IF THE BUZZER-BEATING 3 in Game 5 of the first round of the 2018 playoffs against the Indiana Pacers and the fast-break bank shot to win Game 3 of the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ second-round series versus the Toronto Raptors and the 51/8/8 stat line in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors are LeBron James‘ greatest hits in what he calls his greatest season, then his performance in Game 2 of the second round should certainly be considered a B-side gem.
After eking out an overtime victory on the road against the top-seeded Raptors to open the Eastern Conference semifinals, James showed in the next game why the Cavaliers — who amassed nine fewer wins in the regular seasons than Toronto — weren’t really an underdog.
On his way to 43 points, 8 rebounds and 14 assists (and just one turnover), James transformed into a midrange assassin by using precision to pick at the seams of the Raptors’ defense rather than simply pummeling them with his power.
“I remember sitting there on the bench having a very real moment of, ‘I’ll never see anything like this ever again,'” Cavs big man Larry Nance Jr. told ESPN. Nance had landed with Cleveland at the trade deadline that year and was a part of its improbable run to the Finals. “And there’s never been anything like that ever again, and there won’t be, really.”
James shot 8-for-12 on jump shots that game — his best shooting percentage on jumpers in a playoff game over the past 10 years, per GeniusIQ tracking– tossing in pull-ups, fadeaways and catch-and-shoots from all over the court.
“It was showing the full maturation of his game and the touch at that point and understanding where doubles are coming from and everything,” Nance continued. “If I’m the Raptors, I’m so happy that he’s taking these. But he’s just showing them: ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ And, dude, it was awesome.”
James and the Cavaliers didn’t win the title that season. James didn’t win one of his four MVP awards, either. But the 23-year veteran looks back at the 2017-18 campaign with fondness, saying last month on his podcast it was “best season that I had.”
No one knows whether James’ return to Cleveland with the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday will be his last. However, there are similarities between this Lakers season and the last one in which he wore a Cavaliers uniform, with James still committed to individual excellence but with the pressure of the unknown causing chaos for his current franchise.
THAT DYNAMIC for those 2017-18 Cavaliers began three months before the start of the season.
To recap: After losing the 2017 Finals to the Warriors 4-1 in June, Kyrie Irving demanded a trade out of Cleveland in July.
The Cavs, sources told ESPN, had already discussed internally a deal to send star forward Kevin Love to the Pacers for Paul George before the talented combo guard made it clear he wanted out, and Cleveland initially tried to wait out Irving’s demand.
Eventually, sources said, with Irving’s camp leveraging a potential knee procedure if he was still with the Cavs come training camp, Cleveland traded him to an Eastern Conference rival, the Boston Celtics, in August. Irving was coming off a Finals in which he averaged 29.4 points against one of the greatest teams ever assembled in Golden State.
Cleveland’s return on the deal was underwhelming: an All-Star in Isaiah Thomas, who was coming off hip surgery; a journeyman forward in Jae Crowder; an unproven big man in Ante Zizic; and the Brooklyn Nets‘ 2018 unprotected first-round pick.
The Cavs were coming off three straight Finals appearances. James personally had been to seven in a row, dating back to his Miami Heat run.
The Brooklyn pick became a sticking point behind the scenes. James and his camp wanted every advantage possible to compete for a championship. The Cavs, meanwhile, informed them that the franchise would have to hold onto the pick for a rebuild — that is, of course, unless James committed to a contract extension.
That stalemate — and the tension it caused — remained over the course of the season.
New Cleveland general manager Koby Altman brought in veteran talent on short-term deals instead: Jose Calderon, Jeff Green, Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade.
“I don’t know what you would call that team, like, the misfit team,” a Cavs source told ESPN.
It was with that backdrop that James walked onto the dais at the Cavs’ annual media day in September 2017, picked up the microphone and told reporters: “Before we get started, there’s like five different topics, six different topics that we want to talk about … Kyrie, that issue — if it is an issue; to my new teammates; to my free agency next summer; to what do I feel about the team and the upcoming season …”
He answered questions for more than 40 minutes.
THE ONE CONSTANT was his performance.
On opening night, James posted 29 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists as the Cavs beat the Celtics, with Irving’s first appearance in green and white overshadowed by Boston’s Gordon Hayward suffering a gruesome ankle injury.
Cleveland had its challenges that season:
Thomas missed the first 36 games of the season while his hip was recovering; Rose took an unexcused leave of absence from the team to go to Mexico; star forward Kevin Love experienced a panic attack at halftime of a game against the Hawks, which eventually led him to become a mental health advocate; Wade’s longtime agent, Henry Thomas, suddenly died midseason; and Tristan Thompson found himself the subject of tabloid news stories centered on his personal life.
Still, the Cavs stayed in the mix because of James.
“I think it was the confluence of, obviously, his elite athleticism, his playmaking ability, his ability to read defenses on both sides of the ball,” Love told ESPN. “That athleticism, sure. I’m saying on the other side of that, his skill and basketball mind and brain were all just converging at the same time.”
And James did something he’d never done in his first 15 seasons: play all 82 games.
“He was very consistent in speaking that into existence, that he was going to play all 82,” Love said. “He kept saying it: ‘I’m going to put it all out there. I’m going to play all 82.'”
When Thomas returned to the court, the Cavs hit a tailspin, going 6-13 from Christmas Day until just before the trade deadline.
James played every game and his numbers looked mostly the same, but that extra oomph was missing.
“LeBron wasn’t himself, obviously,” a Cavs source said.
The night before the trade deadline, James came alive with 37 points on 16-for-22 shooting, 15 assists and 10 rebounds, playing 48 minutes, 19 seconds and hitting the game winner in overtime against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The next day, Altman traded away six players and a future first-round pick in a series of three deals to completely overhaul the team.
The Cavs added George Hill, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson and Nance, and they parted with Thomas, Crowder, Wade, Rose, Channing Frye, Iman Shumpert and their own 2018 first-round pick.
One of those moves was with the Lakers — and it opened up just enough cap space for L.A. to sign James as a free agent only a few months later.
Even so, one Cavs source said, “The thing I think about with that trade deadline is, the best acquisition we got was, we got LeBron James back.”
James finished the season averaging 29.2 points on 53.4% shooting, 9.8 rebounds and 9.8 assists, and the Cavs went 19-10 with a virtually entire new team around him.
He led the Cavs in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks for the season — the second time he topped his team in all five categories. He had 18 triple-doubles, the most in a season in his career. He led the league in minutes per game and total points.
“If you ask me what was the best season that I had, where I felt the most complete as a basketball player, I would say 2018,” James said last month on an episode of his podcast, “Mind the Game,” with co-host Steve Nash.
“[The] 2017-18 season, I felt like I could do no wrong out there on the basketball floor. Offensively, defensively, I felt no flaws in my game.”
“I felt every time I stepped out on the floor, I really could do everything I wanted to do,” James continued. “All three levels. Defensively, guard all three levels. I mean, I still feel that way, but it was just another level of that in 2017-18, with the team that we had. That season right there, I felt like that was probably my most complete season.”
JAMES’ REMARKABLE PRODUCTION only amplified in the playoffs.
His 748 postseason points were the second most in league history, trailing only Michael Jordan’s 759 in 1992. James scored or assisted on 1,230 points, the most in an NBA postseason. He racked up eight 40-point games across the 22 he played, tying Jerry West’s 1965 record for the most 40-point games in a postseason.
“The playoffs came and he just put on his cape,” a Cavs source said.
Right up there with the aforementioned greatest hits was Game 7 of the Eastern Conference in Boston, as he played all 48 minutes and tallied 35 points, 15 rebounds and 9 assists to make it to his eighth straight Finals.
“He was just so confident,” Nance told ESPN. “Indiana took us to seven, Boston took us to seven, but I don’t think there was anybody in the locker room [who] felt any real pressure because, yeah, we got him.”
James then led the Cavs into Game 1 of the Finals and — forget JR Smith’s blunder at the end of regulation — would have won the game if not for being called for a block on Golden State’s Kevin Durant with 36 seconds left, resulting in two points for the Warriors rather than a turnover.
“I believe that was a missed block/charge call,” Nance said. “I think that changes the series drastically.”
Love offered his take on the play.
“Then having it get reviewed and it gets overturned by Ed Malloy,” Love said. “Yeah … sure.”
James punched the whiteboard in the visitors locker room after that loss and hurt his hand, and the Cavs ended up getting swept.
As Love said, “I remember him just putting his hand right in the ice bath and thinking to myself, ‘OK, well, this is likely it.'”
JAMES AND THE CAVS don’t have a championship to show for 2017-18, and the chaos of the season was felt by everyone.
James is now in his eighth season with the Lakers — his longest uninterrupted stint with a team in his career — but his future in Los Angeles remains uncertain, with his contract set to expire at the end of the campaign and the franchise set to move forward with Luka Doncic as its star of the present and the future.
Multiple team and league sources told ESPN the Cavaliers would gladly welcome James back this summer if he wanted to return to Cleveland for his 24th NBA season and third stint with the team.
There’s no telling the ride the Lakers could still go on this spring, especially if James can find that cape to put back on. While James is eight years older, he has shown a similar commitment to this season’s Lakers team, sources said. He missed the first 14 games because of sciatica. But James stopped drinking alcohol during his rehab, and he has slimmed down considerably, hoping to take pressure off his back and joints and to “keep up with the young guys,” he said.
“We weren’t supposed to make it that far,” Love said of those 2017-18 Cavs. “I mean, you look at the makeup of that team and the inexperience, even more so. It wasn’t a team that really had enough of a supporting cast to make it to that level.
“But because LeBron took us there and put us on his shoulders, we were able to get to that point.”
And maybe, here in 2026, his presence in Cleveland on Wednesday can give both teams a taste of that 2017-18 experience.
“It’s going to be a circus, and it is just a regular-season game,” a Cavs source told ESPN. “But when he comes, it feels like a Finals game.”
ESPN’s Matt Williams contributed to this story.
