Until he finally moved to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, LeBron James had spent his entire career playing in the Eastern Conference in the NBA. His two stints with the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as his well-publicized time with the Miami Heat, produced numerous Eastern Conference titles and trips to the Finals, as well as 3 championships for the King.
During this time, LeBron was the scourge of all the teams in the conference. He made it out of the East every season from 2010-11 to 2017-18, 8 trips to the NBA Finals in a row. There were other good teams in the East at that point that got simply shut out, the Boston Celtics with their Big 3, the Atlanta Hawks that won 60 games, Paul George’s Indiana Pacers, and of course, the Toronto Raptors in the later seasons.
James dominated them all, and the players that were star performers on those teams probably hated the sight of him at that point. The Cavaliers swept the Hawks in the 2015 playoffs en route to the Finals. And next season, when the two matched up again in the postseason, Jeff Teague seemed adamant that it would turn out differently this time.
“Not this year. Not this year.”
LeBron James had destroyed the Atlanta Hawks in the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals, averaging 30 points per game and nearly a triple-double to sweep the team with impunity. So it’s understandable that Jeff Teague didn’t want it to be the same story when the two faced off again the next season. However, it somehow became worse for them.
The Cavaliers beat the Hawks by a point differential of 10.75 points per game in the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals. After Teague said it would be different the next year, the Hawks went on to lose by 12.5 points per game to the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with only one game being close at the end. This is an excellent example of exactly why it’s simply not the best idea in the world to doubt LeBron James or talk too much trash before everything is said and done.
