Every once in a while sports catches me caring about something I didn't know I cared about. Like, for instance, Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Last night Lebron led the Cavaliers and the entire City of Cleveland, indeed perhaps the whole northeast corner of Ohio, out of the shadowlands of sports purgatory and into the glorious light of Championship.
Cleveland's sports woes are well chronicled: The Drive by John Elway, The Fumble by Ernest Byner, Michael Jordan stealing Craig Ehlo's face and perhaps even devouring his soul, the actual departure of the Browns to Baltimore, pretty much everything the Indians have ever done, and perhaps most acrid of all: native son Lebron James' own announcement that he would be "taking his talents to South Beach." Cleveland is the poster child for the rust belt and the punchline of jokes about futility. It is Detroit without the tragedy and violence. The thing that really probably stung the most about Cleveland sports is how close they came so many times. It wasn't that they were mired in perpetual losing, the Cavaliers made the finals a few times and lost, the Browns were int he AFC championship games, the Indians probably made the playoffs once or twice, and they did actually get a really funny movie (Major League) made about how pathetic they actually were.
As Philly phan, I can sort of feel Cleveland's pain (four NFC championship games in a row and one Super Bowl loss, can certainly make you forget about all the winning that Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb's Iggles did in the first decade of the new millennium). So last night, after I watched Game of Thrones, I clicked on over to game seven and watched Lebron's Cavaliers complete an unprecedented comeback from a 3-1 series deficit and actually become NBA champions. In the process they defeated the defending champion Golden State Warriors, the new darlings of the NBA, and the harbingers of the future of the league. They beat a team that had only lost nine regular season games four times, including the last three in a row, while facing elimination. Lebron was not Michael Jordan in these games either, he didn't drop 60 points a night and dominate like some sort of mythical basketball god. He played hard though, and he made his teammates better. He defended like a demon, he passed like point guard and he fought for everything, even as he seemed to be battling for his scoring touch.
In the end, when he collapsed on the floor, I felt that he had earned that moment perhaps more than any athlete I can remember. It was the completion of an epic story arc. It started with him being the most talented, most sought after high school player, maybe ever. It followed with him, Akron boy, being drafted by the local Cleveland Cavaliers, and almost immediately making the team that Jordan had gutted in the 1990's relevant again. He got them close, he got them right to the brink, but he couldn't bring it home, so he left. He left like a 20 something year old, who doesn't really know how to go about things. He went to someplace warm and cosmopolitan, a place that is pretty much the antithesis of Cleveland, Miami. Cleveland mourned and burned his jersey, but deep in their heart they knew why he left. Most of them would probably have left too given the chance. In Miami Lebron assembled his super team, there he won, there he gloated, and there he decided he had unfinished business in Cleveland.
When he came back two years ago, he was a savior and all was forgiven, instantly, without a second glance. It would have been a perfect thing to have won last year, he bootstrapped a young, incoherent team into the finals and ran into the three point shooting buzz saw of the Golden State Warriors. His two main supporting players were down and out, and he couldn't quite muscle through the team that has proven to be this year, until last night, an absolute force of nature. I didn't really blame him, and neither did Cleveland, even though the sports writers were pronouncing the demise of Lebron James as a force in the game. If you really paid attention, you would know that the story of him riding back to Cleveland to an instant championship was not really how it goes for that city. It just wouldn't have been right. It would have been too easy. It wouldn't have been right for someone else to take out the Warriors either. Just like Jordan needed to slay the dragon of the Detroit Pistons, Lebron needed to fend off the challenge of Stephen Curry. Cleveland needed to wear its heart on the outside of its body for a week as the Cavs fended off elimination three times in a row. They were the underdogs, which is what Cleveland must be. It was not a fluke that they had to come back from a deficit, it was not a fluke that they were locked up at 89 coming down to the final seconds of game 7, it was not a fluke that Lebron had to fly in with a desperate block on Steph Curry and then crash to the floor after a missed dunk, leaving him clutching his arm and Cleveland holding its breath 2500 miles away, it was exactly as it should be that he winced his way through making one of two free throws to mostly seal the deal, it was absolutely right that the deal never really seemed sealed until the game clock went red. It was all, well, not perfect, but it was exactly what had to happen for Cleveland.
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