Before Game
4, I ditched the perfectly adequate spread in the media dining room in the
bowels of Quicken Loans Arena and headed over to East Fourth Street, relishing
my every inch-along moment in a dense, exhilarated crowd where just about
everyone but me was sporting Cleveland garb
.
Not, I
should add, just Cavaliers stuff. In fact, I’d say at least half of it
emphasized the Cleveland itself, first and foremost
.
Things like
believeland. Or
cleveland is the city. This isn’t
normal. You don’t see a whole lot of this in championship games in New York or
LA, cities too large to have their identities so entwined with that of their
sports teams. And neither do you see it in smaller cities like San Antonio, St.
Louis or (
shudder) Pittsburgh — places
that have both won recent titles and been only rarely the butt of cruel jokes
at the expense of any suffering. The fact that you see it in title-rich Boston,
of course, is why Boston fans have become the most insufferable in the country.
But Cleveland’s yearning for redemption is … well, if you’ve made it to the
second graf of a blog on the Cleveland Mag website, I can’t imagine you need me
to explain.
Even a
surprising amount of Cavs merch made a nod toward the team’s history. There was
quite a lot from the orange-and-blue era and many replica jerseys of retired
players
,
presumably to send the message that the wearer ain’t no bandwagon-jumper.
I managed to
burrow my way into the Greenhouse Tavern and bully my way to the bar
,
where I scored a seat at the far end. Next to me was a woman in v-necked wine-and-gold
shirt picturing the retro Cavalier dude and her date, dressed in immaculately
pressed, logo-free togs that would pass casual-Friday muster in the most staid
law firm, though he turned out to be a New York-raised Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
real estate agent. She was his massage therapist until she moved here to start
her own business. He came to visit and wouldn’t tell me how much he paid for
the tickets because he didn’t want her to think he was trying to impress her
.
The massage
therapist said she wasn’t a huge basketball fan but she had deep family ties to
Cleveland had been “living and dying” with the Cavs all season. “When I came
home,” she said, “everyone joked that I was just trying to be like LeBron.”
As for Realtor guy, he was just
rooting for a good series, though as a New York Rangers fan, he knew what it
felt like to suffer for a long time and then finally be redeemed.
The woman and I made eye contact. Yeah, right, the look said. Realtor guy don’t know from suffering.
“Of course,” he said, scrambling
for the save, “I want her to be
happy, so I’m rooting for Cleveland.”
“Of course,” I said.
Two days later, as I write this, I
kind of envy Realtor guy and anyone else who doesn’t have a dog in the fight
that this NBA Finals has become.
For them
(and, judging from the stellar TV ratings, there are multitudes of such people),
this has been a delightfully a close, hard-played series, rich with storylines,
MVP winners and unlikely heroes. A series that both displays and challenges the
state-of-the-art basketball strategies. A series in which first one team split
games at home, then the other team followed suit. A series that’s tied 2-2 and
seems destined to go seven — which, really, is the only rooting interest you
have.
They enjoy every minute of it
without worrying that maybe they’re crazy.
For
Cleveland fans
— at
least those of us living and dying with the Cavs — we’ve been … if not
literally living and dying, at least kind of, well … manic.
Before Game
1, we were hopeful.
After it, we were distraught
Before Game 2, we braced for what
seemed like a certain 4-0 sweep.
After it, our spirits soared,
flying along with the team back to Cleveland with home court advantage.
Before Game 3, we were at best
cautiously optimistic.
After it, with Cleveland up 2-1 and
with (historically) a 74 percent chance of winning, we allowed ourselves, for
the first time, to get serious about how we’d really feel not if but when a Cleveland team wins a title in our lifetime.
Before Game 4, we’d allowed
ourselves to get downright giddy.
After it, we weren’t crushed the
way we were after Game 1. We were ground down. Emotionally exhausted and ground
down. We woke resigned to losing the series in seven.
Before Game 5, a lot of us will be braced
for more disappointment.
But our believeland clothing will betray us. And snippets of old
songs will creep into our minds. Tonight
the orange and blue delivers, some of us will sing.
Hard workin’ town, hard-workin’ team. // Mark Winegardner
