INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- The Cleveland Cavaliers were just two wins away from claiming their first-ever NBA Championship last season, but a host of injuries weakened their chances to beat the league's best regular-season team, the Golden State Warriors, in The Finals.
It is that failure that pushed point guard Kyrie Irving, who missed five of the six games in The Finals because of a fractured kneecap, through his rehab work in the offseason, and will continue to drive him as the Cavaliers look to get back to the top of the Eastern Conference and take that final step to become a champion.
"For me, it will just be a lot more rage, a lot more emotion going out there," Irving said at Cavaliers Media Day late last month. "There won't be too much smiling or anything like that from our team. We know the mentality that we have.
"We have a great culture here, a great core group that we're bringing back, some great faces that will add value to our team and a lot of versatility, and we're looking forward to the challenge. What's understood doesn't necessarily need to be said from our standpoint and what we're saying in our locker room. We know what we have to do, and we know what we want to accomplish."
After suffering the fractured kneecap, Irving was forced to watch his teammates continue to fight their way to a pair of victories against the Warriors before falling two wins short of an NBA Championship. But by entering the 2015-2016 season as the reigning Eastern Conference Champions, Irving and Cavaliers plan on bringing the fight to their opponents.
"We haven't forgotten what it took to get there, and while we were there, the experience, but now, it's getting better as a team and getting more prepared mentally for what the challenges are mentally for us because every team's going to come into our building or we're going to go into their building and they're definitely going to bring their energy," Irving said. "That was something we definitely had to learn, but for us, we're staring right back at them, and we're coming in with the mentality that we're coming for everyone as well as everyone's coming for us."
Cavaliers small forward James Jones knows a lot about playing on a team that went from hunter to hunted in the course of one season.
By teaming with Cavaliers small forward LeBron James for several years with the Miami Heat, Jones learned what it takes to bounce back from a loss in the NBA Finals and then, not only make it all the way back to the championship series, but also, do what is necessary to win the title.
And Jones is happy to hear Irving take the attitude of matching every opponent's intensity on a game-to-game basis.
"For us, on a personal level, professionally, our guys really made strides, especially our younger guys who became critical parts of the recipe of our success, but we need to be healthy, and we need to find a way to stay motivated," Jones said.
"Success is something that can either spur you to dig deeper and you want more of it, or you can become complacent. I don't think we have the crew that will be complacent, but I know that's human nature that we have to fight, so we'll be conscious of that all year long.
"We're not getting younger, and the older you get, the more it takes from you, physically and mentally. On the flip side, you realize this life is fleeting and you probably have limited opportunities to get there. With every Finals loss, you invest more and hope that you have more in the tank to be able to push to get back to that mountaintop and can be successful. It's harder every time, and it's indescribable. You have to go through it to really understand just how heavy the burden of losing is, but once you come back out of it, it's the ultimate motivator."
