“Almost Died..we Have Footage of This Man in the Ice Tub”: 8 Years After ‘Deathly’ Battle Against Stephen Curry, LeBron James’ Top Weapon Gets His Flowers

Published 04/14/2023, 11:51 PM EDT

LeBron James and Stephen Curry have been battling it out for the better half of the past decade. While LeBron James played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the two teams met four straight times in the NBA Finals. Their first showdown was in the 2015 NBA Finals. Though the Warriors won that series, one role player got his flowers six years after that battle.

The first matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors started out in the favor of Cleveland as the team took a 2-1 lead. However, injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving led the Warriors to finish the series in six games.

LeBron James’ former teammate gets his flowers after eight years

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As Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love went down with injuries, other role players took their position in the starting lineup. Kevin Love was replaced by Timofey Mozgov and Kyrie Irving’s place was taken by Matthew Dellavedova.

In a recent podcast of The Old Man and The Three, J. R. Smith made an appearance and talked about the 2015 NBA Finals. Specifically, how Matthew Dellavedova played while trying to fill in Kyrie Irving’s shoes.

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On the show, Smith said, “Delly almost died guarding Steph Curry, literally almost died. We have footage of this man in the ice tub, literally to his neck trying to guard this man.”

That is when host J. J. Redick chimed in and said, “Randomly on my Twitter feed the other day, a Dellavedova montage video popped up from the 15’ Finals. F*ck, he tried. He Battled his a** off. Like competed.”

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Smith also mentioned, “From watching that, Dellavedova is by far one of my greatest people I like of all time. He literally gave everything he had and there was no excuse.”

“There wasn’t like ‘Oh he just had it going.’ It wasn’t like ‘Oh, I’m trying.’ No, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t none of that. He could barely talk after. That’s how hard he was trying,” added Smith.

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Matthew Dellavedova isn’t the flashiest player on the court, but he surely left a mark in his Finals debut. Though the Cavaliers did not win the NBA championship that year, the team rallied back to win the 2016 NBA Finals. That win, where the Cavs came back from a 3-1 deficit is still talked about to this day.

And it is also nice to see Dellavedova getting the recognition he deserves for his impeccable effort after so long.

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Written by:

Abhishek Dhariwal is an NBA writer at EssentiallySports with a background in journalism and mass communication. Abhishek uses storytelling along with feedback gathering to curate elegant and exclusive content for ES. His writing covers a wide range of topics, from in-game coverage to off-court activities of NBA stars.

Edited by:

Pragya Vashisth

“Almost Died..we Have Footage of This Man in the Ice Tub”: 8 Years After ‘Deathly’ Battle Against Stephen Curry, LeBron James’ Top Weapon Gets His Flowers

LeBron James’ former teammate gets his flowers after eight years

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