If you put Frangelico and Absolut Citron in a glass and then sugar coat a lemon to take a bite out of afterwards, it tastes just like chocolate cake. Nothing about citrus vodka, sugar, lemon, or hazelnut liquor should taste like chocolate or cake, let alone both, but it does.
And so it is with the Cleveland Cavaliers, the most underdog sports town anchored by a league’s best player that somehow has gone from vilified to loveable. Loveable Lebron and the Cavs, coming to a playoff run near you.
It’s sort of odd that such a down on its luck sports city and franchise is lucky enough to have by far the game’s most dominant player, and it’s amazing to see the about face the sports world has done on Lebron James, scorned this time last year playing for the villainous Miami Heat in a plastic sports town blessed with good fortune.
We move our line as fans or viewers of anything pretty quickly. Yes, there is still a faction of folks that dislike James, but it’s night and day compared to what he faced his first year in Miami Heat colors. Part of that is because Cleveland is viewed from the outside as a tough-luck sports town with a blue collar fan base versus maybe the unfair, maybe the fair portrayal of the transient Miami fan sporting white pants and sunglasses indoors. Maybe it’s all made up. Maybe it’s not. Like most things, the truth is somewhere between the two ends.
Maybe it’s how Lebron handled himself this last time around, opting to shove off to vacation and quietly allow the printing of an embargoed story in Sports Illustrated rather than sit down in front of a captive audience and then feign shock and awe when folks got really pissed about it. Some of it was the miscalculation of image, some of it was youth and not understanding how much it all meant, and some of it was because of how Lebron explained it this past summer.
Had James explained it beforehand the way he did afterwards (and who knows if that was the thought process beforehand or if it just sounded good afterwards) with the likening of going to the Heat as ostensibly, his chance to go to college metaphorically like other players get the opportunity to do … go away, grow up, and then come home … people wouldn’t have been so salty about it.
Had he done it all in a quiet article rather than go on television with the whole lead-up and hand picked reporter to question him, who knows? Part of being young is making mistakes.
Now though, some five years after The Decision, James and his team is tough to not root for. Cleveland has probably their most legitimate chance to win a championship with this Cavs team since any point since their last pro sports title in 1964 unless you count the Cleveland Barons of the AHL and I’m pretty sure no one is.
The Cavs have a coach that roughly looks like business professional Bo Pelini; their owner is a guy trying to do revitalization of human spirit both in Cleveland with sports and in Detroit with infrastructure; their best player is a once-scorned favorite son come home; and it’s pretty tough to, on the outside, really find issue with any of their players, like young star Kyrie Irving, completely unoffensive on every level Kevin Love, or Timofy Mozgov, who has the greatest spelling of his first name in the history of naming children.
The real feat these Cavs have pulled off is that they’re somehow underdogs and favorites all wrapped up in one ball. James’ relative greatness, which will be parsed over long after he’s gone, is evident in the fact that the Cavs last year were preparing for an off season where they could lose Irving and were staring down the barrel at lottery ping pong balls and hoping to get lucky. This year, they’re everyone’s favorite to win the conference, and really only because James came back.
The NBA isn’t any other sport. Yes, guys go places primarily for money, but salary caps for the most part wipe the money part of the equation clean. And the NBA is the one sport where players are GM’s without the name plate on the office door, because no one really cares who Cleveland’s coach or GM is … they want to play with Lebron.
The days are potentially gone where market size is the big factor in luring free agents rather than who is on the roster and do I want to play with them. Yes, teams like the Lakers or the Celtics will always have those historic edges, but the gap has been narrowed. If the choice is playing with a roster full of also-rans in New York or getting the same money to play with a Russell Westbrook or a Lebron James, the tide is shifting and New York will lose out on that player.
Lebron is probably the most interesting athlete of our time, career arc wise. He’s been loved beyond comprehension; hated beyond that same comprehension; and then falls somewhere in the middle now. We’ll see if his decision to come back home changes how players view their free agency the way it did when he cut the cord and went to Miami. Or if it’s just unique to him.
Either way, these playoffs are odd times in Cleveland. They’re tough to not root for, both because of how much sports means in old school Midwest towns like that and because there was just sort of something enjoyable about watching such a tortured fan base get lucky for once.
The truth is, we all probably put too much into our sports, especially in certain areas. They detract from the droll, over-worked lives many of us lead, especially in gritty, cold, historic Midwest. Sports for the most part in places like a Detroit, Chicago, or Cleveland are a momentary shift away from all of the other problems in life, if only for three hours at a bar with a few buddies and you hope your team wins.
There’s probably some sort of psychological study that can be done about it all, but if you’ve lived or spent time in any of these towns, they just have a different feel to them. For Cleveland, it’s been a long, tortured road to a championship and one that has yet to really end.
But for the first time in a long time, you can see it on the horizon. And to be honest, it’s pretty tough to root against it, no matter which watering hole you patronize to let your sports take you wherever you want them to, momentarily or in the case of winning a title … forever.
We Are All Cavaliers for a bit, I suppose.
