The 2016 NBA Finals is the only 3-1 comeback in the history of the championship round. No team had ever done it before. No team has done it since. The Cleveland Cavaliers dropped three of the first four games to a 73-win Golden State Warriors team that had just produced the first unanimous MVP in league history, then won three straight — two of them on the road in Oakland — to end Cleveland's 52-year title drought across all major professional sports. LeBron James walked off the floor as the unanimous Finals MVP, the first player on record to lead a playoff series in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. The series gave the NBA "The Block" and "The Shot," reset the league's power balance for the rest of the decade, and produced one of the most enduring memes in sports history. It is the greatest Finals rally ever, and the games themselves still hold up.
The Setup: The 73-Win Warriors
Golden State did not just win the 2015-16 regular season. They broke it. The Warriors finished 73-9, surpassing the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' record of 72 wins after beating the Memphis Grizzlies 125-104 on April 13, 2016. Stephen Curry led the league in scoring at 30.1 points per game, hit an NBA-record 402 three-pointers, shot 90.8 percent from the line, and averaged 2.14 steals — and was named the first unanimous MVP in NBA history, sweeping all 131 first-place votes. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green made the All-Star team alongside him. The roster around them — Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, Andrew Bogut, Shaun Livingston, Festus Ezeli, Leandro Barbosa — was the deepest in the league.
That team almost did not reach the Finals. Down 3-1 to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors needed a Game 6 performance for the ages from Klay Thompson, who scored 41 points on 14-of-31 shooting, hit a playoff-record 11 three-pointers on 18 attempts, and dropped 19 of his points in the fourth quarter alone to force a Game 7 in Oakland. Golden State won that Game 7 and arrived at the Finals as massive favorites, having just demonstrated to the entire league that they could be pushed to the brink and still win out.
The irony writes itself.
The Setup: Cleveland Replaces a Coach in January
The Cavaliers entered the 2015-16 season as the defending Eastern Conference champions, having lost the previous Finals to Golden State in six games while Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love watched from the bench in suits. On January 22, 2016, with the team holding the best record in the East at 30-11, the Cavaliers fired head coach David Blatt and promoted associate head coach Tyronn Lue. The reasoning, never officially stated but widely understood, was about chemistry, voice, and the locker room — a roster anchored by LeBron James was not responding the way it needed to. Lue, a former player and a Doc Rivers assistant, took over a 30-11 team midseason. Cleveland finished 57-25 and locked up the number one seed in the East.
The roster Lue inherited was a deeply specific build. LeBron James was 31 and at the height of his physical peak. Kyrie Irving had returned from the broken kneecap that ended his 2015 Finals after Game 1. Kevin Love was the third star. J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert were the wing shooters and defenders. Tristan Thompson was the offensive rebounder and rim-runner. The bench was Matthew Dellavedova, Mo Williams, Richard Jefferson, James Jones, and Timofey Mozgov. At the February 18 trade deadline, the Cavaliers added Channing Frye from Orlando in a three-team deal that sent Anderson Varejao to Portland — a 6-foot-11 stretch-five who became one of Cleveland's most important playoff pieces despite playing fewer than 20 minutes in the Finals.
Dellavedova was healthy and in the rotation throughout the playoffs — the "Delly's absence" narrative often referenced about the 2016 Finals refers to the offseason aftermath: the Bucks signed him to a four-year, $38 million offer sheet that the Cavaliers chose not to match in July 2016. He was in uniform for every game of the series.
Games 1 and 2: A Procession in Oakland
Game 1 was a wake-up call. Golden State won 104-89 on June 2 at Oracle Arena. Kyrie led the Cavs with 26 points. LeBron put up 23 points, 12 rebounds, and 9 assists. The dagger was the bench: Warriors reserves outscored Cleveland's reserves 45-10. Curry and Thompson combined for just 20 points, and Golden State still cruised by 15.
Game 2 was worse. Warriors 110, Cavaliers 77. Kevin Love took an inadvertent elbow to the head from Harrison Barnes going for an offensive rebound late in the second quarter, returned to the floor briefly, and was eventually diagnosed with a concussion that ruled him out of Game 3. The 33-point margin was the largest in NBA Finals history at the time. The series moved to Cleveland with the Warriors looking like the historical inevitability that the regular season had suggested they were.
Game 3: Cleveland Punches Back
Then Game 3 happened in Cleveland on June 8, and the Cavaliers won 120-90 — the same 30-point margin, in reverse. LeBron put up 32 points, 11 rebounds, and 6 assists in 40 minutes. Kyrie added 30 points and 8 assists. J.R. Smith got loose for five three-pointers. With Love out and Richard Jefferson stepping into the starting lineup, the Cavs played a switchier, more athletic style that the Warriors could not solve at Quicken Loans Arena. It was Cleveland's most complete game of the series so far, and for one night the math of the matchup looked different.
Game 4: The Cliff, and Draymond's Swing
Game 4 in Cleveland on June 10 ended Warriors 108, Cavaliers 97. Golden State took a 3-1 lead. Curry scored 38, his best game of the series. Klay added 25. Cleveland was now staring at NBA history — no team had ever come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals — and the Vegas books moved accordingly.
But the late minutes of Game 4 produced a moment that re-routed the series. With less than three minutes left, Draymond Green went to the floor and LeBron James, in transition, stepped over Green's torso. Green, sitting up, swung his arm and made contact with LeBron's groin area. Both players had to be separated. The officials assessed Green a Flagrant 1 in the moment. The league reviewed the play afterward.
Here is where the rulebook intervened. Green had already accumulated flagrant foul points in earlier playoff rounds — a Flagrant 2 for kicking Steven Adams between the legs against Oklahoma City, and an earlier Flagrant 1 against the Houston Rockets. The cumulative postseason flagrant-points system was unambiguous: once a player crosses four points, the next flagrant triggers an automatic one-game suspension. The Flagrant 1 against LeBron pushed Green over the threshold. The league's statement was almost apologetic in its mechanics — the act on its own would not have merited a suspension, but the math forced one. Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5.
For a team built around small-ball lineups with Green at center — the "Death Lineup" that had defined Golden State's entire identity — losing him for an elimination game in Oakland was a structural problem.
Game 5: Forty-One Apiece
Game 5 on June 13 at Oracle Arena is the most underrated game of the series. The Warriors started Andrew Bogut in Green's place. With Draymond watching the game from the A's clubhouse next door, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving each scored 41 points. They remain the only teammates in NBA Finals history to each score 40-plus points in the same game. Cleveland won 112-97 and the series flipped from a coronation to a war.
LeBron's line: 41 points, 16 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 steals, 3 blocks. Kyrie's: 41 points on 17-of-24 shooting. The Cavaliers shot 51.4 percent as a team and pulled away in the second half. Curry scored 25 with four turnovers; Klay Thompson scored 37 and still could not catch up. The Warriors were a flawed team without Green, and Cleveland's stars exploited every seam.
Game 6: The Forum Hostage Game
Back in Cleveland on June 16, LeBron James did it again. Forty-one points, 11 assists, 8 rebounds, 4 steals, 3 blocks, and just one turnover. Kyrie added 23. Tristan Thompson grabbed 16 rebounds. The Cavaliers won 115-101 to send the series back to Oakland for a winner-take-all Game 7. LeBron became the first player to post 40-plus points in back-to-back Finals games since Shaquille O'Neal in 2000.
Curry fouled out late and threw his mouthpiece into the stands, drawing a technical and a $25,000 fine. The Warriors were unraveling on their own home tape. Cleveland was the team that looked calm.
Game 7: The Block, The Shot, The Stop
Game 7 was played on June 19, 2016, at Oracle Arena. The Cavaliers won 93-89. The final five minutes are some of the most-studied, most-replayed footage in NBA history.
With 1:50 left and the score tied at 89, Iguodala caught the ball in transition off a Curry feed and went up for a layup. LeBron James — trailing the play from beyond the three-point line — chased him down and pinned the ball against the backboard at full extension. "The Block." It remains the most iconic defensive play in Finals history. The score stayed tied.
Cleveland brought the ball back the other way. The possession ran down. Kyrie Irving, isolated against Stephen Curry on the right wing, dribbled into a sideways step-back from 25 feet and rose over the two-time MVP. The shot banged in. Cleveland 92, Golden State 89, 53 seconds remaining. The Wall Street Journal would later rank it the biggest shot in NBA history.
LeBron drew a foul and made one of two free throws to push it to 93-89. On the other end, Curry got a clean look at a tying three with Kevin Love switched onto him in the corner — Love guarded the entire possession, contesting the jumper — and missed. The buzzer sounded. Cleveland walked off Oracle Arena as champions.
LeBron's Game 7 line: 27 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists, 3 blocks, 2 steals on 9-of-24 shooting. A triple-double in a Game 7 on the road to win an NBA championship. Kyrie added 26 points and 6 rebounds. Draymond Green had the best stat line on the Warriors at 32-15-9, but Golden State went cold from three down the stretch and turned the ball over at the worst moments.
The Stat Line of the Decade
LeBron James was named the unanimous Finals MVP. His seven-game averages: 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds, 8.9 assists, 2.6 steals, 2.3 blocks. The series totals: 208 points, 79 rebounds, 62 assists, 18 steals, 16 blocks. He led every player in the series — both teams combined — in all five of those categories. According to the NBA, no player on record had ever led a Finals series in all five major statistical columns. Guinness World Records subsequently certified the achievement as the first of its kind.
There is no real comparison for what LeBron did across those seven games. He played 41.7 minutes per night, posted three triple-doubles, scored 41 in back-to-back elimination games, and chased down a defender from 30 feet to deliver the defining play of the championship-winning game. Curry was the regular-season MVP. James was the answer.
What This Meant for Cleveland
The drought lasted 52 years. The last major championship won by a Cleveland professional sports team before Game 7 was the 1964 NFL Championship, when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts 27-0. In the half-century between, the city went 147 combined seasons across the Browns, Cavaliers, Indians, and short-lived Barons without raising a trophy. "The Drive," "The Fumble," "The Shot" — Michael Jordan's, not Kyrie's — "The Decision." Cleveland sports fandom was a recognized cultural shorthand for misery.
LeBron James, born in Akron, Ohio, returned to the Cavaliers in 2014 with the explicit promise of bringing a championship home. He delivered it twenty months later, on the floor of the building belonging to the team that had just set the all-time wins record. The footage of him collapsing on the court at the final buzzer, sobbing, repeating "Cleveland, this is for you" into the camera, is one of the few moments in modern sports that requires no setup. The city's reaction outside Quicken Loans Arena that night, and at the parade on June 22 that drew an estimated 1.3 million people to downtown Cleveland, was unlike anything in American team sports for a generation.
The Meme That Wouldn't Die
The cultural afterlife of the series produced one of the most durable internet jokes in sports history. "The Warriors blew a 3-1 lead" became shorthand for any catastrophic blown advantage. By late June 2016, the phrase had escaped basketball entirely — Twitter users were attaching it to Brexit, the Olympics, the 2016 presidential debates. On October 9, 2016, during Fox News' coverage of the second presidential debate, a sign reading "The Warriors blew a 3-1 lead" was visible behind a Fox News pundit on live national television.
The meme outlasted the moment. It entered Urban Dictionary, became a t-shirt and wristband cottage industry, and is still deployed any time a team coughs up a series lead in any sport. It is the most successful trolling meme the NBA has ever produced — and the team it targeted won 73 games.
What Changed After Game 7
The series re-shaped the league. Within two weeks of the final buzzer, Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City to sign with the Warriors. Golden State won the next two championships and reached the Finals every year through 2019. The Cavaliers reached the Finals each of the next two seasons, losing both times to a Warriors team with Durant. LeBron left Cleveland again in 2018 for the Lakers.
But the 2016 banner stayed in Cleveland. Every piece of franchise regret in the team's history was rewritten by the seven games LeBron played that June. The Cavaliers had a championship. The 73-win Warriors had a meme.
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The 2016 Finals is one of those series that gets re-watched in full every June by fans who lived through it and discovered in full by fans too young to remember. Every NBA history quiz worth playing includes at least one question from this series — the score of Game 7, who hit the dagger, what Draymond did to get suspended. Test how much of the Finals lore you can recall with our daily Who Am I? quiz, where the mystery player might be anyone from the 2016 roster, the 73-win Warriors, or the rivalries that followed. And if you want to go head-to-head with the entire LeBron era, our NBA Bingo board pulls from every Finals matchup he played in — and every championship contender he beat.