible. We watch them because we like to live vicariously through the players. We watch them in hopes that we’ll see something that we could never imagine happening. We watch them because we want to see the guys that never should have made it, make it. Delly’s playoff run touched on all those nerves.
The Cavs brought him back, and he’s gotten better. As of this writing, he’s sinking 46 percent of his threes — and almost 45 percent of his twos! No longer do we have to wonder if Delly is going to stick in the league. He’s made it. He’s a real NBA player. That plucky bastard’s 2015 was one of the most compelling sports years I can remember. I hope he stays at it for 10 more years. Based on what we’ve seen so far, that might be selling the kid from Maryborough short.
- Kyrie tweaked his ankle early in Game 6 when he stepped on Tristan Thompson’s foot. [↩]
1 Comment
Great article.