On Tuesday, the fate of the Cleveland Cavaliers was sealed, as the Golden State Warriors were too much to handle in Game 6 of the 2015 NBA Finals. After the game, Warriors forward Andre Iguodala was named MVP of the series. Although Iguodala and teammate Stephen Curry were both plausible options for the award, LeBron James was the best player in the series and the most valuable player to his team. The award should have gone to him.

James, who failed to win the award by three votes, narrowly missed joining Jerry West as the only other player in NBA history to win an Finals MVP in a losing effort. West won the award in 1969, although his team fell in seven games to the Boston Celtics.

In this series, James’ importance to the Cavaliers is most easily seen by comparing the team’s offensive rating with him on the court and off of the court. According to NBA.com/Stats, the Cavaliers scored 97.9 points per 100 possessions with James on the court during the NBA Finals. However, with him off of the court, this number fell all the way to 50.9. With James on the bench, the Cavaliers shot just 17.1 percent in the series and failed to make a three-point attempt. The offense was so putrid during this time that head coach David Blatt only found 23 minutes to sit James, much of them occurring late in games when the Warriors held a large lead.

When James was on the court, he was asked to do nearly everything for Cleveland. During the NBA Finals, he scored or assisted on an average of 57.7 points per game, the highest number ever in an NBA Finals. Furthermore, his 40.8 usage percentage is the second-highest mark ever in an NBA Finals, just slightly behind Michael Jordan‘s mark set in 1998. Still, while playing 45.7 minutes per game, James found a way to average 35.8 points, 8.8 assists and 13.3 rebounds per game against the best defense in the NBA in the regular season and postseason.

Considering the players around him, his assist percentage of 52.7 in the series is almost inconceivable. To put that number into perspective, there were only two players above 40.0 percent in the postseason. Disregarding Kyrie Irving, Matthew Dellavedova had the second-highest assist percentage on the team with 14.4. No other player in the series notched a number higher than 28.5 percent.

Alongside James, the Cavaliers seemingly had zero capable offensive players. Although Dellavedova started the series off strong, he closed the series out shooting 19.2 percent from the field in the final three games. Additionally, the additions of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert struggled from the perimeter, shooting a combined 30.3 percent from behind the arc in the NBA Finals.

Down low, Timofey Mozgov played well, but the Warriors’ small lineups made it challenging for Blatt to extend his minutes. Furthermore, Mozgov is not a player who is built for post isolation touches in the paint at this stage of his career. Next to him, Tristan Thompson rebounded well as usual, but the starting power forward was yet another player on Cleveland’s roster who could not be called upon to create his own offense.

If this series went to seven games, it would not be ridiculous to think that a few voters would have switched their vote to James. Still, with everything that James did for his team during the series, it didn’t seem as if he needed seven games to win the MVP award.

Nicholas Sciria is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Nick_Sciria, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.