June 2016. Oakland California. Oracle Arena. The NBA Finals, tied at three games a piece. The Cleveland Cavaliers on the pinnacle of making history, becoming the first team to ever come back from a 3-1 game deficit to win a championship. On the line for the Golden State Warriors: a second straight championship. The Warriors had league MVP Stephen Curry. They had the best regular season record ever recorded, 73 – 9. They had home-court advantage. They had the series lead. They should have won.

My friends and I were all around 16, and had been obsessed with the NBA for years. This was the biggest game we’d ever seen. Every effort was being made to watch it. In class rooms throughout the school, there were students huddled around desks, looking into pencil cases, friends laps, or wherever the phone was hidden. From memory, ours was supported by a Biology textbook. Officially, there were 30.8 million viewers of this game, making it the largest audience for an NBA game in 18 years. There was no way we were missing it.

The game had everything. Rivalry. Suspense. Big names. It had those intangibles that makes sports so great, and so heartbreaking. No lead felt safe, no one knew what would happen. The series shouldn’t have gotten to this point; we were in uncharted territory. With two minutes left, scores were tied. 89 – 89. That’s when it happened.

The greatest moments in sports are ones that earn ‘The’ status. ‘The Shot’ by Jordan against Ehlo. ‘The Rumble In The Jungle’, Ali vs Foreman. ‘The Hand of God’ from Diego Maradona. I would say that to etch your name in the history books, an athlete needs their ‘The’ moment. In the dying moments of game seven, the championship on the line, LeBron James got his.

At that moment we all knew the Cavaliers had won. Yes, the scores were still tied. But after a play like that? How could they not win. A minute later, Kyrie Irving hit a three-pointer putting Cleveland up three with 53 seconds left. That would be the last basket of the game, and the Cleveland Cavaliers would win their first ever NBA Championship.

The game was jaw-dropping. No one could find the words to describe it. History had been made. All you could do was sit there, and appreciate what you just saw. I wasn’t in the stadium for it, but I was still part of the audience, as were millions of people around the world. What I took away from that game was sports ability to unite people. The only negative? I was going for the Warriors.