CLEVELAND — In February, when the Cleveland Cavaliers were still evolving, when Kyrie Irving was still spry and Matthew Dellavedova was a quiet curiosity, David Griffin made some inquiries, scouring the league for another point guard.
It was not a commentary on Irving, the Cavaliers' explosive young
All-Star, or on Dellavedova, the scrappy backup. It was simple due
diligence by Griffin, the Cavaliers general manager.Stars get hurt. Depth is critical for a contending team. And Dellavedova, as of midseason, was just an untested, undrafted, anonymous understudy. So Griffin made some calls.
"Because you had a 23-year-old starter and a young kid in Delly," Griffin explained Wednesday. "Having veteran presence, like we have at every other position, would have been great. But just there was never an opportunity to get it done."
File this under The Great What-ifs of the 2015 NBA Finals, a series that is now being defined in part by the Cavaliers' point guard odd couple.
One is a superstar, the other a burgeoning legend.
One left Game 1 on crutches. The other left Game 3 on a stretcher.
Irving will not play again in this series after breaking his kneecap last week.
Dellavedova is playing to exhaustion and had to be hospitalized Tuesday night because of dehydration after helping the Cavaliers take a 2-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors.
If the Cavs win the series, ending this city's 51-year championship drought, Dellavedova will be enshrined as a local hero. Irving will serve as an asterisk.
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"We would have added a point guard at the buyout deadline," Griffin said. "It doesn't mean that Delly would have been in jeopardy. Most people carry three of them. We weren't. So adding a third was something we would have wanted to do all along."
Had the Cavaliers found a third point guard, perhaps that player would have soaked up some of Irving's minutes in this postseason and spared him the wear and tear that caused his foot and knee issues. These are the nagging questions that can haunt a team well into the summer.
Though at the moment, the Cavaliers are too busy celebrating the happy emergence of the kid they call Delly.
The 24-year-old guard from Australia is the toast of the town, his legend growing with every game. He scored a playoff career-high 20 points in 39 minutes Tuesday night and spent the rest of his time hounding Stephen Curry, the league's Most Valuable Player.
When it was over, a thoroughly spent Dellavedova was seen being taken from the arena by ambulance for what the team later described as "severe cramping." He was given intravenous fluids at the arena before heading to the Cleveland Clinic for more treatment.
"I felt like I've pushed the limit a few times, but that's probably the tightest I've been," Dellavedova said Wednesday, looking and sounding replenished. "I'm feeling good now, though."
If anything, the trip to the hospital only enhanced the second-year guard's reputation as the Cavaliers' resident bulldog. Over the course of this postseason, Dellavedova has scrapped with the Bulls' Taj Gibson and the Hawks' Al Horford, veterans twice his size—getting both players ejected for retaliating.
Although he wields a solid three-point shot, it is the scrapping that Dellavedova is most renowned for: the dives for loose balls, the grabbing and clutching and general annoyance. Indeed, a reporter asked directly Wednesday if he is an "annoying" player.
Paul Sancya/Associated Press
After considering whether he'd find a player like himself annoying, Dellavedova allowed, "Yeah, I think I would."
That Dellavedova was even relevant enough to field such questions had everything to do with Irving's bad luck. He was playing one of his best games of the postseason last Thursday in Oakland, dueling Curry and providing LeBron James with a badly needed scoring partner, when misfortune struck. Irving drove, landed hard on his left leg and simultaneously collided with the Warriors' Klay Thompson, fracturing Irving's left kneecap.
"It's a tough situation to be in, especially in the Finals at the biggest stage," Irving said Wednesday, addressing the media for the first time since undergoing surgery.
Without Irving on the court, the Cavaliers offense sputtered last Thursday, allowing the Warriors to pull away in overtime for the Game 1 victory. With Irving declared out for the series—and with Cleveland having already lost star forward Kevin Love to a shoulder injury—oddsmakers and commentators quickly buried the Cavaliers. There was talk of a sweep.
A week later, it's the Cavaliers who are in command of the series thanks in large part to Irving's scruffy understudy, the one who has inspired countless Teen Wolf memes on Twitter.
"I'm definitely not surprised as much as everyone else is," Irving said of Dellavedova, recalling his first time competing against him in a summer workout three years ago. "First time I went to Vegas, first time I played against him, he commanded my respect. Whether that be in a pickup game or us playing a scrimmage in practice, it was going to be hard-fought, and I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. So once you step into that—I want to call it a ring with Delly—you better be ready to rumble."
Most people, Cavaliers officials included, could not have seen any of this coming. The 6'4", 200-pound Dellavedova was a lowly regarded prospect after a four-year career at Saint Mary's College in the California Bay Area. He signed a partially guaranteed, minimum contract with the Cavaliers in September 2013 to compete for the role of third-string point guard behind Irving and Jarrett Jack.
The Cavaliers traded Jack to Brooklyn last summer in a rush to clear salary-cap room to sign James. That was the first among many events that opened the door for Dellavedova's unlikely rise.
Given the chance, Griffin would add another point guard today if the rules permitted. The Cavaliers need all the bodies and ball-handlers they can get. But they're happy enough with the way things have evolved.
"Right now, we're benefiting from the fact that Delly just refuses to feel limitation," Griffin enthused. "He refuses to believe that there's something he cannot do."
Griffin, who came up in the Phoenix Suns organization, recalled a favorite motto of Suns legend Dick Van Arsdale, who was fond of saying, "Them's that can, do."
"Delly can exceed expectations because that's all he's ever done," Griffin said. "It's all he knows how to do. It's not like you take a kid who grew up being one thing and had to figure out how to be tough. This kid's only here because he has this. So it's what he does."
How big is Dellavedova now? On Wednesday, an Australian reporter asked James—known as "The King"—if he would endorse the knighting of his teammate as Sir Dellavedova.
James chuckled but quickly embraced the idea. "Whatever that guy wants or needs, I'm all for."
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