NBA GAME 5: Two Takeaways & One Huge Game at Home

           

   Maybe you’re like me?

   During this playoff run — and especially in the NBA Finals — the day after a Cavs win, you get nothing done.

   You’re glued to sports-talk TV and radio[1].

   You read tens of thousands of words of analysis on the Internet and/or actual newspapers[2].

   Unsated, you happily tumble down social-media rabbit holes.

   You even break down and talk to people, jibber-jabbering with profligate abandon both on the telephone (weirdly enough) and in person (weirder still!).

   You even dare wonder how much money you’d spend on NBA Champions gear and then hate yourself for jinxing everything and then click on some other website or go bother some other person willing to listen to your hot take on last night’s big win.

   But after a loss?

   It’s … weird.

   You’re pouty.

   Awash in avoidance.

   You don’t want to say anything about the game, read anything[3] or think about it.

   You tell yourself it’s time to put away the childish things of your silly, immoderate fandom and get some real work done.

   Unless your real work is writing a blog like this. In which case, you, like me, would no doubt spend your day the way I just spent Monday — in a funk of weary, procrastinating denial.

   Given a day to process Cleveland’s Game 5 loss to Golden State, I have two takeaways.

   First, for my money, the worst moment was also the best and the happiest, the most gorgeous and exhilarating.

   With less than 10 minutes remaining in the game and the Cavs down 75-72, LeBron James drives into the lane, the Warriors defense collapses on him, he kicks the ball out to the perimeter, where his teammates zip what seems like 10 quick passes[4] before it gets back to him and he finds Iman Shumpert for a wide-open corner three.

   Tie game!

   About two minutes later (after two buckets by LeBron, a floater in the lane and a three of his own), the Cavs even led, briefly and for the final time, 80-79, before utterly collapsing down the stretch and losing 104-91.

   But there can be no argument that the Shumpert trey was the zenith of the game for Cleveland. It was a perfect specimen of the kind of offensive reign of terror this team is at its best.

   It was an increasingly frequent sight, until the departure of Kevin Love in the Boston series and utterly absent after Kyrie Irving went down in Game 1.

   How beautiful it was to see again.

   And what torture to behold it and wonder what might have been.

   My second takeaway is this: Moral victories are for losers.

   Dozens of times the past few days, I’ve heard even fellow Cleveland fans — especially them — talk about how great the Cavs will be positioned to win next year. I’ve heard more speculation about offseason free-agent contract issues (Love, Thompson, Delly, etc.) than I have X’s-and-O’s chalk-talk about how to reclaim the control of the tempo of the game that the Cavs had in the first three games of the series.

   This morning, a friend of mine — lifelong Clevelander and a knowledgeable fan — actually texted me to ask what’s better for LeBron’s legacy: to have swept the Warriors with a healthy Irving and Love or to lose in seven with what’s left.

   Seriously? C’mon man. The former!

   Who am I to hold a grudge against LeBron — quite the contrary! — but I don’t give a damn about his legacy[5].

   I care about winning a title in Cleveland.

   After 51 years of waiting for next year, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s be present. Let’s savor the agony and the ecstasy of the moment.

   We’re home.

   We’re playing tonight, two games away from a championship.

   If you’re like me, that’s all that really matters.   // Mark Winegardner

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[1] Except for all programming involving Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless, Colin Cowherd and Tony Kornheiser-free Michael Wilbon, because, seriously: How are any of those guys still a thing?

[2] If, like me, you’re, say, 53 years old. Otherwise, yeah: Just online.

[3] Typically, the newspaper stays on the stoop or in the tube, untouched.

[4] It was only three.

[5] That’s not entirely true. I do. But not yet. Not right now.

NBA Finals: Game 4 Postmortem

   

   

   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[1].

   Not, I should add, just Cavaliers stuff. In fact, I’d say at least half of it emphasized the Cleveland itself, first and foremost[2]. 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[3], 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[4], 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[5].

   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[6] — 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[7]. Hard workin’ town, hard-workin’ team.   // Mark Winegardner

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[1] Not while wearing press credentials. Hey, I’m a pro. There is a code to observe. I will confess that this series has driven me to violate the no-cheering-in-the-pressbox a few times, though I have recovered speedily and then dutifully swallowed my shame.

[2] Way more than that, if you concede that the ubiquitous all in slogan makes a nod toward the region’s soul-deep involvement with this team.

[3] Zydrunas Ilgauskus, who wore #11, remains #1 in the hearts of at least a dozen people I saw that night.

[4] That’s just an expression. Bullying is wrong! All night, I politely chanted excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me the way Hare Krishnas chant Hare Krishna, Krishna Hare. I digress, but where did all the Hare Krishnas go?

[5] “Twenty-two apiece,” he said when she went to the bathroom. That’s thousand. Plus service charges. He offered to show me his receipt on his iPhone, but I said I’d take his word for it.

[6] Probably for Golden State fans, too, although as fear overcomes me and I feel this series slipping away, I’m not of a mind to be empathetic to you guys.

[7] Actually, this is my ringtone.

NBA Finals: Game 4

Pregame
We've recruited ESPN the Mag contributing writer and Crooked River Burning author Mark Winegardner to help us cover the 2015 NBA Finals — maybe our best chance in 51 years for that elusive title. But he's not #AllinCLE. Not yet anyway.
After a 96-91 win over the Golden State Warriors in which Matthew Dellavedova had to be taken from the arena on a stretcher after severe cramping, the Cavs have taken a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals. Tonight, it's a pivotal Game 4 at The Q. 

Jason Brill, associate editor: Some Tribe game today. Heard you were there. 

Mark Winegardner: Markum looked stellar! Urshela smoked his first HR! Yet something tells me those aren't going to be the two most exciting Cleveland sports moments today. 

MW: All game long there were random burst of "Let's Go, Cavs!" chants. Walking around downtown now. The same is true here. Hardly anyone in the casino not wearing Cavs gear.

JB: At lunch, it was pretty active around  Playhouse Square. It feels like a delivery on the excitement of last July when LeBron announced he was coming back.

MW: Did that excitement ever really wane? Maybe when they were 19-20, I guess.

JB: Maybe the delivery of all that promise. Not going to speak for the city, but I knew they were better than 19-20.

MW: Has any team ever won a championship starting only one guy from its opening lineup?
JB: And that one opening day starter happens to be the best player in the world? Probably not.

JB: And I think Steve would say we're venturing into jinx territory.

MW: And he'd be right!

MW: Warriors gotta be thinking, How the hell are we losing to these guys? Which is probably good for the Cavs.

NBA Finals Game 2: Team Grit

   

   Rarely, in the history of seven-game series in any sport has a 1-0 lead felt so insurmountable as it did going into Game 2 of these NBA Finals.

   Cleveland — improbably — surmounted the hell out of it.

   Until yesterday, no team had ever won a Finals game without the services of its second-[1] and third-[2] leading scorers, yet with those guys relegated to hospital beds footnote status, the Cavaliers went into Oracle Arena, where the Golden State Warriors sport the best home-court record in the NBA, dictated the pace of the game from beginning to end, and won, in dreaded overtime[3], 95-93.

   Remind me again why we[4] thought the Cavs were toast?

   They’ve played 106 minutes of basketball, on the road, against the 67-win, best-in-the-NBA Warriors, and led for more than 79 of those minutes.

   They’ve had four opportunities for buzzer-beaters in regulation, two in Game 1 (LeBron and Iman Shumpert), two in Game 2 (LeBron and Tristan Thompson), missed all four, and emerged with the series tied 1-1, with no need to thank anything resembling good luck.

   Matthew Dellavedova, who as recently as the trading deadline seemed to be holding down the position (backup point guard) most in need of an upgrade, started at point guard. And he didn’t start especially well, either, getting torched at both ends of the court by Klay Thompson. But once he switched to NBA MVP Steph Curry (and vice versa), the game turned around. In fact, with Delly guarding him, Curry, probably the best and most resourceful outside shooter in the history of the game, didn’t make a single shot[5].

   The Cavs, who as recently as January were one of the worst defensive teams in the NBA, are winning because they’ve transformed themselves into one of the best. It ain’t always pretty, but no fan base is better equipped to embrace winning ugly than we are.

   That said, don’t try telling Cavs fans that we’re not beholding a vision of rare beauty.

   Behold: LeBron James.

   He entered this season as part of any NBA Mount Rushmore conversation.

   It’s increasingly likely that, however it ends, he has emerged to challenge Michael Jordan as the NBA’s GOAT.

   LeBron has led his team in points, rebounds and assists in 35 playoff games — 11 more than the next two highest[6] combined.

   Michael Jordan never had a stat line in the Finals like LeBron’s 39 point, 16 rebound, 11 assist game yesterday. In fairness, because he never played a single game in the Finals without his two best teammates, Jordan didn’t need to. In the series in which Jordan carried the heaviest load, the 1998 Finals against Utah, he totaled 24 rebounds and 14 assists in six games. In just two games, LeBron has 24 rebounds and 17 assists. Jordan averaged 33.5 points per game. LeBron is averaging 42.5[7].

   Yesterday, the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated the biggest win in the history of the franchise.

   Now, they, as ever, are following LeBron’s lead and coming home[8].   // Mark Winegardner

                         

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[1] Kyrie Irving, DNP, fractured left kneecap.

[2] Kevin Love, DNP, left arm nearly yanked off by a clumsy Celtic.

[3] So maybe, just maybe, the overtime loss in Game 1 won’t go down in ignominy and history as The Overtime? At minimum, it’s pretty to think so.

[4] Maybe not you, but, yes: me. And pretty much everyone in the NBA chattering class.

[5] Dellavedova has used the playoffs to go from folk hero to damned good player, a journey highlighted by being responsible for postseason career-worst offensive games from former MVP Derrick Rose, current all-star Jeff Teague and now Curry.

[6] Larry Bird with 13 and Tim Duncan with 11.

[7] If you think Jordan shot dramatically better, you’d be wrong; he went 43% from the floor and 31% from three, while LBJ is shooting 40% from the floor and 36% from three.

[8] Me, too! I’m leaving Florida today, flying back to the only place I’ve ever lived that felt like home, where I’ll crash for a few days in my mother-in-law’s spare bedroom so I can cover the Finals for Cleveland Magazine. Stay tuned!