The Blueprint

Praise for The Blueprint

“[An] energetic, detailed slice of basketball history… Lloyd’s intoxicatingly thorough reporting allows readers to grasp the difficulty in assembling a team—even one featuring a legend.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] brilliant book, one that takes the reader back through the many momentous moments over the past several seasons in Cavaliers history…Lloyd masterfully tells a truly compelling story of the fall, and subsequent rise, of the Cavaliers.”—Tim Bontemps, The Washington Post

“In the tradition of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (2003), journalist Lloyd traces how the Cleveland Cavaliers, after re-signing LeBron James, captured the NBA championship in 2015–16.”—Booklist

“I couldn’t put down The Blueprint…this book will interest anyone whose team has had a long championship drought.”—Library Journal

“A very personal account of the return of LeBron James to Cleveland in 2014 and of the Cavaliers’ NBA championship in 2016… [Lloyd] tells several interlocking stories: James’ decision to leave the team, the four intervening years when the Cavs’ front office began plotting to get him back, the arrival of key players (especially Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, and J.R. Smith)… and, of course, that championship that erased decades of frustration for Cleveland sports fans.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is a book about basketball, but also about hope and loss and redemption and what happens when the impossible somehow becomes real. Page after page, Lloyd expertly pulls back the curtain on all the private moments that coalesced to give Cleveland something more than a miracle: its first major championship in more than half a century.”—Rachel Nichols, ESPN
 
“In 2011, Jason Lloyd told me LeBron was coming back to Cleveland. 2011! That’s how deeply ingrained he is with this franchise, this athlete and this story, a modern epic he was hard-wired to tell.”—Lee Jenkins, Sports Illustrated