Cleveland Heights, Ohio — THERE is no song called “I Left My Heart in Cleveland.” Cleveland is the flip side of California and the Golden State Warriors, whom they have met in the last two N.B.A. finals. The former Cleveland Cavaliers basketball coach David Blatt once said: “We’re in Cleveland. Nothing is easy here.” Then he got fired.

 Sunday night Cleveland came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat Golden State and win the N.B.A. championship. I was born in Cleveland, my father was born in Cleveland, my children were born in Cleveland, and we’ve all seen many, many losing teams — 52 years’ worth, if you’re counting. And we’re counting here in Cleveland. The last time Cleveland won a championship was the 1964 National Football League Championship. My dad took me. I was in Section 18, Row T, Seat 8 of Municipal Stadium.

 Two years ago, when LeBron James announced his return to Cleveland from Miami in Sports Illustrated, some Cleveland men teared up. My middle-aged friend Jimmy and I did. So un-Cleveland — those tears. The credo here is “Cleveland: You’ve Got to Be Tough,” from a T-shirt first printed in the 1970s when the boy-mayor Dennis Kucinich ushered the city into default.

 James wrote: “Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio. It’s where I walked. It’s where I ran. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son.” ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| After Cleveland's win in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, the only Cavaliers player who was anywhere near as emotional as LeBron James was J.R. Smith. Smith cried on the court and this image started making the rounds on social media almost immediately:

 But those weren’t the only tears Smith shed on Sunday night. Far from it, actually. After the Cavaliers collected the Larry O’Brien Trophy and went back to their locker room, Smith held a post-game press conference, and he was extremely emotional throughout it. His tears continued to flow throughout his presser, as he talked about how much his family means to him and what they've done to help him overcome adversity. It was easily one of the best moments of the entire NBA Playoffs. Watch it, here:

 Here’s a transcript of Smith’s speech, which included a portion devoted specifically to his father:

 That Smith’s press conference took place on Father’s Day made it all the more special.

 Plenty of people had jokes about Smith being an NBA champion on Twitter after the game:

 JR Smith bout to throw a hell of a party. — Twan (@Twan_Priceless) June 20, 2016 I can only wish one day I'll party as hard as JR smith does tonight — sean brannagan (@seanbraggs36) June 20, 2016 I would pay an unlimited amount of money to be able to party with Jr Smith tonight — Nick Johnson (@nick_johnson019) June 20, 2016

 But the things he said during his press conference really summed up what being an NBA champion is all about. And all jokes aside (we've made a lot of them, too, over the years), it's nice to see how much winning a title truly means to a player like Smith. ||||| Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

 LeBron James was anointed as a transcendent, generational star while he was still in high school. He’s been the best player in basketball for most of the 13 years he’s been in the league—a four-time MVP, a 12-time All-Star, and already the 11th-leading scorer in NBA history by the age of 31. He’s the most physically gifted player of all time, faster and more skilled than anyone with his size and strength. And yet on Sunday night, a few minutes after he led the Cleveland Cavaliers to their first-ever title, James said, “I don’t know why the man above give me the hardest road.” The now three-time NBA champ spoke the truth.

 Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals felt like a rock fight staged inside an enormous pothole. Steph Curry, the unanimous MVP, shot 6 for 19 from the field and finished with more turnovers than assists. His fellow Splash Brother Klay Thompson shot 6 for 17 from the floor and 2–10 from 3-point range. LeBron himself shot just 9 for 24 and led both teams with five turnovers. After he scored six straight points to put the Cavs up 89–87 with 4:52 to go, James missed four shots in a row, each of which would’ve given Cleveland back the lead. On the other end, the Warriors missed their last nine shot attempts. The only player on either team who made a field goal in the last 4:39 was Kyrie Irving, whose 3-pointer with 53 seconds left turned out to be the game-winner in Cleveland’s 93–89 victory over Golden State.

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 This is the thing about the NBA and legacies and greatness: In this series, LeBron was about as dominant as any basketball player can be, and he never came close to controlling his team’s fate. If one of the best offensive teams in history managed to score any points at all in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter … if Curry didn’t throw a dumb behind-the-back pass out of bounds … if Kyrie Irving had clanged that long jumper instead of knocking it in, then this story probably wouldn’t include the phrase “three-time NBA champ.”

 James led both teams in the NBA Finals in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. He scored 41 points in Game 5, 41 more in Game 6, and put up a triple-double in Game 7. With a little less than two minutes on the clock, he chased down Andre Iguodala and made the block of the century to keep the game tied.

 A couple of minutes later, he nearly destroyed space and time with a game-clinching dunk over Draymond Green. That would've been fitting, for the best player in the world to seal one of the most significant victories in NBA history with one of the greatest dunks ever.

 But Green fouled him, hard, sending James to the line. He flicked his jammed right wrist and made one out of two free throws, giving the Cavs the two-possession lead they wouldn't relinquish. This was less spectacular but somehow more appropriate. LeBron soared over everyone, got knocked out of the sky, and had to pull himself off the ground to lock up his franchise's biggest victory.

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 But to bring a championship to Cleveland, the best player in the game needed a couple of breaks. This is the reality of professional sports, and it’s because of that reality that I’ve rooted for LeBron James for the past 10 years. Players play to win championships, and fans and writers evaluate them based on whether they succeed. It’s unfair, but it’s what makes the games we watch so thrilling. Since winner-takes-some is never going to be a thing, those of us who want one of the best players we’ve ever seen to get the respect he deserves have no choice but to hope he gets the bounces he needs to make his résumé unimpeachable.

 LeBron led the first-ever comeback from 3–1 down in the NBA Finals. He beat the greatest regular-season team ever. He came back to his home state of Ohio and won a championship for the most star-crossed sports city in the United States. That block on Iguodala isn’t the block that kept the game tied before Steph Curry went off and won his second title in a row. It’s the Block. If he wasn’t before, LeBron James is now, rightfully, a basketball legend.

 It’s been a hard road for LeBron James. It was a hard road to get nicknamed “the Chosen One” as a high school junior, then get criticized even as he exceeded every unrealistic expectation. It was a hard road to get drafted by his home-state team, and be expected to do what no other player in any sport had done for Cleveland since 1964. It was a hard road to leave Ohio for another, better opportunity, and to have his jersey burned by the fans that had claimed to love him. It was a hard road to come back, to forgive Dan “Comic Sans” Gilbert, and to say he was “ready to accept the challenge” of winning a championship with the Cavaliers. It was a hard road to play without Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving in last year’s finals. It was a hard road at times to play with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving—the star power forward who can’t play defense and the star point guard who sees the game as a 48-minute one-man show with occasional intermissions during which other people are allowed to touch the ball. It was a hard road to lead a team that might not have even made the postseason without him.

 Winning a championship in any sport is hard. An NBA championship is harder to win than most. There are no hot goaltenders or dominant starting pitchers. The playoffs aren’t a crapshoot; they’re a gauntlet. You can’t luck your way to an NBA title. You can’t hoist the trophy by relying on grit and guile. You have to be the best, or very, very close to the best, and hope that this is one of the years in which that’s good enough. ||||| Your teams. Your favorite writers. Wherever you want them. Personalize SI with our new App. Install on iOS or Android.

 In the final minutes of Cleveland's Game 7 victory, LeBron James chased down Andre Iguodala for a giant block that helped seal a 93–89 win and the Cavs’ first championship.

 With the game tied, 89–89, James ran back on defense after a Kyrie Irving miss. In transition, Iguodala kicked the ball to Curry, and got it back for a layup try. James sprinted toward the bucket, leaped just outside the restricted area, and pinned Iguodala's shot against the backboard.

 James won Finals MVP after finishing the game with 27 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists. He hit the game-sealing free throw with an injured wrist.

 LeBron with one of the biggest blocks you'll ever see pic.twitter.com/vu3UIUIBiH — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey) June 20, 2016

 • Get SI’s Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Championship package

 The Cavs captured their first NBA title, and the first for the city of Cleveland in any major sport since the Browns won the NFL championship in 1964. ||||| I AM LEGEND

 He single-handedly brought his team back from a 3-1 deficit to win one of the most thrilling NBA Finals ever. It’s time to admit that LeBron is on the Mount Rushmore of basketball.

 I give up. It is simply too hard to hate LeBron now. It is too much effort, and it makes me feel like a sad person.

 Saying this goes against my nature. He was the bad guy for, in hindsight, simultaneously obvious and vituperatively stupid reasons. I will try to enumerate them.

 A guy, Scott Raab, wrote a bunch of columns and a book about LeBron in my formative years. The book wound up being called The Whore of Akron. “May he suffer another decade of strokes and spend an eternity tonguing Satan’s flaming anus,” Raab wrote of LeBron. It felt fresh and perfect.

 Eric Risberg/AP

 There was a media prescription for LeBron—a big, juggernaut of a teenager who had been lying around, cocooning in televised high school games on ESPN2, and we all had to like him. This was back when ESPN was infallible, and questioning its incessant starfucking was considered weird and wrong. Therefore, questioning why they were showing blowout high school games and lauding a 17-year-old as the next Jesus Christ wasn’t even on the radar.

 The bloom is well off the rose on that network now—after three straight, static years of a sports network chasing Johnny Manziel from bar to bar so that two red-faced, middle-aged millionaires could argue about the definition of alcoholism first thing in the morning, every morning.

 But back then, it wasn’t part of the deal to think that ESPN might be in it for the wrong reasons. So when Raab wrote a bunch of vicious columns about LeBron, it felt like home. I wanted to live inside it.

 All of my skepticism about this restrictive and overall dumb way we talked about sports was able to calcify into pure, easy hate, and it was all seized and appropriated into one big villain: LeBron James.

 After his Decision, when traditional sports media was leveling a seesaw over whether LeBron “taking my talents to South Beach” James was a misunderstood star or a standard antihero and nothing in between, Raab was playing around in the beautiful nuance and verbiage and color of hate. ESPN seemed so binary. These columns, about how LeBron ripped the heart out of his hometown, and then the guts, and then the pancreas, for good measure—they were real, and they were landscapes, and they were gorgeous.

 Everybody else wanted to get their heart rate up while watching Hot Take Hell on ESPN7. Scott Raab was making outsider art that people used to reserve for graffiti against oppressive governments. It was the American male way to read big words without shame in the early 2000s: write about sports with a lot of provincialism, covered in blood.

 Then LeBron got unbelievably good, winning a couple of titles in Miami before coming home to Cleveland to wonder why people still hated him.

 I don’t know. I don’t have an answer anymore.

 It was an anxious, impractical hate, one that required a lot of logic-leaping, emotional energy, and lighter fluid. And now I’m done with it.

 He made five straight NBA Finals? Fine, but he only won a couple of them.

 He moved back to godawful Cleveland from gorgeous Miami so he could make good on his word? Yeah, but he wrote a persnickety letter and left a bunch of players off it that wound up getting traded, and now—look here—there’s a conspiracy that he might have gotten those players traded himself. Does he secretly run the team? Does he have more say than the Cavs’ general manager? Is LeBron Machiavellian? Is he not a point forward but actually the Dictator of Cleveland? I mean, he got his coach fired, right? And replaced him with a buddy of his? Who does that? Boy, he’s gonna have it coming to him when some superteam just shellacks him twice and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He’s gonna get it good. Say goodnight to the bad guy.

 And then there was none. He didn’t get it good. He served up a chasedown block from nowhere, like a teenager in an AND1 Mixtape—but at 31 years old. It saved the Finals. He led his team in every conceivable category. In fact, he led all players on both teams in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks, making him, as ESPN noted, “the first player in NBA history to lead all players in all five categories for an entire playoff series,” averaging 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds, 8.9 assists, 2.3 blocks and 2.6 steals.

 It is undeniable. He won the NBA Finals by himself. He came back down 3-1. He brought his native Cleveland its first major sports championship in 50 years.

 I’m too tired now to deny it anymore, and a little ashamed. LeBron’s one of the greatest there is. He’s up there with Jordan. Don’t let me tell me otherwise. ||||| Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James answers questions as he holds his daughter Zhuri during a post-game press conference after Game 7 of basketball's NBA Finals Sunday, June 19, 2016, in Oakland, Calif.... (Associated Press)

 Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James answers questions as he holds his daughter Zhuri during a post-game press conference after Game 7 of basketball's NBA Finals Sunday, June 19, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Cleveland won 93-89. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) (Associated Press)

 The drought is over for Cleveland, and the debate is over as well.

 Best player in basketball?

 His name is LeBron James.

 This is why he went back to Cleveland, to deliver a title, to end the city's epic championship drought and finally give Northeast Ohio what it craved for nearly 52 years.

 It's done. And now he's free. Anything that happens from here is icing atop a three-tiered championship cake for James.

 There's absolutely nothing left for James to prove. The only thing he hadn't done on a basketball court was make Cleveland, a city whose sports teams were cursed for so long, a winner. December 27, 1964 was the day Jim Brown last made them one. That is, until June 19, 2016. James was an NBA champion before from his time in Miami, an Olympic champion, an MVP, a Finals MVP ... he had checked every box but one, and now that one is filled as well.

 Stephen Curry is the two-time reigning MVP and rightly so, best player on the best regular-season team in league history. Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant will likely be the hottest free agent on the market this summer, coveted by everyone. Kobe Bryant was the highest-paid player in the NBA this season and this year was a celebration of his 20 years of greatness.

 But they're all part of LeBron's world.

 James is the freight train, the most unstoppable force in the game, and he shows no signs of slowing down after 13 years in the league. He's 31. He rarely if ever misses games. He's been in seven of the last 10 NBA Finals, including each of the last six. He's nowhere near his decline, which has to delight even those Cleveland fans who burned his jerseys in 2010. And while winning cures all, he can be a free agent this summer, which should scare some people as well.

 "I'm true to the game," James said, "and I know what I bring to the table."

 It bears noting that some of what's on that table now wasn't there six years ago, though.

 It's fair to say, this celebration would not be happening without July 8, 2010, the day James headed to Miami.

 James needed a change and craved a title. He got all that and more. He learned how to lead, he learned the value of structure, he learned from Dwyane Wade and Erik Spoelstra and Pat Riley and Micky Arison, took little bits from each of them, added it all to his already-ridiculous game and made himself better.

 James never went to college. But like many college kids, he went away for four years and then returned home with hopes of making his city better.

 The result: Cleveland is a city of champions.

 "I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone," James said, "and I knew if I had to — when I came back, I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get back to a place that we've never been. That's what it was all about."

 He'll never win over everyone. He'll never win the argument about who is better, him or Michael Jordan or anyone else who merits mention among the league's greats.

 He doesn't care, either. He'll leave those conversations for others to have. But he put an end to the discussion of who is the best right now.

 "There's no denying what he was able to accomplish this series," a very classy Curry said after Game 7. "He played pretty great basketball."

 James is the quintessential American success story. He bucked overwhelming after odds by rising above his impoverished upbringing in Akron, Ohio. He's a global icon who's earned roughly $175 million in NBA salary, probably that much if not a great deal more from his Nike sponsorship deal alone, has a blossoming entertainment studio and is easily one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.

 He's on pace to be a billionaire someday like his good pal Warren Buffett, who James can chat up basically any time he wants.

 And now he can do whatever he wants for as long as he wants to play this game. He owes no one anything anymore. Stay in Cleveland, return to Miami, go anywhere else in the NBA; it's all up to him now.

 For the first time in 13 years, LeBron James is free of burden.

 With that weight lifted, it's scary to think his best might be yet to come.

 ___

 Tim Reynolds is a national basketball writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at treynolds@ap.org ||||| Your teams. Your favorite writers. Wherever you want them. Personalize SI with our new App. Install on iOS or Android.

 OAKLAND, Calif. — The cozy basketball locker room at Akron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High School is loaded with motivation in every corner. There are bible verses in the lockers and along the side walls, a John Wooden quote in the back and blow-up photographs of the program’s most famous alum plastered everywhere. But the first thing visitors see upon entry is a simple, tall poster with Fighting Irish green lettering that reads: “Discipline: Do what has to be done; when it has to be done; as well as it can be done; do it that way all the time.”

 Four virtues are built into the message: Responsibility, timeliness, excellence and consistency. Those same four virtues carried LeBron James, the alum whose photos grace the locker room’s walls, to the greatest achievement of his career: his first NBA championship in his native Ohio, the first title in the Cavaliers’ 46-year history, and the first title in 52 years for the cursed city of Cleveland.

 The Cavaliers defeated the Warriors 93–89 in Game 7 at Oracle Arena on Sunday, pulling off the greatest comeback in Finals history by digging out of a 3–1 deficit and spoiling the most successful regular season the league has seen.

 “Our fans ride or die, no matter what’s been going on,” said James, who broke into tears on the court after the final buzzer sounded and was named Finals MVP for the third time in his career. “No matter the Browns, the Indians, the Cavs. They continue to support us. For us to be able to end this drought, our fans deserve it. They deserve it. It was for them.”

 • How Cavs pulled off stunning upset | Frame-by-frame look at The Block

 The Cavaliers did it thanks to some resourcefulness from rookie coach Tyronn Lue, a gigantic late-game three-pointer from Kyrie Irving and unexpected contributions from the much-maligned Kevin Love. They had a little help from Draymond Green’s Game 5 suspension and multiple shaky outings from Stephen Curry.

 Most of all, though, the Cavaliers shocked the world because James did what had to be done, when it had to be done, as well as it could be done, and he did it that way all the time.

 Ben Golliver for Sports Illustrated

 James did it in Game 5, pouring in 41 points on the road to spoil Golden State’s party. James did it again in Game 6, scoring 41 points again and dishing 11 assists, while blocking Curry in emphatic fashion. And James did it again in Game 7, posting 27 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists, to notch the seventh triple double in his Finals career and the first triple double in a Finals Game 7 since James Worthy in 1988.

 “I watched Beethoven tonight,” Irving said. “LeBron James composed a game. He had a freakin’ triple double in Game 7 of an NBA Finals game.”

 • Get SI’s Cavaliers NBA Championship package | Watch Game 7 highlights

 The play that will live for years on the highlight tapes came with just under two minutes left. For nearly three tense minutes, neither team scored, but the Warriors broke out on a two-on-one fast break, threatening to get an easy go-ahead bucket. Andre Iguodala dribbled hard to half-court and then passed to Curry on the left wing, who returned the pass in textbook fashion without dribbling. Iguodala took the ball in full stride, with a crease to the basket past J.R. Smith, and tossed up a double-clutch layup off the glass.

 Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images

 As that sequence unfolded, James, who had been in the right corner, found himself trailing the play, caught up briefly by Klay Thompson. When Curry received the ball, near the three-point line, James had only just crossed half-court, and yet he already had a vision for how the play would end. When Curry returned the ball to Iguodala, James gathered in stutter-step fashion, preparing to plant for a swooping block attempt. He leapt from outside the protected circle, floating across the paint to pound the shot against the backcourt and keep it in play.

 The Cavaliers needed a block, they needed a block at that exact moment and only a superhuman effort would make it happen. James delivered on all counts, just as he had all series, just as he has throughout his 13-year career. No one else on the Cavaliers could make that play. No one else would even think to make that play. James thought about it, made it and made it look easy.

 • All of LeBron’s Finals, ranked | LeBron’s letter | A timeline since then ...

 James has been a bigger, stronger and faster physical force since his prep school play landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated at age 17, but he’s always been smarter too. A huge part of his basketball intelligence is his vision, which manifests itself in many ways. He saw that it was time to take a backseat to a scorching hot Irving late in Game 5. He saw the impossible passing angles throughout Game 6. He saw the chasedown block opportunity in Game 7.

 His vision, unlike any other current athlete, has extended well outside his 94' by 50' office. James saw that he made a mistake with how he executed The Decision in 2010, he saw what it took to win a title in Miami, he saw the possibility of a return to Cleveland when many others didn’t, and he saw that he could use his leverage as a player to build a roster and reshape a coaching staff to his liking. James saw that he had no equal in the Eastern Conference, he saw Irving’s precocious talent, he saw Love’s desire to start fresh outside Minnesota, he saw Tristan Thompson’s undervalued skills and he saw that Dion Waiters and former coach David Blatt weren’t going to be a part of the equation.

 “I came back for a reason,” James said, wearing the net around his neck, his Finals MVP trophy in front of him, his daughter in his arms and his two sons by his side. “I came back to bring a championship to our city. I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone, and when I came back, I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint.”

 That blueprint and those maneuverings put James and the Cavaliers in position to strike when the Warriors’ dream season fell to pieces with Green’s suspension and Curry’s subpar play.

 See classic photos of three-time NBA Finals MVP LeBron James

 LeBron James Off the Court Courtesy of the James Family Courtesy of the James Family Michael J. LeBrecht II Michael J. LeBrecht II Michael J. LeBrecht II Michael J. LeBrecht II David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images Johnny Nunez/WireImage Steve Grayson/WireImage Steve Grayson/WireImage David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images Johnny Nunez/WireImage Simon Bruty Chris Polk/FilmMagic Greg Nelson Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images Johnny Nunez/WireImage Gregory Heisler Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Sprite John Parra/WireImage John W. McDonough Ben Pruchnie/WireImage for Budweiser Harry How/Getty Images Bruce Yeung/NBAE/Getty Images Greg Nelson Sands/GC Images Fred Vuich Kevin Mazur/WireImage Todd Rosenberg John W. McDonough Robert Beck Ron Schwane/AP Gene J. Puskar/AP Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Jeff Haynes 1 of 37 Advertisement

 Down the stretch, as James blocked Iguodala and Irving broke the long-standing tie with an incredible three-pointer, Golden State missed nine straight shots and didn’t score in the final 4:38. During the regular season, the Warriors had been the league’s most clutch team; here, in a winner-take-all Game 7, they spent crunch time back on their heels, overwhelmed. Curry, who finished with 17 points on 6-of-19 shooting, said he was “aggressive, but in the wrong ways,” as he went 1 of 6 in the final period and carelessly flipped a behind-the-back pass out of bounds down the stretch.

 “We’re stunned,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “We thought we were going to win. I was extremely confident coming into tonight. This is why you can’t mess around. … James is one of the great players of alltime and obviously he was the key to the turnaround. He had a great series.”

 This championship is a long time coming: 16 years after his first high school state title, 14 years after the Chosen One” SI cover, 13 years after he was Cleveland’s No. 1 pick, six years after The Decision and three years after his most recent title with the Heat. James has, without hyperbole, spent more than half of his life in direct preparation for this moment. So too has Akron, Cleveland and the rest of Ohio.

 There’s no doubt that this is and will be remembered as the high point of his career to date, and nothing that comes afterward will be able to top it. This is the peak, the pinnacle, the ultimate triumph.

 “He deserves it,” Lue said. “He’s a hard worker. He’s been the face of the NBA for 13 years. To leave Miami to come to Cleveland to give the city of Cleveland a championship, just shows you who he is. He’s a giver. He’s always looking to take care of people. He’s always been nice to everyone. If anyone deserves it, LeBron James definitely deserves it.”

 #http://www.120sports.com/video/v185109022/cavaliers-win-the-nba-finals

 Back at St. V, James has donated enough money to fund a new gymnasium, dubbed The LeBron James Arena. His No. 23 jersey is everywhere—from the backs of the school’s students, to the student store, to the gym rafters—and his old basketball teammate Willie McGee is the school’s athletic director.

 “I can’t wait to get back home,” James said from Oracle, thousands of miles from the Akron high school gym that put him on the map and then on the globe. Halfway across the country and more than a decade later, his play had perfectly embodied the message that can be found next to his old green, metal locker.

 James put the Cavaliers on his shoulders. He saved their season from elimination three straight times in unprecedented fashion. He played the best and most complete basketball of his first-ballot Hall of Fame career, earning unanimous Finals MVP honors by leading all players in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. And, on Sunday, he played 46-plus minutes in the 199th postseason game of his career—that’s 199 out of a possible 199 games, because he’s never once missed a playoff game due to injury.

 Responsibility, timeliness, excellence, consistency. ||||| This is more than just an NBA finals win for Cleveland. This is the end of the drought. The end of the curse. The end of the heartaches. Fifty-two years - just a blip.

 LeBron James, MVP for the finals, put it all on the court, all of it, all in for Cleveland.

 So did the team. So did the amazing Tristan Thompson. Kyrie Irving. Kevin Love.

 The celebration. The delivery. The tears from LeBron.

 He earned it for Cleveland. LeBron promised it, he came home for it, and he brought it. It wipes out The Decision.

 What decision?

 As LeBron said -- he poured his heart and his blood and his tears into this game, against all odds.

 "Cleveland! This is for you!"

 And it was all heart, all determination, against, on paper, the best team in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors played hard, played smart, but Cleveland just was smarter, just was tougher, just was better.

 The moment is magic, unbelievable, transformative.

 Thank you, Cleveland Cavaliers.

 Thank you, LeBron.

 Thank you, Cleveland, for believing.

 93-89.

 Fifty-two years.

 It was worth it.

 And it changes everything. ||||| Rating is available when the video has been rented.

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Summary: – LeBron James led his Cleveland Cavaliers to a Game 7 win Sunday night to cap an epic championship series, one in which the Cavs became the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit. Some of the next-morning analysis: If there are any LeBron haters left, it's time to let it go, writes Ben Collins in the Daily Beast. (He counts himself as one of those former haters.) He's "one of the greatest there is. He's up there with Jordan." Josh Levin at Slate explains why this is now true: "If he wasn't before, LeBron James is now, rightfully, a basketball legend." Tim Reynolds of the AP weighs in, too. No more debate: LeBron is the "best player in basketball." Sports Illustrated says this play by James late in the game (a "superhuman" shot block) will be replayed for years. Cleveland native Bert Stratton writes about what the first sports championship in a half-century means for his city at the New York Times. An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer has three words for it: "magic, unbelievable, transformative." A post at Complex says an emotional JR Smith of the Cavs gave one of the most memorable post-game news conferences ever. The video is here. Deadspin highlights the moment Cleveland newscasters learned the Cavs had won while on the air.


They flew home from Iraq together on a spring day in 2010 on a C-17 cargo plane, the dog in a metal kennel on the floor at the soldier’s feet. When they reached the United States, the soldier went home to his farm in Fountain, Colo., and the dog was transported to the Army’s military kennels at Fort Carson, about 12 miles north.

 Sergeant 1st Class Matthew Bessler and the Belgian Malinois named Mike had been part of a canine tactical team with the 10th Special Forces Group based at Fort Carson. On the ground in Iraq, their work had been phenomenal, earning Bessler two Bronze Stars, among the most coveted commendations in the military. During their second tour as part of an elite Special Operations group in a particularly deadly phase of the war, the pair had spent every day and night together for eight months.

 Now back home, the days were never longer than when they were apart. It was as if one’s existence was proof of the other’s survival.

 Both the soldier and the dog had come home with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Mike was retiring as a combat dog, although his PTSD would get worse before it got better. And although Bessler had been in denial about his PTSD for some time, it would soon become clear that it had become too severe for him to return to war.

 Bessler had already planned to adopt Mike, but in time he would wind up training him for a new job — this time as a service dog to help protect Bessler from the unpredictable menace of PTSD.

 “Michael is a brother,” said Bessler, who served more than half of his 20-year military career in Special Operations, with an expertise in engineering and intelligence gathering. “He needs me just as much as I need him.”

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 For his service, including the detection of thousands of pounds of explosives and bomb-making materials that likely no human or machine could have located, Mike had been promoted to the rank of Major. That was part of the Army’s long tradition of bestowing ranks upon war dogs; the dog’s rank was usually at least one above the soldier’s to encourage respect and discourage abuse.

 To Bessler, Mike was a soldier, and their bond was as strong or stronger than the love that can grow between soldiers during combat. Bessler would lose touch with many of his battle brothers over time, but Mike would become a constant in a world spinning with chaos.

 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, was not a new diagnosis for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at that time. But PTSD, traumatic brain injury and the physical and mental needs of the 2.1 million veterans of those long wars would soon become part of an all-out crisis for America.

 It was no surprise that Bessler, a highly decorated Army Ranger who fought for long stretches in some of the most violent of America’s recent wars and conflicts — Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq — could return home damaged.

 But Canine PTSD was a new diagnosis, only then emerging as a possible explanation for some of the troubling behaviors some veteran combat dogs exhibit.

 A key to diagnosing a war dog with post-traumatic stress is noting whether the dog’s behavior has changed in the same setting, according to Dr. Walter F. Burghardt Jr., the chief of Behavioral Medicine at the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dogs Hospital at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.

 So if a dog consistently searches for bombs, for example, and suddenly stops in the midst of working, with no change in his environment, that would be a clear sign of trauma. “It usually involves a situation where the dog is not working as we expect it to,” Dr. Burghardt said. An estimated 5 to 10 percent of the 650 military working dogs who served in combat are expected to show symptoms of Canine PTSD, he said.

 Looking back, Bessler believes he can pinpoint the exact moment that pushed Mike over the edge.

 [MORE: Meet the Belgian Malinois, the highly-trained military dogs that guard the White House]

 After Bessler and Mike returned home from Iraq, Bessler put in the papers to adopt his wartime companion, whose official military name was K-9 Mike 5 #07-257. While the adoption was pending, Bessler would get up at dawn and drive to Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs, to see Mike at the kennel, inside a shabby beige structure called Building 6001.

 The dog was refusing to eat unless Bessler was there with him. So first Mike would eat from a bowl of dry food, and then Bessler would let the 52-pound Belgian Malinois out of his barren steel cage.

 Mike would be elated as soon as he spied Bessler. The dog’s lean and muscular body would shake with anticipation — his ears perking up, his long tail wagging furiously, his giant pink tongue hanging out.

 And Mike would know what was coming next: chasing and chewing on his cherished tennis balls. The Belgian Malinois, nicknamed “the malligator,” is known for its propensity to chew and the incredible strength of its bite. Mike was trained with the “ball reward system,” and tennis balls were his prize for doing his duty in Iraq.

 During Bessler’s early morning visits to the kennel in Ft. Carson, the two would go around the side of the building to an old basketball court where Mike could chase the ball. Bessler would return to the kennels in the middle of the day to play ball, come back at night, and think of Mike during the hours in between.

 One day a trainer called Bessler. Mike was refusing to work with any other handler. In effect, the dog was insisting that he stay with his human brother.

 “He’s waiting for you to come back,” he told Bessler. “Come pick up your dog.”

 The adoption was official, three weeks after Mike and Bessler had arrived home from Iraq.

 [MORE: Finding hope in a trash can: How a North Korean boy saved himself from starving and made it to America]

 On Bessler’s farm, Mike was surrounded by other dogs, cats, horses, chickens, a billy goat — and all the tennis balls he wanted. He was out of that grim cage at Fort Carson and enveloped by love.

 But soon after Mike settled in, the dog began anxiously chewing on rocks instead of tennis balls, crushing his teeth and destroying his gums and a chunk of his lip. He was hyper and hypervigilant, unable to focus and easily spooked by loud noises. He was having accidents in the house.

 Mike’s gum and lip injuries got so bad that Bessler and his ex-wife took him to the emergency room several times. A veterinarian in Colorado helped perform a series of successful surgeries to essentially reconstruct his nose and mouth.

 Mike’s veterinarian in Colorado, Carin Ramsel, said that Mike’s condition met the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis, and she prescribed 20 milligrams of Prozac a day for anxiety.

 Although his symptoms had become horrifyingly worse, Mike had first starting show signs of PTSD about six months into his last tour with Bessler.

 Bessler and Mike had been posted at a small, makeshift base in the swamplands of Basra Province, in southeastern Iraq. Bessler recalled that he had received intel about a pocket of insurgent activity within about two miles of the post. But in order to get there, he and Mike, along with an Iraqi Intelligence officer and two other members of the 10th Special Forces Group, had to cross a river in a small inflatable boat at night.

 The soldiers loaded up all their gear into the boat and made their way about halfway across the river when the boat started taking on water. It was near the point of capsizing when Bessler and the other soldiers began throwing their rucksacks, rifles, ammo and other gear overboard.

 The Iraqi intelligence officer shouted to the other soldiers that he couldn’t swim. Bessler told him not to panic. He grabbed Mike’s 15-foot leash and both he and the dog went overboard, sinking down into the river, which was filled with muck and kelp.

 Bessler jumped into the water and swam toward them. He got hold of Mike first and then tried to grip the intelligence officer’s right arm and pull him along with the dog toward the shore. But the arm slipped through Bessler’s hand and the man went under.

 He realized then that Mike, who was trained to rappel from an airplane and had mastered other highly advanced tasks, had no training in the water and was on the verge of drowning. But Bessler was holding onto Mike for dear life, gasping for air and pushing his way upward through the morass of kelp.

 The boat was floating away. The two other soldiers had made it to shore and the intelligence officer was dead under the water as Bessler and Mike made their way to the riverbank. Bessler followed the faint glare of a light that was flashing friendly code.

 The feeling of the Iraqi intelligence officer’s arm slipping from his fingers was as haunting as any of the bad deaths Bessler had witnessed or tried to stop. But this time Mike’s life had been at stake. It had felt beyond terrifying.

 Soon after that Mike stopped searching for bombs. Instead he was jumpy, on high alert, looking around to try and keep Bessler safe but no longer sniffing for explosives, a key requirement of his job.

 So Bessler took Mike to the 10th Group’s lead dog trainer in Baghdad, who spent some time with the dog and then told Bessler: “He’s done working.”

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 Back in Colorado, once Mike had been on Prozac for six months or so, he became calmer, more focused, more trusting, Dr. Ramsel said. Still, like many returning veterans, Mike needed a purpose. He was a rock star in Iraq until he stopped searching for bombs. Now he was an unemployed Type A dog.

 At that point Bessler was slowly coming to terms with his own disabling trauma and the fact that he would not be able to return to war. He knew what service dogs could do for struggling veterans and decided to learn everything he could about training one. Mike has been his service dog for three years now.

 Facing a recent painful and legally messy divorce, Bessler moved from Colorado back to his hometown of Powell, Wyo., where he was a star wrestler in high school and where his father and other relatives live. The connection began so long ago, it’s no stretch to say that Mike can read Bessler’s mind –only he does it with his nose, picking up on the scents of his moods.

 Now when Bessler goes to Wal-Mart, where it can feel like a minefield of overstimulation is waiting for him in every aisle, if he starts to panic he’ll walk with Mike into a corner. And Mike will stand on his feet. The physical pressure is recognized as one of many ways service dogs can help reduce anxiety.

 There is also a science to Mike’s ability to help Bessler with his anxiety and fear: the hormone oxytocin, which creates feelings of safety and calm, and is stimulated in both dogs and humans when they interact with each other.

 Besides PTSD, Bessler also lives with chronic headaches and migraines, shoulder and back pain — most likely from years of carrying a 60-to-70 pound rucksack — and tinnitus, a continuous, distracting and often painful ringing in the ears. He also suffers from memory and speech problems and blurred vision.

 You wouldn’t know Bessler had so many medical and mental health issues from looking at him. That’s why experts say the signature wounds of these wars are mostly invisible.

 Thick with muscle, heavily tattooed but with a low-key manner, Bessler could simply be the likable guy in a baseball cap riding around in his pickup truck with a cool dog and a really cute puppy in the front seat. The puppy, Ziva (a Hebrew name that means brilliance and splendor ) is a black lab that was a present from a neighbor for Valentine’s Day.

 But Bessler’s moods change day-to-day and sometimes hour-by-hour. Sometimes medications work, sometimes they don’t. Out of nowhere, he’ll be overcome by a flashback. He’ll get so fed up with the nightmares and sleepless nights — “Why even bother to nap or sleep?” he said by telephone the other night — he’ll think the only thing that can stop all the physical and psychic pain is death.

 Then Mike will pick up on Bessler’s depressive state, and as well-trained service dogs do, interrupt him, stop the demons from taking over. The dog will climb on top of Bessler as if to make sure his master can not go anywhere and hurt himself. Or, he’ll drop a tennis ball or a stuffed toy in Bessler’s lap and refuse to leave until he gets to chase one of them.

 And Bessler will consider that taking his own life would mean leaving Mike behind. A credo in the military is to leave no soldier behind.

 “That’s not being fair to the dog, not being fair to that partner who’s stood beside me forever,” he said, crying. “When you can escape yourself for a minute, and stop being selfish and think about the things you have, in my world it’s that dog.”

 Want more inspiring news and stories to improve your life? Sign up for the Inspired Life Saturday newsletter here. ||||| In this file photo, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Bessler of Powell is pictured in Iraq with Mike, the dog he adopted after the pair served together in the U.S. Army. The dog was killed on Saturday by a bicyclist who said he was attacked, but Bessler is disputing that claim.

 A retired military dog was shot and killed outside of Powell on Saturday by a bicyclist who says the dog attacked him. The dog, named Mike, also was a service dog for Army veteran Matthew Bessler of Powell, who raised the 10-year-old Belgian Malinois since he was a puppy. Bessler, who was out of town at the time, disputes the bicyclist’s account.

 “As a dog and a companion, he was probably one of the most loyal animals to anyone he came across,” Bessler said of Mike in a Wednesday interview. “If he knew you and you were in my house, he was by your side, leaning up against you.”

 Bessler hopes Mike can have a burial with military honors.

 “Mike was a retired major in the Army that saved a number of lives because of his work in bomb detection and everything he had done,” Bessler said.

 Mike served alongside Bessler in Iraq in the U.S. Army, and both came home with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mike then became a service dog for Bessler. That transition — from a combat dog to a service dog — made the canine especially unique and led to a profile in the Washington Post in July.

 “As far as we know, this is the first and only case that they have,” Bessler told the Tribune in July.

 An online fundraising campaign to help pay for Mike’s funeral costs was launched on Tuesday by Jess Campbell.

 “We are a community coming together to mourn the loss of a brave military service dog, who deserves the honor to be laid to rest with a military funeral and burial,” the page reads. “Major Mike is a former military combat dog that had served two tours of duty in Iraq. Please help us fund a funeral that will do this military war veteran the respect he deserves.”

 Extra donations will go toward a program that honors and supports war veterans, Campbell said.

 For more information about the campaign, visit www.gofundme.com/ew6cjw7k.

 The 59-year-old Powell man who shot Mike has not been cited for any wrongdoing.

 “Essentially, if you feel your life is in danger or threatened by an animal, you can act against it,” Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said Wednesday. Steward said that, according to the man’s statements and his actions, he felt threatened.

 The man was not injured in the incident.

 According to the account the bicyclist gave to the Sheriff’s Office, he was turning north onto Road 5 from Lane 9 when he was “attacked” by a “German shepherd-looking dog.”

 The Powell man got off of his bike and began using it as a shield, circling back and forth and keeping the bike between him and the dog, he told the Sheriff’s Office. Eventually, he was able to grab a revolver from his bicycle-mounted holster, and he shot the dog. The dog ran away and the man called 911, the Sheriff’s Office said.

 “(The man) said he was genuinely in fear of his life and well-being, and the dog was ‘definitely in full attack mode and not backing down at all,’” Park County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lance Mathess summarized of the report later compiled by a deputy.

 When he shot the animal, it was about 5-10 feet away, the man said. He had not thought the single round of bird shot had killed the dog, Mathess said of the man’s account.

 No other people witnessed the incident, though a neighbor heard the shot and came outside to see the dog limping away.

 Bessler had been hunting in the Big Horn Mountains at the time. The friend who was caring for Mike told the Sheriff’s Office they had no idea how the dog had escaped from Bessler’s residence, Mathess said.

 Bessler questions many parts of the bicyclist’s account.

 “He has his story,” Bessler said. “I know my dog. I have my story.”

 The man told the Sheriff’s Office, and the dog’s wounds show, that he shot the dog in the rear.

 “In my mind, it’s inconsistent with a dog that’s attacking somebody,” Bessler said, saying that two pellet marks went directly toward Mike’s heart.

 Bessler described Mike as a nice dog who was gentle with children, enjoyed being petted and always wanted to play ball.

 “He would never attack someone,” he said. “The only time he ever protected property was when somebody stepped on to my property and looked into the back of my truck.”

 Bessler added that Mike effectively had no teeth from years of chewing rocks out of anxiety.

 Bessler said Mike “never gets out on the road” and would only briefly run alongside people passing by.

 “I believe the gentleman just shot the dog on my property,” Bessler said, adding, “I don’t buy his story.”

 The man said the encounter took place in the road, and Steward said that’s consistent with what the neighbor told the deputy.

 “She comes out, and laying in the intersection was this guy’s bike and him standing there,” Steward said.

 The man initially reported he’d been attacked by a “pack of dogs,” but he later admitted that — while several other dogs came near him — only Mike threatened him, Mathess said.

 Bessler said the three other dogs with Mike when the incident occurred were smaller than Mike, including a puppy, and that none of them are aggressive.

 “If it went down the way the guy said it did, then so be it,” Bessler said. “But I’m disgusted with the fact that the guy hasn’t even shown his face to say, ‘I’m sorry this happened.’”

 Steward said the Sheriff’s Office plans to follow up on a few inconsistencies, such as whether bird or buck shot was used, but he said “everything’s pretty consistent with what the victim’s telling us.”

 Bessler said his next step will be having an autopsy performed and “memorializing, remembering Mike and taking care of services.”

 “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still so flabbergasted over the whole thing of why a person would be carrying the types of things he (the bicyclist) was carrying.”

 Steward doesn’t think it’s that unusual for someone to be carrying a weapon.

 “A lot of people, when they walk or ride bikes around here, they’ve got pepper spray, a gun or a stick,” he said. “And that’s because dogs come out and chase bikes (and) people.”

 The sheriff called it “tragic all the way around.” ||||| We are a community coming together to mourn the loss of a brave military service dog, who deserves the honor to be laid to rest with a military funeral and burial. This soldier was found fatally wounded by his owner and friend Matt Bessler (also a military war veteran) after Matt returned home from a hunting trip. Major Mike is a former military combat dog that had served two tours of duty in Iraq. Please help us fund a funeral that will do this military war veteran the respect he deserves.Any extra donations will be distributed to a military based program that honors and supports military war veterans.I have been contacted by gofundme for validation purposes and to make sure that the donors are not being taken advantage of due to the size of this campaign and the national attention of the story. Which is absolutey fine and helps to reassure the purpose of this account.Here are the questions asked with my answers:1. Who you are: my name is Jessica Campbell2. Where you're from: I was born and raised in Frannie, WY. I now reside in Cowley Wy and own and operate a business in Powell,WY. Now these towns are about only 15 minutes apart.3. Your relationship to the parties you're raising funds for: Matt and Major Mike (more Matt then Mike but Mike was always welcome) both attended and trained at my gym on and off for the the past 1.5-2 years.4. How the funds will be spent (be specific as possible): the funding will be spent on funeral services, necropsy (animal autopsy), an other support and any other costs that Matt may have in association with the shooting incident and the funeral for Major Mike (military honors, etc.). Any and all left over funds will be donated to an organization for war veterans that Matt works with and will be of his choosing. I will update every one every time there is a change or where the funds are spent.5. How you intend to get the funds to those in need: I do not have access to the funds. That is why I chose gofundme, these funds will go directly to Matt as needed for use and then to the organizations of Matt's choosing.Please follow the link below to read a recent article written in the Washington Post telling the story of two amazing soldiers who went through hell together both in Iraq and back home here in the U.S. ||||| Stock image of a Belgian Malinois. (Photo: Milan Maksic, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 POWELL, Wyo. — An Army veteran is asking for a burial with military honors for his dog that was shot and killed outside Powell.

 Matthew Bessler's 10-year-old Belgian Malinois named Mike was shot and killed last Saturday by a bicyclist who says the dog attacked him.

 Mike served with Bessler in Iraq in the U.S. Army acting as a combat dog and in bomb detection. When the pair returned from their deployment, Bessler adopted Mike. The dog helped Bessler transition from combat to normal life as he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.

 “I raised him and trained him as a puppy, and the ability he has to sense some of the issues that I have with seizures, with my PTSD, my TBI (traumatic brain injury) and severe anxiety disorders, how he can calm me down just by him being in my presence ... He can help take the focus and help change the focus of what’s going on with me and help me calm down or relax me,” Bessler told the Billings Gazette.

 According to the Powell Tribune, the bicyclist who shot Mike told the sheriff's office that he felt threatened by a pack of dogs that he encountered while on the road. The man said he first used a bicycle as a defense but then grabbed a revolver from his bicycle-mounted holster and shot the dog.

 However, Bessler — who was out of town at the time of the shooting — disputes the cyclist's account.

 “If the guy was actually fending the dogs off with a bicycle, (Mike) would have really been barking, and there was no barking," Bessler said. "All there was was just a shot. The guests who were at the house, they said the same thing. There was no barking. It was just a gunshot.”

 The 59-year-old Powell man who shot Mike has not been cited for any wrongdoing.

 Iraq Bronze Star combat dog is shot and killed by bicyclist in Wyoming http://t.co/yGvBCf3g0o — Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) October 17, 2015

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ROoR3t

Summary: – A US military veteran wants his service dog to receive burial with military honors after it was shot dead by a cyclist in Powell, Wyoming, USA Today reports. Matthew Bessler says Mike, his 10-year-old Belgian Malinois, was a combat dog who did bomb detection in Iraq before transitioning to civilian life, albeit with canine PTSD. "I raised him and trained him as a puppy, and the ability he has to sense some of the issues that I have with seizures, with my PTSD, my TBI [traumatic brain injury] and severe anxiety disorders, how he can calm me down just by him being in my presence," the Army veteran tells the Billings Gazette. "He can help take the focus and help change the focus of what’s going on with me and help me calm down or relax me." (The unique pair were featured in a Washington Post story this summer.) Now Bessler is questioning the official story that a passing cyclist killed Mike when the dog tried to attack him, the Powell Tribune reports. Bessler was away on a hunting trip when the cyclist passed the veteran's house, drew a bike-mounted revolver, and opened fire (with birdshot, the cyclist says). The cyclist "said he was genuinely in fear of his life and well-being, and the dog was 'definitely in full attack mode and not backing down at all,'" says a sheriff's spokesman. Yet Mike was shot in the backside from 5 to 10 feet away, per the sheriff's office. Bessler says he's considering taking civil action, and is "flabbergasted" that "a person would be carrying the types of things [the bicyclist] was carrying." Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page has reached its $10,000 goal to get Mike an animal autopsy and have him "laid to rest with a military funeral and burial."


The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath may have succeeded in transferring the brain-dead teen from an Oakland hospital to undisclosed care facility, but medical experts say it's only a matter of time before not even machines can keep her blood flowing.

 Bodies of the brain-dead have been maintained on respirators for months or in rare cases even years — and in a few other cases released to families.

 But once cessation of all brain activity is confirmed, there is no recovery, said Rebecca S. Dresser, professor of law and ethics in medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, who served on a presidential bioethics council that in 2008 reaffirmed "whole-brain death" as legal death.

 Brain cells die without blood flow and autopsies in such cases have shown that the brain liquefies.

 After marathon negotiations with a federal magistrate, Jahi's family members received approval to remove her body, while attached to a ventilator, from Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland on Sunday.

 The brain-dead girl was released first to the Alameda County coroner and then to the family, and is now the responsibility of her mother, who has moved her to an unnamed facility.

 The courts have so far agreed that Jahi is dead. The coroner on Friday issued a death certificate listing Dec. 12 as the date of death.

 But bioethics experts say news media coverage that often repeated family assertions that Jahi McMath was alive — even responding to touch — clouded an issue the public already has difficulty grasping.

 The Oakland girl underwent surgery Dec. 9 to remove her tonsils, adenoids and uvula. She was declared brain-dead after she went into cardiac arrest and suffered extensive brain hemorrhaging.

 At least three neurologists confirmed that Jahi was unable to breathe on her own, had no blood flow to her brain and had no sign of electrical activity.

 What followed was a court's order — extended once — that the hospital keep the ventilator on, first while an independent neurologist confirmed Jahi was brain-dead, then as the family scrambled to find a facility that would accept a patient declared deceased.

 All the while, the breathing machine kept Jahi's lungs and heart working.

 Jahi's family — and their attorney, Christopher Dolan of San Francisco — have maintained that brain death is not death, that the girl might get better, and that the rights of Jahi's mother, Latasha Winkfield, to determine the medical course of action were violated.

 But California law says the family had no right to make decisions about the ventilator, only a right to a "reasonably brief period of accommodation" after the declaration of brain death to "gather family or next of kin at the patient's bedside."

 To experts, the case has raised no novel legal issues, but it has created a painful spectacle.

 Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, said the Jahi case could compel other families to "ultimately say, 'I'd like to take this body home and wait for a miracle.' That would be a public policy of disrespect for dead bodies."

 "The ability to get clear about brain death has been a real obstacle," he said. "This hasn't helped at all."

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 lee.romney@latimes.com

 Twitter: @LeeRomney ||||| Chris Dolan, the attorney for the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, answers questions at a press conference at Dolan's San Francisco offices, Jan. 5, 2014. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group) ( D. ROSS CAMERON )

 SAN FRANCISCO -- The mantel over a fireplace in Christopher Dolan's law office is lined with photos of his family, notably pictures of his two young children.

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 And as far as he's concerned, those photos -- not money, fame or a lawyer's hubris -- explain why he took on an Oakland family's heart-wrenching public battle over 13-year-old Jahi McMath when she was declared brain dead more than a month ago.

 And it hasn't made him popular. Dolan has received death threats, been called a liar, unethical and accused of exploiting a family's grief. But the tough-talking Connecticut native, who sprinkles his narrative with a healthy dose of profanity, makes no apologies for his very public role in helping Jahi's family get her out of Children's Hospital Oakland and preserve some form of medical treatment.

 "If it was my daughter, I'd do everything I'm doing for this family," Dolan said Tuesday during a two-hour interview with this newspaper. "The one thing the family was going to know at the end of the day is that the family had somebody who fought for them."

 In Dolan, Jahi's family found a 50-year-old trial lawyer who has sparred in court against a host of powerful adversaries, from Stanford University's hospital to companies such as Federal Express. The delivery giant found out just how tough Dolan can be when he persuaded a federal jury a decade ago to award $61 million to two Lebanese drivers harassed by a manager with racial slurs in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

 Dolan even took on the Ladies Professional Golf Association on behalf of Lana Lawless, a transgender golfer who won the right to play on the tour and forced the organization to change its rules to enable transgender golfers to participate.

 Dolan was drawn into the maelstrom over Jahi's fate on Dec. 16, when he got a phone call at his San Rafael home from her uncle, Omari Sealey. He knew nothing of the controversy, having been immersed in a federal court trial, but Sealey pleaded for help, urging him to turn on the television to watch the latest coverage of the drama. Dolan flipped on the TV, and could see Sealey in the background of the newscast, holding his phone, as their conversation unfolded.

 After discussions with his wife, Dolan decided to take on the family's cause, convinced they should have a choice in the decision over whether Jahi should be taken off a ventilator. Describing himself as a "cafeteria Catholic," Dolan admits he did a lot of soul-searching on his views about end-of-life treatment, but kept coming back to the conclusion that a family, rather than just doctors and hospital administrators, should have a voice when they still believe a child can be saved.

 But critics have questioned Dolan's altruism. After Dolan and Sealey appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan show Monday night, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin decried the role of a lawyer in the case, saying he was "preying on the false hope of the family." Children's Hospital spokesman Sam Singer, Dolan's chief antagonist in the Jahi saga, calls the lawyer "heartless," adding: "I've never seen such reckless disregard for the truth."

 Dolan is particularly dismissive of Singer and the hospital, claiming that they've libeled him. He points to a wall full of lawyer awards in the entryway of his Market Street office, some singling out his ethics, and merely jokes that Singer needs "to get some decent clothes."

 "The whole thing about me giving them false hope is a construction of public relations because they needed a villain," Dolan said. "It's OK if I take the heat. You can still have sympathy for the family."

 Describing himself as "about as pro-choice as you can get," Dolan is not an avenger for groups devoted to the end-of-life treatment issue. "I didn't know (expletive) about it when I took this on," he said. "I knew nothing about it."

 And Dolan stresses that he's representing the family for free, and will not handle the inevitable medical negligence lawsuit sure to come against Children's Hospital, where Jahi developed complications and suffered cardiac arrest after a three-part surgery to remove tonsils and clear tissue from her nose and throat on Dec. 9. Multiple doctors have declared Jahi brain dead, but the family has rejected that diagnosis, hoping she can live. She has been moved to an undisclosed location, where Dolan concedes the medical outlook is grim.

 Dolan insists it would be unethical for him to handle any negligence or wrongful death case, which could expose the hospital to millions of dollars in damages, although he will continue to press a separate federal constitutional case he hopes might define family rights in such situations in the future -- if Jahi's family wants to pursue it. Dolan matter-of-factly states he's already made a "boatload of money," so he can afford to subsidize such causes.

 Dolan has no shortage of adjectives for himself, at once describing himself as a "scalpel" and "hard-ass" to a "highly educated juvenile delinquent (he graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law School)."

 He shows a visitor texts he's received in recent days from Jahi's family, one from her mother saying she was "forever grateful" for his help. He insists he won't do another case like this one, but has no regrets about spending all those days trying to help the motionless Jahi and her family.

 "I'll go down swinging," Dolan said, tearing up at one point when he recalled the day they got the right to move Jahi. "I don't care. I'll lose the money. Maybe that's why people are having such a hard time understanding what's my angle. This lady asked me to save her kid from being killed."

 Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz ||||| Photo: Uncredited, Associated Press Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close

 Image 1 of 8 This undated file photo provided by the McMath family and Omari Sealey shows Jahi McMath. This undated file photo provided by the McMath family and Omari Sealey shows Jahi McMath. Photo: Uncredited, Associated Press

 Image 2 of 8 Attorney Christopher Dolan (left) and Omari Sealey smiled as reporters tried to find out where Jahi McMath had been moved Monday January 6, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Attorney Christopher Dolan and uncle Omari Sealey announced that Jahi McMath has been moved to another medical facility and is receiving antibiotics and nutrients. Attorney Christopher Dolan (left) and Omari Sealey smiled as reporters tried to find out where Jahi McMath had been moved Monday January 6, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Attorney Christopher Dolan and uncle ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

 Image 3 of 8 Jahi's Uncle Omari Sealey, (left) listens as Sandra Chatman talks about her grandaughter Jahi McMath while being joined by the family attorney Christopher Dolan, as they speak to the news media about the court ordered extension in front of Children's Hospital in Oakland, Ca., on Monday Dec. 30, 2013. 13-year-old Jahi McMath was slated to be removed from a ventilator at 5pm this afternoon but a court order has extended the deadline for the removal of the ventilator until 5pm January 7, 2014. Jahi's Uncle Omari Sealey, (left) listens as Sandra Chatman talks about her grandaughter Jahi McMath while being joined by the family attorney Christopher Dolan, as they speak to the news media about the court ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

 Image 4 of 8 Nailah Winkfield, the mother of brain-dead girl Jahi McMath, embraces her brother Omari Sealey, after they stated that the court order to remove Jahi from a ventilator has been extended to January 7th 2014. The statement was made by the family to the news media in front of Children's Hospital in Oakland, Ca. , on Monday Dec. 30, 2013. 13-year-old Jahi McMath is slated to be removed from a ventilator at 5pm this afternoon, after being declared brain-dead by the hospital. Nailah Winkfield, the mother of brain-dead girl Jahi McMath, embraces her brother Omari Sealey, after they stated that the court order to remove Jahi from a ventilator has been extended to January 7th 2014. The ... more Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

 Image 5 of 8 Christopher Dolan, attorney representing the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, speaks to member of the media after a court hearing on Monday, Dec. 23, 2013 in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at the Children's Hospital Oakland after doctors declared her brain dead following a routine tonsillectomy procedure. A judge on Monday appoints Dr. Paul Fisher, Chief of Pediatric Neurology at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, to determine whether Jahi is legally dead as the family members continue to fight to keep McMath on life support. Christopher Dolan, attorney representing the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, speaks to member of the media after a court hearing on Monday, Dec. 23, 2013 in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at ... more Photo: Stephen Lam, Special To The Chronicle

 Image 6 of 8 Nailah Winkfield, mother of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, cries before a court hearing on Monday, Dec. 23, 2013 in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at the Children's Hospital Oakland after doctors declared her brain dead following a routine tonsillectomy procedure. A judge on Monday appoints Dr. Paul Fisher, Chief of Pediatric Neurology at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, to determine whether Jahi is legally dead as the family members continue to fight to keep McMath on life support. Nailah Winkfield, mother of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, cries before a court hearing on Monday, Dec. 23, 2013 in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at the Children's Hospital Oakland after doctors ... more Photo: Stephen Lam, Special To The Chronicle

 Image 7 of 8 Family members of 13-year-old Oakland teen Jahi McMath are holding out hope for a miracle recovery after a routine procedure has left the girl brain dead. Family members of 13-year-old Oakland teen Jahi McMath are holding out hope for a miracle recovery after a routine procedure has left the girl brain dead. Photo: CBS San Francisco

Summary: – The California 13-year-old declared dead after tonsil surgery is getting better at the undisclosed facility where she was moved earlier this week, family lawyer Christopher Dolan claims. Jahi McMath has had feeding and tracheostomy tubes inserted and "doctors are optimistic that her condition has stabilized and that her health is improving from when she was taken from" the hospital, Dolan tweeted. He says she is now "doing very well" and is getting the treatment she should have had weeks ago, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Dolan's opinion aside, the Los Angeles Times points out that recovery is not possible, and that machines can only keep her blood flowing for a finite amount of time; in only rare cases have the bodies of the brain-dead been "maintained" longer than months. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, the veteran trial lawyer defends his role in the case and says he has been receiving death threats. He describes himself as a pro-choice, "cafeteria Catholic" who had to do plenty of soul-searching before getting involved, but will "go down swinging" in his efforts to help the family. "If it was my daughter, I'd do everything I'm doing for this family," he says. "The one thing the family was going to know at the end of the day is that the family had somebody who fought for them." He stresses that he is helping the family for free and will not get involved in any negligence lawsuits.