As his teammate in the Cleveland Cavaliers for two seasons, J.R. Smith had that close-up look at how Matthew Dellavedova boldly accepted the impossible challenge of defending Stephen Curry in the last 2015 NBA Finals.
As he guested in J.J. Redick’s “The Old Man and the Three” podcast, Smith discussed how difficult it was for Dellavedova to contain the superstar shooter, even noting that the gritty guard almost passed away on the daunting assignment.
“I love Delly to death, but Delly couldn’t – Delly almost died guarding Steph Curry,” said Smith. “No, literally, almost died. We have footage of this man in an ice tub, like literally to his neck trying to guard this man.”
“But he tried. He battled his ass off, like competed,” Redick responded.
With Kyrie Irving leaving prematurely in the Finals series as he sustained a fractured knee cap in Game 1, Dellavedova has no choice but to step forward and play at the point for the handicapped Cavs team. Besides the pressuring ball-handling role in the championship stage, he got an even heftier duty to fulfill – guarding Curry who won the Most Valuable Player award that 14-15 regular season and has begun his meteoric rise in the NBA with that godly shooting ability and uncanny off-ball mechanisms.
Enforcing his pesty, sticky defense, Dellavedova went successful initially in locking down Curry. Despite Curry finishing with 19 points, he was limited to just 5-for-23 shooting, as the Cavs went on to split up the series in a close fight heading to Cleveland for Game 3.
Though Curry went on to blaze himself for the next games that came en route to the Dubs’ first title in 40 years, averaging 26 points in 44.3 percent shooting, Smith got nothing but love and respect for the herculean effort that the Aussie cager has performed just to restrict the Golden State cornerstone for the rest of the Finals.
“Just from watching that, Dellavedova is by far one of the greatest people I like all time,” Smith argued. “He literally gave everything he had and there was no excuse. There wasn’t like ‘Oh he just had it going’, it was like ‘No’, it’s like ‘Oh, I’m trying’ or ‘No, no, no, no’ – it wasn’t none of that. He could barely talk after that’s how hard he was trying.
“That respect level to me goes through the roof.”
Eventually, all of the pain and sacrifice were paid off for Dellavedova a year after, as he was included in the Cavaliers’ historic title run in 2016 which was capped off by a payback against the Warriors.
