TORONTO -- It was early January and David Griffin was desperate.
The Cleveland Cavaliers' general manager already built a championship team, sure. But he had no interest in becoming a one-hit wonder.
Griffin looked out across the league with the Cavs' rival, the Golden State Warriors, adding the likes of all-everything Kevin Durant and additional difference-makers in Zaza Pachulia, David West and JaVale McGee and the San Antonio Spurs replacing Tim Duncan with Pau Gasol while riding the steadily improving Kawhi Leonard, and felt the surge of stress from the threat they would surely pose down the line.
Unless he found some more talent for his top-heavy roster, there would be no back-to-back Larry O'Brien trophies; no transforming hard-luck Cleveland into a Title Town; no budding dynasty in the making. There would only be a city's and a team's crushing disappointment and the stigma that would follow him personally as being the man responsible for the biggest payroll in NBA history falling short.
After canvassing the league for months for potential help, Griffin finally found a deal to land the Cavs a former All-Star in Kyle Korver, while simultaneously shipping out the underperforming Mike Dunleavy and the injured Mo Williams to free up an another spot on the roster to eventual fill with another capable piece in Deron Williams.
Just like the pair of moves he pulled off in 2014-15 to acquire Timofey Mozgov, JR Smith and Iman Shumpert long before the trade deadline, Griffin was moving on the Korver deal with urgency. There was no time to wait, not when your assets are limited and the rest of the league looks at your team as a target. Not to mention that a guy like Korver, widely regarded as one of the greatest shooters of all time, does not hit the market often. Griffin was holed up on a road trip in a hotel room at the Camby in Phoenix and hoping for some karmic intervention. He turned to "Ride the Pain," a 2005 pop song by the recording artist Juliet that reached No. 1 on the dance charts in both the U.K. and the U.S., to be the soundtrack to send the trade home.
"Ride the pain into the pleasure ... Don't stop now with the pressure ... Can't explain with an answer ... Ride the pain into the pleasure."
This was not Griffin's Pandora station throwing him for a loop. Juliet goes by Juliet Korver these days -- Kyle's wife.
"I started to fear the deal might fall apart," Griffin told ESPN. "Played it all night."
The song worked. The trade went through. And four months later, Korver had his best night with the Cavaliers yet, pouring in 14 points off the bench in Cleveland's 115-94 win over the Toronto Raptors to help the Cavs go up 3-0 in their Eastern Conference semifinals series. Eleven of those points came in the second half, as the Cavs turned a three-point deficit at the break into a commanding lead in the series with a chance to sweep Sunday.
"He's automatic," said LeBron James, who turned in another stellar postseason performance with 35 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists. "When [Korver] steps on the floor, eyes have to be on him. ... Just his ability to be out on the floor just helps us all out offensively because it just creates more space. From the time we got him all the way to now, and as we continue to play throughout the postseason, he's been huge for our ballclub."
As automatic as Korver's shot might be -- with a career 43.1 percent mark from deep and the fifth-most made 3s in league history -- his first steps with the team were as uneasy as that sleepless night for Griffin in Phoenix.
He shot just 2-for-10 combined in his first two games with the Cavs and missed all five 3-pointers he shot. The isolation-heavy offense the Cavs were running was nothing like the off-ball cuts and motion he was used to in Atlanta. James and Kyrie Irving, seeing their new toy go to waste, held the team back for extra work at several shootarounds to make sure Korver was comfortable with them and they were comfortable with Korver.
"I knew what he was capable of, but it didn't start off the way I think all of us expected it to start," Irving told ESPN. "We let him know what our language is and what our schemes are going forward and what we expect from one another, especially on the defensive end, because I know that coming from Atlanta, a lot of our schemes aren't tailor-fitted like it is in Atlanta. We have very different schemes because we have unbelievable athletes and we can make up a lot of ground for how great we are defensively when we're focused."
Korver even got into the act in Cleveland's defense, which held the Raptors to just 43.7 percent shooting and kept its opponent under 100 points for the first time all playoffs, with two blocked shots in Game 3.
"You don't get to play in the fourth quarter unless you play defense," Korver said. "I've learned that over the years."
He also has learned that he can help the team just as much when he takes seven shots -- as he did Friday -- as he does when he takes one, as he did in the first-round opener against Indiana. The Cavs are 7-0 in the postseason and Korver has been vital in all of those victories, be it through his points or his mere presence.
"I think my role means some days there's shots, like tonight there was a few shots, and some days it's just, how do we get [James and Irving] more space?" Korver told ESPN. "My role a lot of times is how do I help the great players be greater?"
Kind of the same thing that was going through Griffin's mind that night in Phoenix. There has been a lot more pleasure than pain in the Cavs' postseason run so far.
source : espn
source : espn
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