| Different Movie, Same Bad Ending Authored by Jeff Risdon - May 31, 2009 - 5:08 pm
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This collapse is different than what Cleveland is used to in terms of epic playoff failures.
LeBron James is the first legitimate star we've had in the Cleveland sports landscape in my 36 years on earth.
We have had some very good perennial All-Stars, but never anything like LeBron.
Not Manny, not Jim Thome, not Ozzie Newsome, not Mark Price or Brad Daugherty, not even favorite son Bernie Kosar nor Hector Marinaro, the greatest indoor soccer player ever.
We're used to banging our heads against the transcendent star and watching him steal our victories, our glory and our pride, not watching our own transcendent star come up short.
It's a sickening role reversal for a city of sports fans that deserves better.
By now most people know the inglorious litany of Cleveland sports: Red Right 88, The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, Robby Alomar, Jose Mesa.
Most of us wear them as battle scars of pride and community, kind of a self-deprecating chip on our collective shoulders. In just about all those cases, our dreams became nightmares because one great player on an inferior team made a play that lives in "greatest sports moments" history.
It's the same reason why Michael Jordan and John Elway are among the greatest athletes of all time.
LeBron was our answer, our coup ferre, our reason to believe. This time was going to be different. We had the amazing superstar that can take a lesser-talented group on his shoulders and quench our thirst for a title.
And this one is homegrown to boot.
He knows our collective pain and seemed sent from the Gods to deliver us from our chronic suffering. We've seen this movie too many times before, and this time we had the hero riding off in to the sunset with the beauty, while the opponent just stared longingly in mystified defeat.
That's how it works, right?
Apparently not for Cleveland. Sadly this turned out much more like the recent BCS failures of the team two hours down I-71. Those Buckeyes coasted to overrated heights and buckled when facing legitimate competition after feasting on weaker prey. That's what happened to the Cavaliers against Orlando.
There are a plethora of reasons why -- poor shooting, unprepared coaching, leaky perimeter defense, Orlando's depth and bevy of sharpshooters, overconfidence -- but the bottom line is that the movie that was scripted as an epic thrill-ride ending in climactic glory ended up a cut-rate horror film that spawns too many spin offs and sequels.
I'll speak from the heart here: this one hurts very badly.
Only the 1997 World Series compares in terms of heartbreaking disaster. Not to discredit the Magic -- they were clearly the better overall team -- but this Cavs team just seemed destined to win. As good as the Magic, Lakers, and Nuggets are, it was easy to see how these Cavaliers could vanquish them all and deliver us from the purgatory of being the longest-suffering fans in America.
I had already formulated victory plans in my mind, how I would handle the ecstasy of gold by acting like a fool.
Instead, I'm just a fool in fandom hell, and the concentric circles of agony are getting progressively larger above me.
--Jeff.Risdon@RealGM.com |
