CLEVELAND - Eons ago in this NBA season and in a place far, far away from Cleveland (it was Utah), Kyrie Irving poured in 34 points.

That night, on Nov. 5, the Cavaliers fell to the Jazz 102-100 on Gordon Hayward's buzzer beater. LeBron James scored 31 and added four assists, but lost Hayward when he tripped trying to fight through a screen to guard on the final play.

After the game, James wasn't thinking about the loss or about that last defensive breakdown. He was miffed that Irving scored all those points without registering a single assist.

"He came up to me and was like, 'One, you can never have another game with no assists,' " Irving said, describing James' words. " 'You can damn near have just one, two, three, but you can't have zero.' And I was like, 'All right, cool, it won't happen again.' And it hasn't happened since that game."

For Cavs fans wondering why it seems James and the other member of Cleveland's Big Three, Kevin Love, continue to struggle to get on the same page -- take note. James and Irving were there once, too.

This is the story of how James and Irving overcame their differences and transformed into one of the NBA's most menacing duos.

"Friends or no friends, at the end of the day we're all here to do one thing, and that's to win," James said to the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Both James and Irving granted separate, exclusive interviews to discuss their months of building on and off-court relationships that are so vital to Cleveland's postseason success.

Since that night in Utah, Irving has delivered the top two scoring games in the NBA this season - a 55-point barrage on Jan. 28; and 57 against San Antonio on March 12. The latter broke James' franchise record for points in a game.

James leads the Cavaliers with 25.7 ppg, but he is also their top assist man with 7.3 per game. Cleveland, which was 19-20 at one point, is now firmly in control of second place in the East with an eye on the franchise's first Finals appearance since 2007 - when Irving was 15 years old.

James and Irving have also become friends away from basketball, making plans to hang after games and being spotted together in a swank Miami nightclub.

Juxtapose that with Love, who last week on two national talk shows said he and James were "not best friends" and he picked Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook instead of James for MVP.

For all the awkwardness Love's comments seemed to generate -- don't forget, James took a not-so-veiled swipe at Love on Twitter in February for not being more of a team player -- Irving was once in a similar spot with James.

And you can trace it at least back to early November, one night before Irving's 34-point, zero-assist performance against the Jazz.

Two views of the same ball

On Nov. 3, the Cavs lost by 19 to Portland. James, so disgusted with Irving and with Dion Waiters (who's since been traded) for jacking up shots without trying to build a rhythm offensively, stood idly in the corner in the second half and let his team flounder.

Afterward, James said the Cavs had developed "bad habits" from four years of losing while he was in Miami. It was abundantly clear which teammates he was speaking about.

"I don't want to say it's not been rocky at all," Irving said. "Obviously, he sees the game one way, I see the game another way. What makes it great about being on the team is that we both can see it together in our own way."

Irving knew that James had a point in Portland, and again in Utah - that winning basketball required ball movement. But Irving also believed that merely deferring to James as the primary option on offense wasn't necessarily fair to Irving's own considerable skills as a scorer, or to what Love or the other Cavs could bring to the table.

"Coming in this season, when you have a guy like that who plays the one, two, and three positions (like James), some games are going to be that way," Irving said. "I feel like that's the biggest thing we've built is we're starting to trust one another more. It took time."

James was 29 at the season's outset, and a four-time NBA MVP with two titles who had played the role of distributor before. He did it when he shared the floor on all those Finals-bound Miami teams with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

But James came to Cleveland with the stated goals of leading a young team to prominence. He expected Irving to initiate the offense and challenged him to do so in September. He wasn't necessarily expecting to defer to someone seven years his junior.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Of all the reasons why James left South Beach to return to the Cavs, he said Irving's presence as the team's point guard was one of the attractions.

"I knew how special he was, just competing against him," James said.

Irving, 22 at the time, was already a two-time All-Star when James arrived. By December, Nike would launch Irving's own signature basketball shoe, joining James among the few NBA players with their own Nike line.

Irving had just inked a five-year, $90 million contract extension with the Cavs, so James knew he'd have a bona fide, top-tier point guard on his side for years in Cleveland. He'd never had that before.

"He didn't have much experience as far as what we were trying to accomplish at the beginning of the season," James said. "I wanted him to kind of learn on the fly, give him bits and pieces of what was going to be ahead of him."

Irving had a bit of a "me-first" mentality -- he acknowledges this -- and James realized Irving was unaccustomed to playing as the favorite each night.

The second part -- playing when you're expected to win -- is the price of playing on a team with James. Success wasn't possible, though, without addressing the former.

So James not only spoke openly about "bad habits," but he compared his teammates to "my kids" after a November win over Boston.

James wasn't talking about Cavs like James Jones and Mike Miller, whom he had won titles with in Miami; or Anderson Varejao, his teammate for years in Cleveland before his Miami tenure.

"Throughout the course of the season, you know what guys can take and what guys can't take," James said. "His approach has changed tremendously."

Irving, of course, had a baseline of respect for James from the start. He called James "basically a living hall of famer," and said he knew he had to earn James' respect and trust.

Irving thought he could win over James by showing him his work ethic at practice and by, yes, changing his attitude.

"LeBron's view of things has changed because it's no longer, he's not looking across the locker room and asking, 'Does this guy have my back?' or, 'Is this guy my brother?' " Irving said. "When we came into the locker room last year, it would probably be about the performance I had, in a selfish way. Because, you know, you become a losing team, you build bad habits."

An age thing

The Cavs strung together winning streaks of four and eight games in November and December, but James was still far from comfortable with the new team.

One of the reasons for James' discomfort was something that caught a little off guard.

Mitigating the age difference between him and Irving, him and Love (26), and some of the others was a real challenge for him.

"It's very different, because myself, Chris, and D-Wade, we came up together," James said. "We all was drafted in the same draft class, and even though we didn't pair up until seven years into our careers, we were damn near the same age and we all had seen the league as it evolved and transformed in different ways. We all grew up together."

Irving was 11 years old in James' rookie season of 2003. As James said, "You have to understand sometimes like 'Oh, they don't even remember that Ray Allen was a driver and a dunker and a slasher.' All they remember is Ray Allen as a 3-point shooter.

"Things of that nature kind of gets into your head," James said.

The age difference is why Irving doesn't like comparisons between Cleveland's Big Three and what James had in Miami. But Irving also thought he could help James get over the gap by proving he had an old soul.

Irving thought James would come to view him as someone he could learn from, too, despite James' relative wealth of experience. Irving said he proved his point, which is why he said age is no longer a factor between them.

"It doesn't matter that he's older. I've been playing against older guys my whole entire life," Irving said. "I mean, I played with my dad in New York City against older guys all the time. I feel like I have an old-school game, I do things people probably think a 23 year old shouldn't know or do.

"And I'm just like, I have that in my game from my dad and from working hard. And LeBron has a lot of things that he has developed, and I want to learn, too."

Turning point

When it finally happened, when James visibly warmed to Irving, isn't exactly clear.

James congratulated his "brother" for making the All-Star game in February - that's a far cry from grouping Irving in with his "kids."

On the morning of Jan. 15, at a team shootaround at UCLA before a road game against the Lakers, James pulled Irving and Love aside to tell them the Cavs would go as far as the three would take them.

The Cavs won that night, and on the next 11 game nights. They've amassed an NBA-best 28-7 record since Jan. 15. James is averaging 25.9 points, 7.1 assists and 6.4 boards in that stretch; Irving's right there with 23.1 points and 5.1 assists.

"When Kyrie is in scoring-mentality mode where he has it going, I want to continue to be the guy to go to him and to set it up, because I could always be engaged in the game, whether I'm scoring or not," James said. "So to have a guy like that who can go off for 50 on any given night is definitely a luxury."

During that same time frame, Love is averaging 15.1 points and 9.6 rebounds, shooting 43 percent. For the season, Love's averaging 16 points and 10 boards - excellent numbers for a team's third option.

But Love's not used to being a third option. He averaged 26 points for Minnesota last season, and he has $16.7 million player option in his contract for next season that he could forgo to become a free agent.

So after Love's occasional, public grumblings about struggling to fit in offensively with James and Irving, and James' responses to those grumblings, on March 22 a picture surfaced on social media of James, Irving, and some Cavs teammates posing after a win over Milwaukee.

Love wasn't in the picture. And then he gave those interviews, offering insight into what was already apparent -- his lacking, off-court relationship with James.

"People get so infatuated with the best of friends, things of that nature," James said. "First of all, I've got three very good friends in this league, and that's Carmelo (Anthony), and that's C.P. (Chris Paul), and that's D-Wade. And after that I have a bunch of teammates. I have guys I ride for every day.

"But Kyrie is a guy I understand how important he is to this team, how important he is. And the same with Kev as well."

Love may never get to where James and Irving are now as friends. Both James and Love agreed that whether or not that ever happens isn't important - it's if the Cavs win that matters.

But James and Irving are only where they are now as friends because they built a rapport on the court. And that's what James wants with Love.

"In order for us to reach our potential, the Big Three has to be big," James said. "And it can't just be Kyrie one night, me one night, and Kev. We all have to be clicking at the same time in order for us to be successful."