Why Cleveland is Angry about Lebron

[Author's Note: With the highly anticipated Cavs-Heat game in Cleveland on Thursday, I thought it would be a good time to revisit my perspective on Cleveland's reaction to Lebron's departure. I originally posted this article on Facebook on July 9, 2010 - a few days after Lebron took his talents to South Beach... ]

Before anyone gets all high and mighty and starts talking about how Lebron was right to leave Cleveland and how Cleveland fans just need to get over it, they need to understand a few things about Clevelanders:

1) We know Cleveland isn't perfect.

It's not New York or Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco, DC or Atlanta. It has awful public schools, obscene unemployment, above average crime rates, a shoddy public transit system, a miserable tax code that drives (or keeps) businesses away, and shortsighted public planners who turned a sublime piece of waterfront property into a concrete mess. It's a city that, occasional sparks of life notwithstanding, has been on a gradual decline since the days of the great steel mills. None of this is news to us.

2) It's still our hometown.

We love Cleveland, problems and all, and we aren't afraid to say so. We appreciate it for the things it does have - a sense of history, great neighborhoods, strong ethnic communities, a world-class hospital, well-respected theater and orchestra organizations, surprisingly good dining, three major sports teams (we'll get to that later), a hub airport, exceptional regional parks, great colleges/universities, pleasant suburbs, and substantial smaller cities (Akron, Canton, Youngstown) that are close enough to add value as part of an extended family.

Most anyone who grew up in Northeast Ohio will be happy to tell you great things about it. And if you decide to belittle it, be prepared for an argument. Clevelanders wear loyalty to their town like a badge of honor. Yeah, the winters can suck, but we're tough enough to handle it. Yeah, the local economy is a mess, but we'll soldier on and find a way to make it. And if there was anything we could do as one person to lift the collective spirit or fortune of our hometown, you can take it to the bank that we'd do it in a heartbeat.

3) Sports teams are like family.

If you grew up in greater Cleveland - and for sports purposes, that's a swath of land roughly from the Pennsylvania border to Toledo and from Lake Erie to Columbus - you were born and raised to love your hometown teams religiously. Fall Sundays have always been about church and the Browns game, winter evenings usually mean Joe Tait on the radio, and each spring brings renewed enthusiasm even if the Indians are staring down the barrel of another 100-loss season.

As a Cleveland sports fan, you know you are taking a bet with long odds, but that's part of the charm. You know that the Browns last won a title in 1964, the Indians in 1948, the Cavaliers never. You know that our teams break our hearts repeatedly and in ever more excruciating ways - Herb Score, Rocky Colavito, Red Right 88, The Drive, The Fumble, Jordan over Ehlo, the MLB lockout, Jose-freaking-Mesa, Art $%^@# Modell - but you stick with them anyway. We have to; it's in our DNA. It's the right thing to do. These are our teams, they represent our city, and supporting them is the most public way we can show love for our hometown. Even those of us who move to other parts of the country still pull for our Brownies, our Tribe, and our Cavs as if we had never left. And we know that someday, when that bet finally pays off, when one of our teams finally gets over the hump and brings home a title, it is going to be one of the sweetest and most satisfying days that sport has ever produced.

...

Now take all of that, and script this story: A local kid, from 30 miles down the road in Akron, with the remarkable single-name potential of "Lebron", turns out to be the most sought-after high school basketball player in a generation, maybe ever. Comparisons to the legendary MJ abound, Sports Illustrated does a cover article on him, and his high school team moves its home games to the University of Akron to accommodate the crowds. The Cavs win the draft lottery (what, a Cleveland team gets lucky?) in the year that he enters the league. They draft him, and unbelievably, he actually lives up to the hype. He helps pull the Cavs from the dredges of the lottery to a playoff team, then to the NBA Finals, to the brink of that magical championship. He adopts the moniker "King James" and becomes a global icon. And all the while, he stays out of trouble and strongly advocates for his hometown, repeatedly proclaiming his loyalty to his roots and appreciation to to those who have supported him throughout his career.

As a fan, after decades of disappointment, this has all the makings of The Team That Finally Does It. The team's management does their part and surrounds Lebron with a solid supporting cast. The Cavs become the class of the NBA regular season but falter in the playoffs. The next season, management convinces a superstar in his twilight years to come in and play second fiddle to Lebron as a key addition, then makes a deadline move to acquire what looks to be the final piece of the puzzle. The Cavs again lead the NBA through the regular season and are the prohibitive favorites to win it all in the final year of Lebron's contract.

Then something amazing happens. The Cavs lose a playoff series to Rajon Rondo and the withering remains of the Boston Celtics not despite Lebron's efforts, but because of them. Lebron misses shots, makes poor decisions, plays sloppy defense, turns the ball over, and retreats from his typical leadership role in the most critical moments of the series. It is a shocking development that calls his very status as the "Chosen One" into question.

With that disappointment fresh on his mind, Lebron has a decision to make: to re-sign with the Cavs or to take his free agent opportunity to go elsewhere.

If he goes somewhere else, he'll probably win a few more MVP awards. And he could certainly win a title or two for an appreciative fan base. Chicago definitely knows how to celebrate NBA championships. New York has been aching for one for a while themselves. Hell, Dwayne Wade won one a few years back with Miami, and it sure could be fun to go try to win a couple more with him, right?

But if he stays with Cleveland and wins a championship here, redeeming himself and exorcising the demons of decades of Cleveland sports futility...the payout is nothing short of immortality. Streets and children would be named after him, statues would be raised - he might even get his own holiday. Even with his eleventy billion dollars, he'd never have to buy a thing in Northeast Ohio ever again. A buzz in Manhattan that only lasts until the Yankees hit the postseason? Another trophy next to Jordan's ridiculous collection? A title in a town that didn't even have a basketball team 20 years ago? How could any of that compare to being the hometown boy who finally brought a championship after more than 45 years to the most brutalized sports fans in the country - to Cleveland, of all places? You couldn't write a better story.

And here's the kicker: Lebron knows this. He is from here. He is one of us. The choice is obvious.

...

So when he turned his free agency into a narcissistic media spectacle, created an hour-long live prime time event to announce his decision, and then proceeded, on national television, to disavow an entire fan base - his own hometown - in the interest of going down south to play with his friends, it wasn't just another player leaving because Cleveland is a mid-market town that can't afford to keep him. It wasn't a freak accident or boneheaded front office move or a team that couldn't overcome the heroics of an opposing superstar. It was personal. It was a local guy turning his back on his own people, abandoning his own city. It was an unimaginable betrayal to a Clevelander.

Don't get me wrong, we've all been preparing ourselves for the worst. We are, after all, Cleveland fans - we're accustomed to heartbreak. But deep down a part of us still believed that it was going to work out. That he got it. That he would back up his words and prove that loyalty wasn't just a sound bite. That he understood the challenge and the opportunity before him. That he bought into the dream as much as we did. That he really was one of us. That he'd do the right thing.

He didn't. And that cuts to the very core of who we are. And that's why we are angry.

The Thirsty Scholars: Teams that are good enough vs. teams that deserve ...

I am hoping and praying for total chaos and bedlam to ensue to see the BCS go down in flames. I hope Auburn loses to Alabama and/or South Carolina; I too think Oregon right now is probably the best team in the country, but I'd like to see them lose to create further chaos and bedlam. (I actually live in Bedlam and vacation in Chaos, which explains my proclivity to these terms.)

All the frickin' BCS gives us is a NC game of polling a 1 and 2 team. They give us meaningless bowls. Do you think anybody cares who plays in what used to be the Peach Bowl, now the Chic Filet Bowl? The Sun Bowl? Nobody cares. Bowl games were supposed to be special. They aren't. They have eliminated that aspect. And that mediocre teams with 6 wins can go helps in that rendering.

Everything is cyclical, and right now the Big East is pathetic and ACC's not far behind. They should have some stipulation that an AQ from a conference must at least be in the top 10 or top 8. That Connecticut or Pittsburg gets in over Alabama, TCU, Stanford and a host of others is laughable. And that's all the BCS has become is a system they keep having to tweak. Well here's a clue fella's, you don't have to tweak a playoff.

Then the bowls leading into the NC game would not be meaningless. They would all mean something as some team is advancing. So for the sake of dissolutionment I am praying for chaos, bedlam, and possibly their cousin mayhem to show up at the BCS party.

Teams that are good enough vs. teams that deserve to go...

It seems that the elections killed this blog.... back to football... and back to Boise State vs. the world!

I was listening to ESPN radio on the way to work and a guy framed the argument perfectly. Basically, BSU is a team that looks like it is good enough to play for a national championship. They've absolutely destroyed everybody in the WAC and it is clear that they are a team that looks as though they could beat anybody on a neutral field in a one-for-all-the-marbles scenario if they play well. On the other hand, you have Auburn... they are a team that has played and beaten the #5 ranked schedule in the country (and that includes their win against 1-AA Chatanooga last week). Auburn has a couple of convincing wins and a bunch of relatively close wins, but they have won every game against a schedule that is just about as tough as it comes. So who should play for it all? The team that is good enough? The team that deserves to go? Of course, there's also TCU that put a serious beat-down on ND's next victim (please don't let my homerism for the Irish ruin my credibility... I'm aware that we just lost to Navy and Tulsa, and conventional wisdom has us losing badly this weekend... I just don't want my call of 5-7 after the Stanford game to come back to haunt me). Anyways, TCU is kind of a hybrid of Auburn and BSU... They've played a better schedule than BSU (but still not as tough of a slate as Auburn), and they've blown out just about everybody (but not as convincingly as BSU). This season continues to scream for a playoff. I've always tried to look at this situation as if ND were in the positions of these teams. If ND ran through a schedule as poor as BSU's, and we were left out of the NC game in favor of a team that played the 5th toughest schedule in the country and also went undefeated, I would undoubtedly be pissed, but I would probably be able to swallow that jagged little pill since the other team played a schedule that was so much tougher than ours. Conversely, If ND went undefeated against the #5 schedule in the country and got left out in favor of a team that played a bunch of complete patsies, I would NEVER get over it. It would be similar to '93 FSU getting the national championship over ND... the same ND that BEAT THEIR ASSES by 2 scores! The same ND that missed out on a national championship when Miami beat us in '89 and lost the following week but the voters said that the head-to-head matchup was the tipping point... God damnit... that was bullshit, but I digress... where was I... Oh, if ND were left out after defeating the #5 schedule in the country. This is why I would want to see Auburn in the game (assuming they are undefeated at the end of the year, and Cam Newton isn't found guilty of recruiting infractions... can anybody defend the SEC against my allegation that it is the dirtiest/scummiest conference in college football?). Oregon looks like the best team this year, the other team for the big game is completely up in the air...

Another thing that came up was that BSU (or some other VERY deservant team) could be left out of a BCS bowl due to the obligation that the BCS must include the Big East and ACC champs. Just think... 4 of the 6 AQ conferences stand to send 2 teams: The big 10 (from the pool of OSU/Wisc/Iowa/MSU). The Pac 10 (Oregon/Stanford). The big 12 (Nebraska, OK State). The SEC (Auburn, LSU, Alabama). The BCS has 4 bowls and the NC game. Let's assume the NC game is Oregon/Auburn. That leaves 8 slots that must be filled. The SEC and Pac 10 champs will be represented in the NC game. Now we have 4 AQ teams (including two awful teams from the Big East/ACC) and 4 at large bids. Let's say that two of those go to BSU and TCU... this could leave a real possibility that a team like Stanford (who looks GREAT this year) could go to the Alamo bowl... another possibility would be that BSU gets left out in favor of teams from the AQ conferences due to monetary reasons... either way, this STINKS! I actually hope that the season turns out this way so that the BCS will have even more reason to go down in flames.

The Thirsty Scholars: The Next Governator: Why not a CEO?

The Thirsty Scholars: The Next Governator: Why not a CEO?: "Zach and Oracle... I TOTALLY agree with you. Having said that, where was this logic in the last presidential election? Mit Romney was very..."

Matt, the reason Mitt didn't get in is the same reason Ross Perot didn't get in, (although Perot's VP choice "The Admiral" was a cartoon character), he was 1, O-N-E business man. A singular business guy, not a private enterprise. So he's still running the government WITH a bunch of politicians. I am talking about an entire company, organization ergo Disney running the government. If we just put in one business man, then hell, why don't we just elect the econ prof from Harvard every 4 years and be done with it. That won't work. These business guys became politicians too. We need a COMPANY with several men like Warren Buffett, fixing the country/economy. But here in lies the rub my fledgling scholars, these smart men a la Mr. Buffett, are too smart for the dirty business of politics.