Iman Shumpert’s most successful season in the league came when he joined the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2015, helping the team win a championship in his very first year with the franchise. Shumpert was a part of the team led by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving and overturned a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, something which had never been done before.
The Cavs faced the Warriors in 4 consecutive NBA Finals, the first of which Shumpert wasn’t in Cleveland for. He was part of the Cavaliers from 2015 to 2018 and endured one win and one loss against the Warriors on the biggest stage. And while that kind of rivalry always leads to some less than pleasant feelings about your opponents, Shumpert recently revealed that he has a completely different reason for not liking the Warriors.
(starts at 2:19 minutes):
Vlad: “You hated that team. When you were playing them.”
Iman Shumpert: “Yeah, hell yeah. I’m supposed to hate them. The basketball Gods told me to hate them, it’s like, I was supposed to hate them with all my heart.”
Vlad: “What was it about them that you hated so much?”
Iman Shumpert: “They was a different version of basketball… It was different. How we all learned is how, it’s like that traditional way of life. Why not go and get the easy points at the rim and as you start heating up and getting more of a feel, then you shoot your deep shot.
“And they had completely butchered that mold, like, ‘When the jump ball goes off, we hot from three’. That pissed me off. Cuz I didn’t think to do that as a kid, so it was a bit of that. Why didn’t I think to do that?”
Shumpert isn’t the only player in the league with reason to be a little envious of the Warriors, their style of play, combined with having legends like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, set them apart in recent seasons. And the hate for them will only grow if they can get another NBA title this season. As it is, they find themselves just one win away from making it to the NBA Finals, and Luka Doncic seems to have accepted that the series is over too.
