For most my life I have been a basketball fan, my team is and has always been the Cleveland Cavaliers. When you grow up in Cleveland you are born to a different kind of heritage as a sports fan. Cleveland fans are a special brand of sports fans, most of us are not frontrunners or bandwagon jumpers. We live and die by our teams, and too often it seems we die, but Cleveland rallies behind our teams in a way other cities cannot imagine. This is what has made the 2007 playoff run by the Cavs so special for me and other Cleveland sports fans. We have waited along time to see something like this. We have waited just to have hope for a chance.
For me -- My love of basketball started long long ago -- I was two when the franchise started, I grew up with the Cavs, some of my earliest sports memories revolved around the Cavaliers. I remember them playing their games at the old Cleveland Arena, but the earliest dreams of a NBA title for me like most Cavs fans started in the "miracle of Richfield season" of 1975-1976. Named for last second heroics that team performed against the Washington Bullets. It would be the first time any Cavalier team would make it to the eastern conference finals. I still remember listening to the many of games on the radio late on school nights. It would foster a love and appreciation for basketball and Joe Tait is perhaps the best announcer for any team in any sport. His calls of the heroics of these games have stayed with me for more than 30 years. As has Bingo "Bobby Smith", "Footsie" Walker, Campy Russel and Austin Carr. I have often wondered what might have happened if Jim Chones had not broken his foot? Dave Cowens and the Boston Celtics won this series 4 games to 2. Other cities would not revel in a season that produced a loss in the Eastern conference finals, but this season this would be a legend talked about locally for decades. It is huge in the annuals of Cleveland sports history. It was the spark that forever made me a fan of the both this game and this team. It would be the memory that would keep the dream alive during the darkest of seasons of which there were plenty.
You see one thing people in other cities have not had to endure is the trauma that has come with being a fan of the Cavaliers. The Cavs would devolve into a fricking laughing stock of the NBA. An argument can be made when this franchise was at it worse it became the lowest of the low, the hardest luck team to survive in the NBA and not fold or move. Teetering on the brink of extinction during the worst of times. A new owner Ted Stepien, would come to define the highest level of incompetence perhaps anyone has ever seen in Cleveland Sports and the NBA. Trading away draft pick after draft pick that could have brought the likes of James Worthy to Cleveland and making moves that sent Bill Lambeer to Detroit. During this time the team was almost moved to Toronto. It can be tough to be a fan of a Cleveland team during good times -- but even harder when you are a laughing stock.
No other city can even claim to come close to the pain Cleveland fans have had to endure.
Our teams have been laughing stocks, the butt of jokes and the big leagues. It is not just the disappointments that are our named failures like "the Drive" or "the Fumble" or "the Shot" these are the close calls, the magical moments we have had to revel in. The good times if you will - the we were close just wait til next year. While fans in cities like Boston used to whine about the Red Sox, or the Chicago Cubs fans would cry about their hard luck, they could watch other teams in their city hang championship banners. Cleveland teams during the decades of seventies, eighties and nineties often were a disgrace in each sport. The Cavaliers and the Indians both have threatened to move in the past and the most storied of Cleveland teams the Browns did move to Baltimore. If this wasn’t bad enough Cleveland fans endure this level of performance and jokes about the city - the mistake on the lake -- the river that burned -- The lake that is Erie and the tower that is terminal. Fans of this city and these teams have bore the brunt of jokes from almost everyone in sports, and the nation. \
And yet we stayed loyal...
And we hoped our someday may come...
For the Cavaliers fans in Cleveland there have been glimmers of hope from time to time but these have been at best fleeting. While the Cavs would contend in the late 1980's and early 1990's there was the ultimate dream killer named Michael Jordan. He did not just kill our dreams; he killed anybody else's in the league that ever had a shot. The group of Cavalier heroes during this time is as immortal to me as the heroes from the Miracle of Richfield. Mark Price, Craig Ehlo, Brad Daugherty, "Hot Rod" Williams and Larry Nance would again take us close, and in Cleveland these names are also honored in our local history. In the end no Cavalier team was ever been able to achieve more than two wins in the Conference finals.
Until Now... Now it seems like someday.
You see now we have King James, Lebron the chosen one. The rest of the county can argue over what his impact is, or will be and who’s better than him. Kobe? Michael? or Magic? Perhaps history will judge the all to be better or not. The rest of the county can tell us how over hyped he is, and point out the flaws in his game. It does not matter to us. Whatever... Who cares.... For fans of Cleveland, he is simply the greatest thing to happen in a long long time. What he represents to the fans of Cleveland is the someday we hoped for. This is the payoff for decades of loyalty and suffering. At 22 years old he is already the greatest player to have ever worn the Cavalier jersey. If we have retired the numbers of the some of other guys I have mentioned earlier, then Lebron has already guaranteed himself a street or high school being named after him.
Witness.
You see we are now in a place we once never really believed we could see, a team from Cleveland is going to the NBA Finals. What makes it even more exciting for Cavalier fans is Lebron is our guy -- a local kid from a High School only a stones throw from the miracle of Richfield. Lebron has handled himself with a grace and humbleness we can admire, and he just might have a lot more somedays to see too. If the early Cavaliers gave us the season we talked about for decades how will we possibly describe what could come next? Lebron is capable of a miracle each time he has the ball.
So we hear all the predictions, San Antonio in five, or maybe even a finals sweep. Please understand our history, you cannot phase true Cavalier fans or anyone else from here. We have heard it all before -- Lebron can't close, he is overrated, cant shoot free throws, the others guys can't step up and, oh yeah, Pistons in six. We have been laughed at, suffered through folly, and almost had our team moved to Toronto. The nation fails to understand is that there is a collective sprit in Cleveland, that no matter how bad it gets, no matter what they say, and even if the friggin river burns, keep plugging away and keep believing because someday can come. That attitude defines the city, the fans, the team, and oh yea by the way, it is embodied by Lebron James too. This attitude was evidenced by Lebron's epic game 5 and was seen in the team’s performance in game six durimg the Detroit series. Nobody in the Eastern Conference is laughing at the Cavs anymore.
San Antonio had better pray, that the Cavaliers someday isn't now.
